By Roldo Bartimole
The George Forbes story that he and County Commissioner Tim Hagan offered to build a stadium for Art Modell at the same time the push was on for Gateway’s stadium and arena doesn’t pass the smell test.
And never will unless Art comes back to verify.
Mark Naymik in today’s Plain Dealer takes for fact what Forbes and Hagan say about a football stadium that the two retired politicians – both with images in the garbage dump – say. There’s a lack of backup to the story. If Forbes and Hagan have the details that could be corroborated with unbiased sources, they should provide it. And I don’t mean their lawyers.
Their word isn’t worth the breath it takes to tell it.
George seems to want – as he always has tried – to sculpt a new image for an unbelievable con artist. In his 80s and, according to other pols, not well, he’s now telling a story for the history books. He wants us to read it his way.
Recently, Forbes had a backyard barbecue with numerous council members from his tenure as Council President. He also invited reporters.
No doubt in my mind that the powerful Forbes wants to influence public opinion as he gets ready to exit. His powerful ego demands it.
This is history talking now.
You have to understand that Forbes got very close to Dick Jacobs. They became such buddies. They partied together. Forbes was on Jacobs’ private jet that took him and others to New York for the All-Star game. Jacobs gave the Forbes law firm business, as was revealed when Mayor Mike White sued Jacobs over Chagrin Highlands, another Forbes gift to Jacobs.
Then you have to believe that the political times would allow taxes for a third sports facility when White and Hagan in 1990 had to push to pass the sin taxes for Gateway, which was opposed by then Cong. Louis Stokes and Cong. Mary Rose Oakar. The tax passed in the suburbs but was turned down in the city. It needed strong support by the Plain Dealer and a near $1-million campaign, to say nothing of big lies to pass.
If Forbes/Hagan did make an offer to Modell, Modell knew that they wanted him to keep quiet until they built for Jacobs and the Gunds.
Why would Modell have confidence in either Forbes or Hagan? He was last man out at the time.
Modell had already struck out in the 1975 when County Commissioner Campanella, close to Modell, along with our corporate power structure, proposed and had a ballot vote for a property tax to finance the stadium. It failed badly by a 2-1 vote.
It was hardly a sign that the public would finance three new sports facilities.
Then the business community started buying land in the old market area where Gateway now resided. It cost some $40 million in private funds (reimbursed when Gateway was built later). It hardly seems logical that there would be enough energy (and money) in Cleveland to do that for another owner in the hopes of a tax to build another stadium and pay off for more land.
Modell wasn’t that dumb.
If you were around and paying attention in the late 1980s and into 1990 when the sin taxes were to be on the ballot you would hardly have expected politicians and the corporate establishment to be ready to take on the chore of selling and funding another stadium.
Only the loss of the Browns later and the fever created by the news media made it possible to fund the present Browns stadium, which is a money-loser for the still on the hook City of Cleveland.
Forbes is not a believable character. Hagan is a me-too disgrace. His role in Gateway (and other gems as the purchase of Jacobs’s white elephant at E. 9th & Euclid) is disgusting. So it’s not much of a jump to see him join with Forbes in this convenient rewrite of history.
They’d both love us to rewrite history for them.
Forbes has been such a political charlatan than no fantasy is beyond his reach.
So until Art comes back to verify, I, for one, don’t believe the two has-beens.
Roldo Bartimole has been reporting since 1959. He came to Cleveland in 1965 to report for the Plain Dealer where he worked twice in the 1960s, left for the Wall Street Journal in 1967. He started publishing his newsletter Point of View in 1968 and ended it in 2000.
In 1991 he was awarded the Second Annual Joe Callaway Award for Civic Courage in Washington, D.C. He received the Distinguished Service Award of the Society of Professional Journalists, Cleveland chapter, in 2002, and was named to the Cleveland Journalism Hall of Fame, 2004. [Photo by Todd Bartimole.]
2 Responses to “ROLDO: Forbes & Hagan – Last to Believe When Truth is Required”
MitchVigil
True or false: Was there not a measure to build the current Browns stadium on the ballot of November 7, 1995? I seem to recall that it passed overwhelmingly.
This would contradict the entire “Modell was pushed out of Cleveland” narrative that the NFL and ESPN are currently pushing, and that you have inexplicably have decided to endorse.
It is certainly reasonable to criticize the decision to build the Browns stadium, but I don’t buy into the notion that ‘poor little Art’ was being ignored by City Hall because Jacobs and Forbes were buddies.
Art had a taxpayer funded sweetheart deal ready to go…..but decided to Baltimore’s even sweeter taxpayer funded sweetheart deal. His co-conspirator Al Lerner stayed behind to reap the benefits of the stadium vote, and now his kid has an extra billion dollars to play with his soccer team.
Roldo Bartimole
MV: Happened to look at a old Point of View I wrote in Feb. 1996 about how the Pee Dee had been pandering about sports. In it I reproduced a front page of the Nov. 7, 1995 Plain Dealer. The headline was “Browns Bolt.” The subhead said,”Modell warned mayor, governor a month ago” and below that was a smaller subhead: “Letter urged public be told.”
There is no way anyone is going to piece together what offers Modell got from Cleveland politiians nor how real any offer may have been.
The conclusion is he left. Get over it.