BEREA — Inside Dee Haslam’s spacious office at the Cleveland Browns’ practice facility, a loveseat that looks like it belongs in a designer home sits across from a round table adorned by a decorative centerpiece.

Tall chairs covered in gray fabric are evenly spaced around the glass table. An organized desk is positioned adjacent to a ladder bookcase, each shelf crammed with photos and keepsakes.

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Everything has its place inside Haslam’s workspace, which overlooks a practice field. With all the success she has had in a career that started when she was 17, there’s hardly any memory of hers not sharing space with another.

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But one item enjoys rare prominence. Hanging alone on a wall is a framed black Crew SC jersey, with “Haslam” imprinted above a No. 96 in gold letters.

More than nine months after the Haslam family was introduced as co-investor/operators of the Crew, along with former team doctor Pete Edwards and his family, Dee Haslam has become the leading voice in reshaping the club into a staple of not just the city from which it was nearly stripped, but of American soccer at large.

Haslam will be one of the speakers at the Crew’s official groundbreaking ceremony Thursday for a new Arena District stadium. The stadium, scheduled to open in 2021, seemed improbable two years ago when previous ownership announced its intention to move the team to Austin, Texas.

A passion for soccer didn’t lead the 65-year-old Haslam down this path. She hadn’t so much as watched a soccer game before the family — Dee, her husband, Jimmy, their daughter, Whitney Johnson, and her husband, J.W. — agreed to buy a Major League Soccer club.

But she didn’t really need a knowledge of soccer to know that this endeavor was worth more than simply giving some passionate fans what they demanded.

Nor did Dee Haslam take on this venture to be heralded as a savior. Rather, it was about allowing a community in distress to continue to hold what she felt belonged to them.

“We’re just the keepers; we’re not the owners,” she said. “We really feel like it’s just an honor to have a sports team and be the keeper of it.”

Painful history

From the beginning of the #SaveTheCrew movement, the Haslams could have privately expressed outrage and moved on, allowing former investor/operator Anthony Precourt to move the team. But that would have ignored something they unexpectedly learned when they purchased the Browns in 2012.

“When that team left, the scars linger today,” Dee Haslam said.

The pain of the Browns’ departure from a proud sports town exists now as much as it did in 1996 when the team moved to Baltimore. Much of that has been because the team has become the poster child for lovable losers across professional sports, but the sensation resides on a deeper level.

When the Haslams learned the Crew might be moving, less than a month after the news became public, they reached out to longtime friend and ally Alex Fischer at the Columbus Partnership to learn what was happening. They initially didn’t tell Fischer they wanted to invest. In fact, it took months before the Haslams decided it made sense financially.

Then came a September 2018 meeting with Edwards, Fischer and Steve Lyons, at the time an executive with the Partnership. Jimmy Haslam and Edwards discussed the trajectory of MLS and where Columbus could fit with a significant financial commitment. Upon discovering that the Edwards family had values similar to their own, the Haslams decided that the investment was worthwhile.

“They couldn’t let this leave Columbus,” said Lyons, who is now the Crew’s chief business officer. “It became personal to them.”

Jimmy Haslam took the longest to convince, Dee said, acknowledging that normally she’s the last one to sign off on a project. Ultimately, they agreed to become majority owners because — like any investor — they believed they could make a profit, with the help of governmental commitments of more than $100 million. They didn’t, however, have to be persuaded that they should care.

“It’s a community asset that needs to be treasured because it does more than just unify,” Dee said. “There are just so many things about sports that are vibrant to a community.”

Steeped in business

Dee Haslam began working for her father — Ross Bagwell Sr. — at age 17 as a receptionist at his advertising agency in Knoxville, Tennessee. She worked in production and in other roles as Bagwell became a cable-television pioneer, turning Cinetel Productions into the country’s largest production company with more than 3,500 shows in the home-improvement genre.

In 1998, Haslam partnered with Rob Lundgren to head the newly formed RIVR Media. She produced Emmy Award-nominated television shows such as “Trading Spaces” and “World Series of Poker” until she stepped down as CEO in April 2018 to focus on her and Jimmy’s ventures in professional sports.

Lundgren had worked in media before joining Dee Haslam at RIVR, but he had never worked with her. From the beginning, he said, she projected a clear vision and never settled for anything short of perfection.

“Once she commits to something, she’s all in. And that’s a real gift,” Lundgren said.

If there was a project they felt wasn’t worth pursuing, she would turn it down. They impressed executives of big New York- or California-based networks in "pitch" meetings and were told that their company from Knoxville could compete against any production company in the world. Her core values became the company’s manifesto, which promotes inclusivity and collaboration.

“One of those things (in the manifesto) is we are — she is — a person of her word,” Lundgren said. “And that is a big damn deal.”

Having grown up in a family business, there were not many pats on the back. “And we’re as guilty of it as anybody with our children,” she said. Excellence was, and still is, the expectation.

As the Haslams’ wealth accumulated — Jimmy is the longtime CEO of the Pilot Flying J truck-stop chain — she continued to give back. In 2000, she became the first campaign chair of the United Way in Knoxville to raise $10 million. From the beginning of their ownership with the Browns and Crew, they’ve committed resources to youth sports and to helping children stay in school and graduate.

“Every child, no matter where they live, no matter what their ZIP code, should have access to the best education they could get,” Haslam said.

Her ability to make connections with strangers in any business environment preceded her arrival in Columbus.

When she joined the Columbus Partnership last year for a retreat in Boston, she spent an evening with dozens of people she didn't know watching her first soccer game as the Crew beat D.C. United in the MLS playoffs. The next day, she was conversing with those same people as if they’d known each other for a lifetime.

Authentic partner

From the start, Haslam made connections to Columbus that aligned with her core values. At one of her first appearances as a co-owner, she introduced the development of a soccer field at Eakin Elementary on the West Side.

Interestingly, those who only recently met Haslam speak of her in the same way as those who have known her for decades. She cares, they say, and is authentic.

“She has a way of engaging in a very upfront fashion, and that wasn’t always the case with the prior owners of the Crew,” said Steve Steinour, the president and CEO of Huntington Bank, who met Haslam through the Partnership.

“I think as a consequence, they will have a lot of success becoming part of the fabric of the community.”

In a conference room in the Browns facility last week, Haslam Sports Group executives worked on plans for the new stadium. Haslam explained in great detail why they had to figure out food services before anything because of how it relates to plumbing, wiring, etc. She explained how train tracks east of the stadium site impacted how they thought about traffic into the stadium.

It's all part of a path to the stadium groundbreaking that has been far from easy.

Not knowing a lot about soccer — “luckily Pete Edwards does a lot,” she said with a laugh — was a minuscule obstacle compared with the project they agreed to take on. Underlying the unknowns, though, is what they know will have the most impact:

“Everything is about winning on the field,” Haslam said. “Everything.”

It didn’t take long for her and the rest of her family to fall in love with the sport, she said. Haslam has taken the lead role in showing that commitment and healing the pain in the hearts of Crew fans who thought their club was gone.

The black jersey on Dee’s wall says I’m your keeper."

“We still might not be great on why that's offsides,” she said, “but we're getting pretty good at it.”

jmyers@dispatch.com

@Jacob_Myers_25