Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser announced this morning an agreement with Commanders owner Josh Harris (if not yet with her city council) for a new stadium at the RFK Stadium site, and she did so in the form of … a video? On X, the platform formerly known as The Platform That Used to Be Twitter? That’s a choice.
So what can we glean from it, while we wait for, hopefully, some actual written words and numbers?
- It’s Joe Theismann! He had a great time as a Washington football player at the RFK site! Until, you know, he didn’t.
- “A new stadium will serve as the anchor for the RFK site.” You’re forgetting what Allen Sanderson said about NFL stadiums! No, not the helicopter thing, the cemetery thing.
- “New housing, new restaurants, retail, and public spaces are all possible!” A new multibillion-dollar stadium is needed because of all the other things that aren’t stadiums that you can then build with whatever land and money you have left over!
- “A world-class city deserves a world-class stadium.” And world-class schools? We’ll get back to you on that.
Bowser has a press briefing planned for 11 am, which will hopefully provide more actual financial details and not just more grainy footage of fans from the 1980s. Watch this space for further updates.
UPDATE 11:12 am ET: It’ll have a roof! Price tag TBD.
UPDATE 12:30 pm ET: $2.7 billion stadium construction cost, with a total of $1.147 billion in public money:
-$500M for Horizonal construction, meaning roads, sidewalks, etc. around the stadium (Funds from Capital Budget)
-$181M for Parking (Funds from EventsDC and Capital Budget)
-$175M for Parking (Generated by Future Revenue)
-$202M for “preparing the site,” meaning roadways, utilities infrastructure and WMATA Capacity Study — This money would have been needed to decide the future of the site regardless of whether a stadium was built.
-$89M for State of the Art SportsPlex at Fields at RFK
The mayor’s office calls this 24% of stadium and parking construction costs, which doesn’t seem right no matter how you slice it, but math is hard!
UPDATE 2:30 pm ET: A few more details slipping out:
- The $500m in construction money from the capital budget will come from partly from the business tax surcharge that has been paying off construction of the Nationals stadium. This could run into problems with either 1) local businesses who were counting on that tax sunsetting next year or 2) the Nats owners, who may have had their eye on it for their own stadium upgrades or 3) literally anyone else in D.C. who might have been thinking about using that money for something else once the MLB ballpark was paid off.
- Bowser’s office anticipates “200 yearly events, including non-sports opportunities” at the NFL stadium, which I can tell you without looking would be by far the record for any 65,000-seat facility, unless Taylor Swift decides to clone herself in the near future.
- An official with the mayor’s office said it is “proscribed” under city law that 30% of the new housing in a stadium district be affordable, without giving details on whether there would be additional city subsidies for that, or what they think the word “proscribed” means.
- The D.C. council is expected to vote on the plan this summer, with the stadium, if approved, opening by fall of 2030.
Still waiting to hear what the team’s lease would look like, whether D.C. would get any cut of stadium or stadium district revenues, whether either the stadium or the mixed-use district would pay property taxes or payments in lieu of property taxes — you know, the small stuff. There’s a slideshow on the mayor’s website, but it doesn’t provide much in the way of a coherent financial summary. It does have a photo of Taylor Swift, though, you think her image licensing people had to sign off on that?
What about building a stadium on non-valuable real estate?
The high school stadium in my town is built on a sinkhole. Maybe the NFL should look into that. Maybe find places that are haunted.
The bottom of the Anacostia River is ripe for development. Think of the incremental tax revenues!
There are (were) stadiums on non-valuable real estate, or at least less-valuable as assessed at the time the stadium was built. The former stadium in San Diego where the Padres and Chargers played was built on a flood plain. Candlestick Park in San Francisco was on the least valuable SF real estate. I suppose it’s notable that newer sports palaces in those cities (Petco Park in SD, Chase Center in SF) are in areas with more valuable land.
That “former stadium in San Diego” has been torn down and rebuilt as Snapdragon Stadium. Home to soccer, rugby, and college football in America’s Finest City.
Yeah, San Diego State University took out a few hundred million dollars worth of bonds to tear down the old stadium and build a new one for themselves on the same parcel.
Stadiums are often built on land deemed not valuable as a pitch to “rejuvenate” the area, but boosters often ignore that pesky substitution effect. For example, the China Basin in SF likely would’ve experienced its real estate boom irrespective of whether Pac-Bell Park was built there. Hudson Yards ended up not needing an Olympic and future Jets stadium to gentrify the hell out of that part of Manhattan.
Although, I think a number of fanbases would tell you their team’s stadium is built on some cursed burial grounds.
I agree with the overall sentiment of your comment. I’d note though that Pac Bell’s opening preceded a lot of the subsequent development by years. For a while there was nothing south of the 3rd street bridge.
I don’t believe the ballpark was a huge catalyst for the subsequent development of that area (bigger forces were at play- the city doesn’t have a lot of room) but the transportation links and just introducing people to that part of the city probably helped spur development a bit.
https://ourrfk.dc.gov/release/mayor-bowser-and-washington-commanders-announce-historic-deal-bring-team-home-and-activate
Does Congress have to approve?
They can block it, but the real problem here is the city council is the only group that can approve the agreement and they’re not involved.
No idea if it can clear the council considering the city is hit with a $1 billion deficit that was the result of House being a dick because they could.
The bigger giveaway might be the team getting a no-bid contract to redevelop some undefined proportion of the entire 177 acre site:
“In addition to building the stadium, the Commanders will be responsible for activating and developing multiple parcels of land around the stadium with restaurants, entertainment venues, hotels, housing, green space, and more.”
I am looking at Redfin, not far from the stadium site there are two homes selling for more than $1 million (zip codes 20002 and 20003). Someone building housing in this area is going to do very well.
The slide deck says this: “Kingman Park District parcels will be offered for development through the District’s process.”
Does that mean the other four developable districts (the “Anacostia Commons” waterfront/wetlands not being developable) will all be controlled by the team? Eyeballing the map, that looks like 80% or more of the land.
Amending the above in fairness to the Mayor and the team: I think the “Recreation District” will be local parkland & athletic fields. And the “Stadium District” won’t have anything other than the stadium itself.
That still leave the Commanders controlling development in two of three areas that will get housing/commercial/retail development (and at least two-third of that acreage).
No worries it’ll all be parking lots for the foreseeable future. Maybe some parking garages as well as the entire proposal as written appears to have zero parking set aside.
Forget about the stadium talk…the Mayor’s slide deck (see page 16) seems to be indicating that the Grateful Dead will be getting back together for a stadium concert!!! Now that is some serious news.
Note: Grateful Dead concert ticket visual is bigger than Taylor Swift visual ever so slightly.
200 events a year could include events that don’t use the whole stadium. The club areas could host meetings, receptions, etc. They could count those as “events.”
Yeah this is what they do. I toured US Bank Stadium and the cheerleaders-esque tour guide cited “over 250 events per year”
“Hold your wedding on the Club Level of New RFK Stadium! The memories will last a lifetime!”
That’s exactly what they do. They’ll talk like there’s 50,000 there several times a week, but really you have maybe 15 total football games and concerts, and the rest of the events strain the definition of the word “event.” Did you let a suite buyer into the stadium in the off season to look at their suite? EVENT!