Commanders stadium could cost D.C. taxpayers $13B including land discount, this is getting ridiculous

What’s been going on with D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s proposed Washington Commanders deal since we last checked in a week ago, you ask? Let’s recap recent developments.

• After I guesstimated the total subsidy including tax breaks and free land at between $2.5 billion and $3 billion, sports economist and property tax expert Geoffrey Propheter did his own calculations and projected that the land discount alone could be worth $11 billion. That would make the total public subsidy for Commanders owner Josh Harris’s stadium-plus-other-development project around $13 billion, which is starting to get into some real money.
• Harris and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell attended an “informal meet and greet” with Bowser and nearly the entire city council on Monday, which is to say they were allowed to lobby elected representatives over cheese plates. (Homes Not Stadiums, please let us know when you get invited to have equal time with the mayor and the council.)
• D.C. council chair Phil Mendelson, who opposed the Nationals stadium plan when it was passed 20 years ago, has been carefully hedging his statements on the proposed Commanders deal, saying “I expect something will go forward” but “I expect that we will make the deal even better for taxpayers, to the tune of millions, probably tens of millions of dollars,” which seems to leave off a couple of necessary zeroes. “The end goal should be … not stadium at any price. That would be stadium at a reasonable price,” he added.
• Several other councilmembers remain undecided, though they may end up taking their lead from Mendelson. Councilmember Zachary Parker has scheduled a community listening session next Wednesday, stating, “The current deal was negotiated without input from the Council or neighbors, and it is vital that we shape the future of these 180 acres at RFK together.”

This is going to come down to haggling, obviously, and it looks like one key to the outcome will be whether Mendelson intends to actually seek a good deal — which, given the numbers so far, would take mammoth changes to get to any price that can be considered reasonable — or just one that he can point to as marginally better than the current record-costly plan. Anchoring is not healthy for children and other living things.