The budget bill that passed Congress late Friday night and forestalled a government shutdown did not include a provision handing over the RFK Stadium site to Washington, D.C., but a separate measure passed early Saturday morning, and everybody is excited! The Washington Post called it “a stunning win” and “a political miracle,” D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser said the bill was important to “get control of this land so that we can make it productive,” House Oversight Committee chair James Comer (yes, that guy) called it a “historic moment for our nation’s capital,” and even Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said the bill means his state “is going to be better in the future than what it is right now” because of promises from Washington Commanders owner Josh Harris to pay for the demolition of the team’s old stadium and contribute to redevelopment of its site.
Not mentioned in any of this, of course, is who would pay how much for a new Commanders stadium, on the RFK site or elsewhere, and that’s where things get potentially dicey. Moore has said he’s looking forward to competing to keep the Commanders, and Harris is still considering sites in Virginia as well. That spells bidding war, and the last time we saw one of those in the D.C. area, it didn’t end well: Even after Virginia lawmakers turned down the Wizards and Capitals‘ demands for a billion dollars for an arena in Alexandria, D.C. officials still approved more than half a billion dollars for renovations to their current arena, apparently just out of happiness to be allowed to spend anything at all. Bowser already indicated that she’s provided unspecified concessions to Maryland politicians to get the land transfer through — could be trading an air national guard squadron, could be something else, nobody’s saying — and it’s anyone’s guess what could be offered to Harris, especially when Bowser has clown consultants claiming a Commanders stadium would be worth as much as $1.26 billion in LOLeconomic output.
None of which has anything to do with whether the RFK Stadium site makes more sense for being centrally located and easy for fans from all regions to get to, or less sense for being centrally located and a waste of valuable public land, or anything else separate from the potential subsidies, because these deals are almost invariably all about the potential subsidies. More to be revealed in the 2025 legislative sessions, no doubt.
I was under the impression that they needed this deal to make anything, stadium or otherwise, happen at the RFK site. Right now it’s just a big parking lot, more or less, is it not?
RFK Stadium is still standing but hasn’t been used since 2017. The stadium’s just a shell at this point. The interior’s been gutted.
The DC government tried to gain control of the RFK site in 2021 and then again in 2023. Both efforts failed. In May of this year, NPS determined the stadium could be demolished without significant environmental impact. However, since DC didn’t control the site, there wasn’t any reason for the city to apply for permits to destroy RFK and redevelop the site.
The only alternative to this legislation would have been to allow the site to remain undeveloped by anybody, and for the federal government to remain on the hook for security and other costs. Eventually, RFK would have absolutely had to be demolished, if for no other reason than public safety concerns. The federal government would have been on the hook for that $.
Welfare for billionaires, that employ multimillionaires.
“Harris is still considering sites in Virginia as well.”
Source?
The last effort to move the Commanders to Virginia died in 2022 amid voter opposition (I’m one of them.) Virginia senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell said in October that he wasn’t aware of “any conversations currently ongoing about any specific site or project or any specific incentives or anything like that that are under consideration by the governor or by the legislature.”
https://www.fox5dc.com/news/dc-virginia-still-vying-commanders-team-improves-6-2-record
This isn’t a three jurisdiction bidding war. In fact, I doubt it’ll even seriously be a two jurisdiction bidding war.
What Maryland really wants is a firm commitment (aka $) from Commanders ownership that the site will be redeveloped, and more tax revenue. There’s a local precident for this. After the Caps and Wizards left the Capital Center in 1997, the site was redeveloped into the Boulevard at Capital Center which opened in 2003. Magic Johnson, who owns 4% of the Commanders, was a part of that redvelopment. In principle, the plan was a good one. Unfortunately, crime and the 2008 recession killed the boulevard in 2017.
IMO Maryland officials understand they could very well financially gain much more than they lose if the Commanders move back to DC. I seriously doubt they’ll offer him the moon to keep the team. That puts DC in a prime position to hopefully drive a hard bargain with Harris, and the DC city council is already split on public financing for a stadium.
From the article linked in that sentence: “The Commanders are considering locations in the District, Maryland and Virginia to build a stadium in the coming years.”
Does this mean that Virginia is seriously considering building a stadium? Very much no. But that’s not going to stop Harris from portraying it as a three-sided bidding war — or more, if he can get the media to report that he’s thinking of moving to Greensboro or something.