Village threatens to evict Crew if Browns don’t show up
The Obetz village COLUMBUS — administrator is demanding that the Cleveland Browns bring a mini-training camp or other type of team excursion to his village in order to earn an extension of the Crew SC’s training-facility lease there.
If the two sides can’t come to terms, the village will ask the Crew, whose new ownership group includes Jimmy Haslam, the principal owner of the Browns, to leave the training facility in December, terminating its 22-year relationship with professional soccer, said Rod Davisson, administrator and economic development director for the village.
“What we are asking of them is to make sure that Obetz, which has been the longtime home of the Crew, has an opportunity to participate with the facilities that we’ve already developed and invested here, to be part of the Browns/Crew group, and to be able to bring events to southern Franklin County,” Davisson said.
“Those events need to be substantial,” he said. “It’s got to be something meaningful, something people want to see, like a (Browns) training camp, like a (Browns) skills competition.”
The Crew’s option to extend its Obetz lease expired late last year, and the team has been on a monthto-month deal since, Davisson said.
“The Village of Obetz has been a great partner for our team,” Peter John-Baptiste, the teams’ vice president of communications, said in an email. “They’ve stuck with the team through the uncertainty of the last few years and their efforts and patience is much appreciated.
“Continuing to train in Obetz for the next couple years before our new planned facility is complete would be optimal for our team. We’ve made recent investments in the facility with the intent of staying and we’d love to reach an agreement.”
The Browns have offered to host an Obetz youth football camp, which typically involves active and former players, but not a team training excursion, John-Baptiste said.
Asked Friday where the Crew would train if it can’t come to an agreement with Obetz, John-Baptiste said: “We’ve got to explore other options . ... Obviously, we’ve got to train somewhere.”
The current facility has two fields, a locker room, training room and coaches offices, John-Baptiste said.
“So far, it doesn’t look promising for them remaining beyond the end of the year here in Obetz,” Davisson said, noting that the use of the facility is now at the village’s discretion. “We’re stalled. They sent us their last offer.”
A plan to convert parking lots around Mapfre Stadium, the Crew’s longtime home field, into an expanded training and practice facility will be reviewed by a new panel created by Gov. Mike DeWine. The 20-person task force is determining the best use for the site.
Transforming Mapfre into a new training center hinges on moving Crew games into a newly constructed downtown soccer stadium west of the Huntington Park baseball stadium. The Crew and the parcel’s owner, Nationwide Realty Investors, are still negotiating over the site more than seven months after the project was publicly announced.
“Nothing has really changed,” John-Baptiste said of the negotiations. “We feel like we’re still close. We feel good about where we are. Everything is still on schedule.”
Asked what Obetz is going to do with the soccer facility if the Crew vacates it, Davisson said the village is already fielding offers from interested parties.