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CLEVELAND, Ohio -- What you think you know about Art Modell's decision to take the Browns out of Cleveland for a shiny new stadium in Baltimore is legend.

Today, the consciences of a couple of old-guard Cleveland politicians give us a long-hidden fact about Modell's departure. Specifically, when Modell claimed he would have stayed if city leaders had offered to build him a stadium, he was lying.

He was offered a new stadium.

At the Gateway sports complex.

He rejected the offer, years before leaving.

Since the former Browns and Ravens team owner died last week, we have rehashed the famous narrative that Modell left town out of frustration with political leaders who stuck him with the dumpy, history-rich Cleveland Municipal Stadium, which lacked the revenue-generating luxury suites and other amenities of newer stadiums.

Modell was particularly upset that leaders here bent over backward for Dick Jacobs and Gordon Gund, the former owners of the Indians and the Cavaliers, respectively, who were getting new homes -- courtesy of the taxpayers, at the Gateway sports complex completed in 1994 just north of the Inner Belt downtown.

The story of the stadium snub for years has left us asking: Why didn't city leaders just offer to build Modell a new stadium along with the others?

After leaving town in 1996, Modell reinforced the snub story in interviews with news outlets, though he was not speaking at the time to The Plain Dealer, which he saw as part of the conspiracy against him.

"My major regret is that I should not have acceded to their request to stay on the side on Gateway," Modell told Cleveland Magazine in August 1996. He told the magazine he should have forced a football stadium into the Gateway conversation.

"I should have made my demands known at that time. Then we wouldn't be here now. . . . Had they even mumbled the word 'new stadium' I would have said, 'Let's talk.' "

It turns out that officials at the time tried to talk with him. Modell wouldn't listen.

George Forbes, who was Cleveland's council president during the late 1980s and a key player in negotiations with team owners during planning for Gateway, said he and others asked Modell to be a part of the project.

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Forbes said leaders proposed building a third Gateway sports facility for the Browns, just south of the Inner Belt a couple of blocks from what is now Progressive Field.

Forbes' memory for detail is hazy. But he said then-Cuyahoga County Commissioner Tim Hagan, Jacobs and lawyers familiar with the financing options were present with Modell at a meeting when the offer was made.

"Tim and I were saying, 'While we are doing this, we might as well clear up the whole damn thing and build all three stadiums,' " Forbes told me. "This way we don't have to go back, and future councilmen and commissioners won't have to deal with the issue. Let's clear it up once and for all, was our thinking."

Jacobs died in 2009.

Forbes said he remained quiet for decades out of respect for Modell, whom he considered a friend.

"Art was my friend and a good man, and I didn't want to get into it," Forbes said. "I didn't want to pour hot water on a scalding dog."

But Forbes said he's long been bothered by the narrative that government failed Modell.

"I have thought about this meeting every time it was written or televised that no one made an offer to build a stadium," he said. "My words are to set the record straight about the governmental institutions and our involvement."

I called Hagan, who championed the Gateway complex and suffered great criticism about its cost to taxpayers. He confirmed Forbes' account. He described the offer as informal but honest.

"There is no question we made an effort," Hagan said.

Exactly why Modell didn't pursue the discussion remains a mystery.

Forbes recalled that Modell said he just wanted to stay in Municipal Stadium. Hagan couldn't add much more detail, nor would he speculate on why Modell didn't look harder at Gateway.

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The timing of the Forbes and Hagan offer is critical to sorting out the legend. When Gateway planning was just starting, Modell was told to stay away. City leaders were concerned about appeasing Jacobs, who did not want to share a stadium with the football team and was threatening to move the Indians to a new city.

David Hopcraft, a longtime spokesman for Modell, said leaders planning Gateway were adamant that the Browns owner wait.

"They told him they would take care of him later," Hopcraft told me. Hopcraft also noted that Modell was one of the biggest contributors to the public campaign to persuade taxpayers to support the tax on alcohol and tobacco that paid for Gateway.

But Forbes said that after Jacobs was satisfied with plans for the new baseball stadium, the time was ripe to bring Modell into Gateway. So Forbes and Hagan made their offer.

Years later, politicians had cooled to the idea to asking taxpayers for more money for a football stadium. Modell no doubt became frustrated by his failure to win political backing for refurbishing Municipal Stadium.

Hagan famously quipped in 1995 about a proposed tax for Municipal Stadium: "We all wish Mother Teresa owned the Browns. It'd be an easier sell."

But timing is everything. And there was a time, long before Modell abandoned Cleveland, when he was offered a new stadium.

Whether or not a Gateway deal could have been struck with Modell -- and ultimately sold to voters -- is immaterial. That leaders offered Modell his own stadium at Gateway changes the storyline that has been central to his excuse for leaving. This fundamentally changes our view of one of the biggest moments in the history of this town.

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Maybe Forbes and Hagan were wise to keep the Gateway offer quiet all these years. Modell already was viewed by many as the worst villain Cleveland ever saw. And knowing that Modell was offered a stadium deal and still left would have only further damaged our psyche at the very time the city's football fans needed to move on.

I know the latest revelation may revive some fans' anger toward Modell, but I'm glad the record is clear, so we can move on.

We need to focus on the team's history on the field, not off.

Hopefully, this history won't be as painful.

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