The Cincinnati Ballet is asking Cincinnati City Council to halt FC Cincinnati stadium plans until a resolution can be worked out between the ballet and the team over where people going to ballet practice can park.

FC Cincinnati officials aren't happy. They say the ongoing dispute is a private matter between a team and a business and should have no effect on council's pending approval of zoning for the stadium.

The ballet, which now leases its building and parking from the team, is worried the stadium site will gobble up its parking lot. That would leave patrons and children with far and unsafe walks to ballet practice.

Not so, team officials say.

The team says it has no plans develop any land the ballet leases, including the parking lot.

Maps of the stadium site show the stadium plan works best with the parking lot land, where there would be an open plaza at stadium level and an underground brewery.

And the team has proposed two parking alternatives they say offer even closer parking to the ballet building. But, team officials told the ballet, that new parking would come with higher rent.

Negotiations have been going on for months. Both sides have hired lawyers.

With a vote on the project set for next Wednesday, Stephen M. King, a Thompson Hine attorney, on behalf of the ballet, sent a letter to city council members Thursday evening. In it he argued the team does not have full control of the site and therefore any approval of a zoning change for the team would be inappropriate.

The ballet's lease "provides absolutely no rights for FCC to enter onto this parcel, let alone construct improvements on it," King wrote.

The team fired back Friday.

"FCC is committed to continuing to work with the ballet," wrote Brock Denton, a Keating Muething and Klekamp lawyer who represents FC Cincinnati. "It is disappointing that the ballet's letter to Mayor Cranley is an eleventh-hour attempt to derail a (planned development) that has satisfied all zoning and and other municipal requirements by raising a concern that amounts to nothing in reality."

"FCC would much prefer focusing on such mutually beneficial discussions rather than on posturing in the press," Denton wrote. "While FCC has focused on project site solutions, the ballet has focused only on financial solutions or delaying the stadium project until the ballet approved a final solution."

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More:City strikes deal to sell FC Cincinnati land for West End stadium

FC Cincinnati was awarded a Major League Soccer expansion team this year and is building a $250 million stadium in the West End, a project council has already approved with an incentive package worth almost $35 million that help with infrastructure needs. But zoning changes and the sale of city-owned land to the team require further council approval.

The team has purchased most of the land it needs including land at Central Parkway and Liberty Street, where the ballet sits. In doing so, it became the ballet's landlord.

Since 1995, the ballet has leased the land at Central Parkway and Liberty Street and that lease permits it to rent the building and the parking lot for seven more years, with an option to renew for an additional 10 years.

Early stadium renderings showed the parking lot being removed for part of the team's stadium plaza.