The city of Cleveland agreed to drop its opposition to a Browns move to Brook Park, with the help of $100 million from the Haslam Sports Group.

A judge has paused governor Mike DeWine pause on the sale of intoxicating hemp products in Ohio, and a Stark County developer believes the historic former Firestone plant can be saved, giving hope to preservationists.

Ideas is next.

Hello and welcome to ideas.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thank you for joining us.

Cleveland pushed hard against the Browns plan to move to Brook Park, filing a lawsuit and objecting to the height of the proposed new enclosed stadium.

This week the fight ended.

Cleveland agreed to drop its opposition, and soon its suits and the Browns agreed to fork over $100 million over 15 years, some of which will be used to raise the current lakefront stadium after the 2028 season.

Governor Mike DeWine has ordered a halt temporarily.

The sale of intoxicating hemp products at stores and gas stations has been blocked temporarily by a judge presiding over a lawsuit filed by merchants who sell the products.

Some legislators warn that the state's unemployment compensation fund is vulnerable and benefits must be reduced to shore up.

And a Stark County developer says the historic Firestone plant in Akron can be redeveloped rather than razed.

Joining me for today's show from news five Cleveland reporter Michelle Jarboe from industry and public media environment reporter Zaria Johnson.

And in Columbus Statehouse News Bureau chief Karen Kasler, let's get ready to round table.

after a year long battle, the city of Cleveland and the Haslam Sports Group announced a deal this week in which the city ends its objections to the Browns move to Brook Park and the Haslam pay $100 million over 15 years, which includes the cost of raising the existing stadium to make way for lakefront development.

The city will drop its lawsuit and its challenge to a permit, allowing the new complex to exceed Federal Aviation Administration height restrictions.

Michele, you've been on this story from the beginning.

From the reporting, it sounds like in the end, this deal came down to a face to face Bibb and Haslam meeting.

That's right.

Mayor Bibb and team owner Jimmy Haslam said during their news conference on Monday that they got together at Haslam House and over a couple of Coca-Cola's struck a deal.

And that happened, this past Friday.

My understanding is conversations continued then over the weekend and into Monday.

And then they had their announcement Monday afternoon.

Now, the city has been opposed to this from the beginning.

It wants the Browns on the lakefront.

There is a whole lot of financial reasons for that.

But now that sort of the writing was on the wall, the, Odot had dropped its objection to the height of the stadium.

It looked like a deal had to happen.

So what are the parameters of this deal?

What exactly happens?

Sure.

So, the agreement involves roughly $100 million that will be paid out to the city over 15 years between now and 2039, 20, 40.

And I divide that into four buckets.

So Cleveland is going to get $25 million by December 1st of this year.

So that that's a cash payment now.

Then after the Browns lease ends at the existing stadium, which their lease ends in early 2029, they have committed to handling the demolition of the stadium and turning over what's been described as a pad ready site, a development ready site to the city.

The estimated cost of that is $30 million.

Now it could cost more than that to do the demolition.

You know, that's a few years away, but that's being estimated as roughly $30 million of the $100 million.

Then the third bucket is these installment payments that Haslam Sports Group is going to make to the city.

Those will start in 2029, and it's $5 million a year for five years.

So $25 million total.

And then the last bucket is, payments that also will start in 2029.

They'll go for ten years and it's $2 million a year that will go toward mutually agreed upon, quote unquote, community benefits projects.

We don't know what those are.

I think it's fair to say that that that part of the deal, which is comes to about $20 million, seems like money that might go to the lakefront or might go to other things, especially with City Council's involvement right here, city Council saying, I don't know what this has to do with my neighborhoods, that you're going to plow money into the lake.

So that might be one way to to solve that issue.

That was certainly the first thing I thought when I saw the language community benefits projects.

And when they say that they will take care of demolition of the stadium, that's signals to me that the stadium's coming down.

I know when they did a request for proposals to say, or ideas to say, what can we do at the lakefront?

They said, with or without the stadium.

And I was thinking to myself, I don't know, a Halloween store, but but what would it be?

But is there any possibility that the that the stadium remains in some capacity?

I don't know how you reuse that.

I think the only way it stays there is if the Browns somehow change their minds.

Okay.

And that's not likely to happen.

So the lawsuits that we've been talking about, there are dueling lawsuits.

It's actually another lawsuit outside of the purview of this, deal.

But they've agreed they'll drop them.

They haven't done it yet.

That's correct.

So.

So the city and the Browns move to stay the litigation this week saying, okay, we're going to put this on pause while we finalize the settlement deal because they've agreed on the terms of the deal.

But now they have to go through all the fine print of it and really come to something they can sign.

There are two lawsuits over the so-called model law and the existing stadium lease.

For for listeners who might not remember, the model law basically makes it harder for pro sports teams to leave taxpayer subsidized facilities.

But the state legislature changed it in the middle of this year so that it really only applies to teams looking to leave the state.

And then Cleveland had filed an appeal of the Ohio Department of Transportation's decision to allow the stadium project to move forward and issue a waiver for the height of the building.

And Cleveland is going to drop that appeal as part of this.

There's still a separate lawsuit that Dennis Kucinich brought in regards to the model law.

He was the architect of that as a state legislator.

That's still something that would exist, though the lawsuit still exists.

I don't know that it's going to go anywhere.

It hasn't really moved.

And then the lawsuit, I've really been paying attention to is, one that a couple of Northeast Ohio lawyers filed initially.

They filed it in state court in Franklin County.

They recently dropped the state court lawsuit but refiled in federal court.

And this is over the state's move to take $600 million in unclaimed funds as a stadium grant for the Browns, as well as using other unclaimed funds for additional pro sports projects.

They're saying that's just not an appropriate use of those funds.

But what I've heard, and it was really kind of dismissive, was like, well, then the state will find some other way to find that money.

I think that state lawmakers have shown that they are very committed to this project.

So for the last year, it hasn't just been Justin Bieber, but Chris Roney and the county executive two were in lockstep against the Browns moving off the lakefront.

So what was his reaction?

I heard a little bit of it at the question that I mentioned at the state of the county.

You also sat down talk with him.

That's right.

I sat down with the county executive on Tuesday, and we talked for for about a half hour.

And he was disappointed, both wearing his county executive hat and wearing his Browns fan hat.

I mean, he's he's been an advocate for keeping the project downtown because he thinks that that's better overall.

And and he disagreed with the move to settle, but he's also like, okay, this is where we are.

There's been a decision.

Now we all need to work together.

You know, if this Brook Park deal is really going to happen, we need to work to make sure it's the best it can be and that it's not going to interfere with the airport.

That it's not going to interfere with traffic in that area, not just in Brook Park, but in surrounding communities.

And he wants to work with Cleveland on the lakefront.

He also, though, as you alluded to at the beginning, said the county shouldn't put money into this.

Right.

The bonding authority doesn't need to happen because the Browns have said we can move forward without it.

And I think he's using that now as saying, okay, you said you don't need it, so let's not give it.

Multiple times.

Yes.

The the, a top executive with Haslam Sports Group in May said in a letter, you know, we're prepared to move forward without the county that we think this deal would be better with the county.

And that's because the cost of borrowing with the county's participation is lower.

Right.

It's cheaper money for the deal.

And then on Monday, Jimmy Haslam reiterated, you know, we have a way to do this without the county.

And obviously the county is in a challenging financial position, $600 million in bonds.

That's a lot to issue.

So so there's a question of whether they would even be able to do that.

You mentioned an airport that was Cleveland Hopkins Airport, which is going to be near the new stadium, but near the old stadium is Burke Lakefront Airport.

And Chris Rene and said yesterday, during the state of the county that his first action after hearing about this the following morning was pick up the phone call, Justin Bibb and say, let's do something about Burke.

So changing gears entirely to another lakefront site, that's a popular one.

People all want to know why there's a lakefront airport and what better use could there be of that?

It does sound like there's some momentum for that now.

Well, the city of Cleveland has been looking at the future Burke for a couple of years now and released some studies last year, that, they felt indicated that there is a path to closing Burke.

It's something the mayor hasn't been shy about saying he's interested in.

And to me, it seemed like, the outreach that the county executive made on Tuesday was a little bit of an olive branch saying, okay, like, let's move on to next steps here and let's think big on the lakefront.

You know, if you add in that Burke is more than 450 acres, if you added that in to what you've got down there, it's a huge site, that presents opportunities.

It also presents challenges.

That's a lot of land to figure out what to do with.

And the timeline for closing Burke is unclear.

The process is complicated.

The mayor called this deal one of the most significant in city history.

Council members.

Some of them aren't sharing his enthusiasm.

I think they were caught off guard.

I know they were caught off guard from what they told us and other media outlets on Monday, and I feel like that's a big part of it.

Yeah, they were council members who who wanted to be part of the negotiations, of course, on how do you negotiate the outlines of a legal settlement with 17 extra people in the realm?

So it's a challenging thing to do, but the feedback I've heard so far kind of falls into two buckets.

One is, why wasn't council part of this process?

And two, we're not sure that $100 million is enough.

Councilman Brian Casey said, basically, if you lie with dogs, you get fleas.

I mean, he was pretty adamant that a deal should never have been reached.

Yeah, he he called the the $100 million from housing sports group Dirty Money earlier this week.

So I don't think he's going to change his viewpoint of this.

A Franklin County judge this week blocked governor Mike DeWine executive order banning the sale of intoxicating hemp products.

It's not marijuana derived products that are sold and dispensaries.

It's a stop in gas stations, corner stores, that kind of thing.

The hemp derived products, would be prohibited for 90 days.

Under the governor's order, the judge issued a temporary restraining order on DeWine's action, delaying its implementation for 14 days.

And, Karen, we talked a lot about this last week.

So right now there's a pause in the pause.

Yes.

Till I think October 28th, which is when the next hearing would be on this whole situation.

But yeah, this is apparently the judge, was not too thrilled with the whole order in general.

He thought that DeWine had really, gone beyond his authority to order something like this.

When I spoke to DeWine the next day about it, he said he felt like he had to do something that he had asked lawmakers repeatedly for two years to put some regulations in on these products, and they hadn't done anything yet.

So he felt that he had to do something.

And he says he hopes that this will result in lawmakers passing some legislation.

Obviously, he's not thrilled that his ban was thrown out.

But, you know, he really wants something to happen.

Yeah, the legislature needs to put regulations in place.

I was at a store this weekend in Lakewood and the guy was telling folks, hey, by Monday night we're going to have to pull all this stuff off the shelves.

And the conversation there was just confusion, like, why?

And will it ever come back?

His question was, what do I do with my inventory?

Apparently they're supposed to turn it over, but he's like, I bought this inventory.

Yeah.

And I mean that that's part of the problem here, is that while the governor's order says you can't solve these products after a certain date, of course, that's been, you know, kind of held while this whole lawsuit is continuing, the real question is what will happen in the end?

Will there be some sort of regulation that's put into law?

And how long will that take?

Because lawmakers have been talking about this for quite a while.

DeWine started saying that he wanted to see some regulations on this not too long after voters approved legal marijuana.

Because these products are not considered marijuana.

They're they're they're different.

And so there's really no regulation on them.

And so he really wants to see something happen.

But as I said, lawmakers have been talking about this for a while and nothing has moved forward.

Cuyahoga County Executive Chris Ronayne, in his state of the county address, yesterday doubled down on the value of immigrants amid a volatile climate nationally, and he warned of draconian cuts from the federal government that will impact Cuyahoga County's efforts to feed and provide health care to needy residents.

Zaria, the task force has decided.

Now is the time to have you jump into the conversation, and I know that you were there at the speech yesterday.

We were sitting at the same table there, usually cheering sessions.

That's what these speeches are.

Here's all the great stuff we've done.

Here's the great stuff that's ahead.

But he did caution about more financial challenges ahead due to the funding cuts and the government shutdown.

Yeah.

And he compared it to cuts that came with that came to the county with the Covid pandemic a few years ago.

And he said that they're going to have to put them back to their best selves, forward to to make it through, to get through.

He said he's planning on leaning on community partnerships to do that, so he highlighted plans to hire more social workers and to launch a Cuyahoga County hunger response team to keep the public informed about these changes that are coming with these cuts and a few other preparation measures.

But I thought it was interesting.

He did emphasize that when the federal government shuts down, the state government is open, the county offices are open, the city offices are open to it sounds like he's going to rely on the partnerships through the local government to really keep the county moving forward.

Yeah.

And there are, though, some cuts coming.

I mean, he's noted that in the Health and Human Services department, just some realities coming when the money's not coming as it was.

Yeah.

And that's what I was really interested to hear about.

And I was surprised when you didn't bring up the Browns in his own speech, because that seems to be what so many people are concerned about.

But he did highlight the financial challenges and the cuts that might be coming with those, financial challenges, which I was curious to hear about personally.

So often when you hear about financial challenges, that's when you hear, well, that's we're going to have some pay cuts or we're going to have to do this or that.

In Ronayne speech, though, he was talking about how people who work for the county should not also qualify for government benefits.

And Michelle and he said the county is still investing in its workers, and they're going to do that by making sure they have a pretty high floor in terms of their salary.

Yes, he he was talking about sorry, correct me if I'm wrong because I don't have it written down here.

Was it by 20, 2626.

But everybody's going to be making at least $20 an hour okay.

Yeah.

So $20 an hour for each of the, the employees by then, which, seems to be significant.

It's a, it's a livable wage.

Yeah.

Also, the Browns were not a topic of the speech.

He did cover some new ground on the reaction to that.

I think we've covered that enough.

But property taxes were brought up in the Q&A and he discussed the specter of an elimination of them.

Karen, there is an issue statewide where there is a grassroots group that needs to collect a massive amount of signatures, but could it be done?

Possibly.

And Michelle, what we heard from the county executive is how disastrous that would be.

Yeah.

That's right.

He, he he urged people, you know, he said, obviously, like, you have the right to do what you want at the ballot box, but I'm just going to urge people not to vote for this if it makes it there, because it would be catastrophic to schools, to libraries, to parks, to, to, you know, across the spectrum.

But he also said, look, this is a reaction to the lack of action in Columbus that state lawmakers need to do something meaningful on property tax reform.

And I know those discussions have been intensifying.

But, you know, so far, the solutions that have come out of the state do not involve the state investing more in trying to offset property tax burdens on that.

That's it, right.

There is the question of whether the state is going to come in and help hold the school districts harmless and other communities harmless if they do make major cuts.

And that's been a real sticking point here is, is what is the state's role besides just passing legislation saying here the local communities have to deal with this.

Zaria and Michelle and me, we were all there.

And I just want you any other thoughts that that came to you?

I'm sorry from from the event, anything that he said or your thoughts from from being there.

Yeah.

I mean, you already touched on the, how hard he drove home, the point about news newcomers and migrants in the community and the value they bring to, Cuyahoga County.

And he, named a few who, worked with the Office of Small Businesses to come here, make Cuyahoga County their home and start their own small businesses and build their lives here.

But outside of that, I was, interested in hearing him talk about the Euclid microgrid project that's still underway.

And this O'Leary schools project, which plans to put solar panels on the rooftops of a couple, schools here in Cuyahoga County.

That seems to be still underway amid these federal funding cuts.

So that's good to hear.

Planning some follow up coverage on that here soon.

So, that definitely stuck out to me.

And it was interesting to me that he led with the with the idea of newcomers is the first thing out of the gate.

He talked about having put an organization in place to welcome folks more than a thousand people in, in the year since then.

We heard about last year.

Michelle, what about you?

I he briefly touched on, you know, some major projects that the county has been talking about for ever that are finally moving forward, the new Board of Elections building that where the BOE has moved into the former Plain Dealer building downtown, sat in that building for many years.

Yes.

And and the the jail project in Garfield Heights, which is finally supposed to get moving early next year.

So, so getting those projects unstuck.

It was interesting about the jail that he was talking, not just about all the plans for the new jail, but that they're doing new programing at the old jail, trying to make things better, that they're not waiting.

Basically, there's there's there are, you know, face to face visits for the first time in a long time, a bunch of other initiatives that he announced.

It seems like attempts to try to make a more humane environment out of what obviously has been a challenging facility.

And the other thing that I found interesting about the voting, what he said, given the size of that massive former Plain Dealer building, people will not have to wait out on the street in the rain in order to get in to vote.

And I remember when there was early voting and people lining up, they were going down the highway ramp on to 90.

Yeah.

And that apparently there's enough space that that's not going to happen anymore.

Our offices are right next to the old BOE, and it was just amazing to watch that sort of snaking line of people all the way around the literally down the highway ramp.

Crazy.

The fund that pays unemployment benefits is vulnerable and needs to be shored up, according to backers of a Republican sponsored bill that would cut unemployment payouts to 20 weeks, down from the current 26. current.

It's been an issue.

It's been on lawmakers radars for a while.

They're basically saying it went insolvent at one point, essentially, and we need to prevent that from happening again.

Yeah.

Lawmakers have been talking about this on and off since at least 2008, which was the last time the fund went broke because it was paying unemployment benefits during the Great Recession.

And Ohio had to borrow $1 billion from the federal government to make sure that those funds kept going.

Ohio paid back that billion dollar loan to the federal government using Covid relief funds in 2021, so there's still has been no resolution on how to shore up that fund that pays those jobless benefits.

You have people like, Representative Michelle Tasca, who is the sponsor of this bill, who say that cutting benefits is the way to go.

And then you have people on the other side, like union groups who are saying, no, you need to raise the contributions from employers.

And so this has been going back and forth again for at least I think, 15 years at this point.

So there the argument is, well, 26 weeks, 20 weeks.

That might be enough for reemployment.

Why 26?

Why is that number arrived at?

What has been the reaction from people that would have to collect unemployment benefits?

Is 26 enough?

Do they want even more than that?

Where do we stand with that?

Well, I think a lot of people are concerned about going back to 20 weeks because they say that that would be a serious problem.

I mean, when people have lost their jobs, they need that time to retool, retrain, you know, get out there and get into the job market.

And cutting from 26 weeks to 20 weeks would really hamper that development.

But again, this debate of, if you're going to shore up this fund and make sure that there's enough money in there, you have to do one or the other or a combination of both.

We're cutting benefits, but also increasing employer contributions.

And so that's been the real sticking point here of of what exactly is the best way to go about that, so that you make sure that there is enough money when the next recession or some other big event happens and that fund is going to be tapped.

Okay.

We've talked about the historic Firestone Building in Akron, and now a Stark County developer is in talks to repurpose it, giving hope to those who wish to save the structure.

Currently, it's slated for demolition unless another plan is offered by the middle of next month.

Zaria Steve Coon of Coon Restoration, says 110 year old Firestone Plant one is as solid as it can be, and it doesn't need to be torn down.

That's got to be music to the ears of people that want to keep it.

Yeah, and he wants to turn it into apartments.

Which, I just moved into a school that is now apartments.

So it's possible.

It's possible.

So he said the structure solid enough.

It doesn't need to be torn down.

It would preserve this historic site that a lot of people, appreciate because of the clock tower attached to it.

And like you mentioned, the city, they have the money already in hand to demolish it.

They don't really want to lose out on that money.

But the city council approved last month to wait 60 days, give 60 days time for another person to come in with the new idea, to preserve the site.

So it sounds like they have the site open for tours now.

People can come in, take a look, pitch some ideas to see what it could be turned into without having to tear it down.

Yeah, I wonder what kind of deal can be arrived at with a developer that says, okay, you can do that because you're right, they have $7.5 million on the table they can use to clear it and then have developable land for something else, right?

Yeah.

And I don't know, I, I read in a Huntsman story on the fire since I don't I didn't see anything about plans for what the space could be used for.

But she did tell me this morning that, a separate developer outside of Coon has already taken a look at the site, so there seems to be interest, maybe some competitive interest for developers.

And there's a deadline of next month.

Yeah.

November 22nd, I believe, is the 60 day.

Mark, so you mentioned Anna.

She'll clearly be covering that story and we'll give you updates on that.

The most popular landmark in Ohio, as determined by TripAdvisor reviews, is the West Side market.

Cleveland actually scored five of the top ten landmarks, with West Side Market being tops Progressive Field ranking third and just behind that, a Christmas Story house in Tremont.

Lakeview Cemetery came in eighth, and rounding out the top ten was the USS Cod submarine.

that sounds like a nice Saturday afternoon.

All of those, all of all of those at once, I mean, one after the other.

Yeah, but the West Side Market, I you know, I thought, you know, none of these other ones, feature, ghost pepper beef jerky.

And that would put it over the top for me.

But West Side Market, I mean, a lot of a lot is changing there with new management.

A lot of new ideas there, there.

But still, that old world feel and I think to myself of getting the hot sauces from friends and, and and getting, a falafel or, or a, gyro there.

But what's your a West Side market go to.

Oh, we always like to get the crates after we do our shopping, and then we go sit up on that little ledge where you're over the radiators, and we just watch everybody shop.

Fabulous.

And Zaria, you're a West Side Market denizen as well.

Yeah, you stole mine.

I was going to bring up the crepes.

So I will say I found out recently that that Ohio City Pasta has a stand there and I typically go to Lucky's Market to grab it.

So I'll have to go to the West Side Market to to get some Ohio City pasta moving forward.

Sounds great.

Good stuff.

Karen, when you come up here, do you hit the West Side Market?

Well, I'm just looking at that whole list and seeing that, Lakeview Cemetery.

You got to go there when the daffodils are happening and, you know, the Christmas story house, you got to go there on Christmas.

So, you know, you have to go to Cleveland more than just one day.

You know, that's what I'm thinking.

And for you, you'll tie it into some sort of sporting event?

Absolutely.

Of course.

Very good.

Monday on The Sound of Ideas on 89 seven Wksu.

The Cleveland Public Library's John Skurnick gives us the lowdown on haunted Cleveland lore ahead of Halloween.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thank you so much for watching and stay safe.