D.C. pole vaulters and skateboarders hope they aren’t forgotten in push for new Commanders stadium

Listen to most of D.C.’s elected officials talk, and you’ll hear them describe the old RFK stadium site as a decrepit waste of valuable space. They’re not wrong, necessarily: The 64-year-old stadium on the east end of Capitol Hill hasn’t been used for sports since at least 2017, and it’s largely surrounded by a sea of parking lots. 

That’s what makes the 190-acre site a seemingly blank slate for the ambitious $3.7 billion proposal to build a new stadium for the Washington Commanders, alongside a slew of new bars, restaurants, hotels, parks, and homes. But RFK isn’t completely empty: A world-class pole vaulting facility and community skate park are still used every day. 

This active community of athletes is now facing an uncertain future, as the parcel of land they sit on could soon be replaced by what would become the stadium’s Plaza District. 

Neither are yet in panic mode about any impending evictions, but they are fighting to make sure they’re not left out of the conversation on the future of RFK. 

“This is prime real estate. It’s a no-brainer: there’s no way they’re going to let us stay here,” says Edward Luthy, who developed the pole vaulting facility. “But we want to continue saying, ‘Hey, don’t forget, we want a toehold somewhere if we can have it.’”

A pole vaulting paradise

You can be forgiven for not knowing there is a pole vaulting training and competition facility in D.C.; I certainly didn’t until recently. But to simply say it exists is to undersell Luthy’s single-minded effort to create it – and the long list of records, championships, and elite athletes it has produced. 

The Michigan native started his own pole vaulting career in high school, continuing it into the military and college. When Luthy, now 52, moved to D.C. in 2008, he started working with local universities to both continue his own training and coach others through the D.C. Vault club he created. In search of more suitable space for the sport, Luthy was connected to Events D.C., the city’s sports and convention authority – and, conveniently enough, the manager of the RFK site. 

Some seven years ago, Events D.C. gave him a small site on a stadium parking lot on the corner of East Capitol Street and 22nd Street NE. Even back then Luthy was aware that his new home might not be permanent. “I raised the idea, ‘Well, what about if this space gets redeveloped?” he recalls.

At the time it was a possibility, albeit a distant one. The lease D.C. had with the federal government limited the site’s use to sports and recreation, and initial redevelopment plans floated almost a decade ago envisioned the site as a hub for athletics and outdoor recreation. (Congress has since changed the lease to allow housing and retail.)

So Luthy got to work building out his dream pole vaulting facility in the shadow of RFK, investing more than $100,000 of his own money to buy top-shelf equipment (each pole, and there are dozens, can cost close to $1,000) to create what he says is one of the only stand-alone pole vaulting centers in the country that is certified by World Athletics for national and international competition. (On June 27-28, it is hosting a Pole Vault Championships.)

“I basically designed the facility to handle everything from six-year-olds through Olympic-level athletes,” he says. “We try to make it really engaging for all of them.”

When he’s not working his day job as a cartographer for the D.C. government, Luthy trains athletes from across the region and a wide swath of universities and schools. And when he sees athletes with distinct potential, he says he’ll offer them a free place to stay and work with them as much as is needed. “We’ll train all night if we have to,” he says.

It shows: Luthy says he’s coached three national record holders. And he is always looking for new talent; when I stopped by to chat with him earlier this month, he pointed to Asha, a 12-year-old D.C. student Luthy thinks will “break the world record some day.”

Another point of pride is Ashton McCullers, a 19-year-old who grew up in D.C. and now attends Howard University on a full scholarship – all because of pole vaulting. Yet he found the sport by complete happenstance. McCullers had actually shown up to the skate park next door, but was intrigued by the people nearby using long poles to propel themselves over crossbars 10 feet above the ground.

“I saw them jumping. [Luthy] opened the gates and I walked in here, just stumbling across the line. He was like, ‘You’re a natural,’” he says.

McCullers was one of the athletes who spoke at a public meeting at Eastern High School in February about the future of the RFK site, even before the Commanders stadium deal had been announced. 

“I just wanted to communicate to the mayor that it’s helping a lot of kids,” he says. “Eddie, he comes out here every day after work and he just busts his ass. Kids will come out here taunting him. He doesn’t care. He’ll let them in, let them jump, try to experience it. He wants the community to try it because he knows it pays for a lot of these kids to go to college.”

Luthy remains optimistic that he will find a new location for the facility if the Commanders deal moves ahead as planned – potentially somewhere else on the site. The proposed plan included an $89 million indoor sports facility alongside existing outdoor sports fields, and he says he’s caught the attention of Mayor Muriel Bowser’s office and Ward 7 Councilmember Wendell Felder, who told me he’s supportive of helping move the facility elsewhere.

Through it all, the single-minded determination that Luthy showed in building out the facility is extending into finding space for a new one. 

“The reason we were at the [public meeting at Eastern High School] was to make sure we were in front of everyone’s face to remind them we’re here,” Luthy says, “so when the development plans start coming we’re not forgotten.”

One of the city’s few skate parks 

Jeremy Stettin is on a similar mission, trying to ensure that the neighboring Maloof Skate Park also survives in some form if the Commanders stadium and surrounding amenities are built out. (The current plan, if approved by the D.C. Council, would see construction on the stadium and some surrounding parcels start as early as next year, for a 2030 opening to the public.)

Stettin, 24, spent his formative years living near H Street NE and skating at Maloof, the 15,000-square-foot skate park designed by professional skateboarder Geoff Rowley for a skateboarding competition in 2011 and opened to the public the year after. He has since turned it into a side hustle of sorts, teaching skateboarding classes to kids and adults of all ages after he gets done with his day job as a sales engineer.

“I feel very indebted to this park,” he says. “I would be a very different person without it.”

Stettin started hearing rumors of possible redevelopment plans at RFK two years ago, and he attended an early community meeting where nearby residents discussed what could come of the sprawling campus. “I could tell that unless we said something to stand up for the park, they were not going to plan anything with us in mind,” he tells me.

Since then, Stettin has taken it upon himself to become a spokesman-of-sorts for the future of the skate park. It can feel like an uphill battle; skateboarders, he admits, are not the “most civically engaged demographic.”

But he says it’s a deeply important resource for the community. 

“It offers a place that is safe,” he says. “You look at the demographics of who typically comes here, many of the regulars are in high school, the exact demographic that the city spends ridiculous amounts of money to reach and do programs for. We have the skate park, and it’s creating a positive environment for people who use it.”

It’s also one of just a handful of skateboarding options in D.C.; there are small parks in Takoma and the Palisades, and a larger one in Shaw. And while Maloof is the largest park available, it’s showing its age and in need of repairs. Its fate also comes amidst other challenges for D.C. skaters, primarily from preliminary plans for the redevelopment of Freedom Plaza – a skateboarding mecca both locally and internationally.

Stettin hopes that city officials can accommodate a new park somewhere else on the RFK campus. At a public meeting in Ward 5 on Wednesday, he asked for a commitment from city officials that they wouldn’t simply demolish the skate park. He didn’t get exactly that, though he did seem to force the issue into conversation.

“I take that to heart,” said Ward 5 Councilmember Zachary Parker. “We don’t want to displace productive uses of the site.”

If not for the skateboarders, says Stettin, then he hopes they’ll agree to that for everyone else’s sake.

“I’ve heard people complain about skating on public property. They do that when they don’t have a skate park to skate at. Your city either has a skate park,” he says. “Or it is a skate park.”