Al Lerner, Cleveland billionaire with Baltimore ties, dies at 69

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Billionaire Al Lerner, who used his wealth from banking, real estate and credit-card giant MBNA Corp. to bring the NFL’s Browns back to Cleveland, died Wednesday night, the team said. He was 69.Lerner’s connections to Baltimore go beyond helping the Browns move to Maryland, then resurrecting the team in Ohio. He was also chairman of Town & Country Trust, a Baltimore-based real estate investment trust that owns 42 apartment communities in the mid-Atlantic and Souteast.Lerner underwent surgery in May 2001, reportedly to remove a brain tumor, and in June said he had been in and out of the hospital over the past year. The cause of his death was not immediately known.“The Browns have suffered a great loss,” a team statement said. “Al Lerner was a remarkable man — exceptionally devoted to his family, a tremendously compassionate person, and a trusted and valued friend.In the past few months, Lerner was rarely around the Browns’ suburban training facility where he had been a regular visitor.“America lost a great man,” Browns wide receiver Kevin Johnson said Wednesday night. “He did so much for this city.”The Shaker Heights resident, a former furniture salesman, ranked 36th on Forbes magazine’s 2002 list of the richest Americans with a net worth of $4.3 billion.Although chairman and chief executive officer of MBNA, the world’s largest independent credit-card issuer, Lerner usually shunned the limelight.That changed when he was awarded the Browns expansion franchise in 1998 for $530 million, at the time the highest price paid for a sports team.The purchase came three years after his longtime friend, Art Modell, moved the franchise to Baltimore. Lerner later served as chairman of the NFL’s finance committee and was regarded as one of the league’s most influential owners.“Al Lerner magnificently fulfilled the American Dream, with extraordinary achievement in business and philanthropy,” NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue said in a statement. “Tough and considerate at the same time, his judgment and advice was always special.“His NFL legacy is as much about his being an influential league leader as it is being the generous Browns owner. Al’s death leaves a terrible void for all of us in the NFL.”Lerner was a minority owner of the former Browns, and it was aboard one of his jets where Modell struck a deal with Maryland authorities to move the team.While Lerner admitted he had a “front row” seat, he said the move was Modell’s decision.“None of that matters. What matters is that in 1999 there’s going to be a team called the Cleveland Browns,” he said while bidding for the team.The son of an immigrant candy shop owner, Lerner was a tough-minded kid, whose first job selling furniture paid him $75 a week.He saved enough to enter a deal to purchase a Cleveland apartment building. His real estate empire grew, and he went on to acquire banking interests in Baltimore.As a philanthropist, Lerner gave generously to hospitals and universities. In June 2002, he and his family gave $100 million to the Cleveland Clinic, the largest gift ever given to a Northeast Ohio institution.Lerner’s $25 million gift helped pay for Columbia’s Lerner Hall, a student activities center. He gave $10 million, on behalf of his wife, to University Hospitals of Cleveland to help provide a new hospital wing.He was president of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, which oversees the medical complex with an international reputation. His gift of $16 million to the Clinic led to the 1999 opening of the Lerner Research Institute.In describing what type of NFL owner he would be, Lerner compared it to his role at the Clinic.“I happen to be the president of the Cleveland Clinic,” he said in 1998. “I do no heart surgery. I do no medical things. If I did, that would dramatically raise the price of malpractice insurance. So, I’m extremely familiar, intimately familiar, with my limitations.”He is survived by his wife, Norma, two children and seven grandchildren.