Wilson Building Bulletin: Mixed reactions from the D.C. Council on the Commanders deal

When Mayor Muriel Bowser joined the Washington Commanders at the National Press Club on Monday, the music was loud and the crowd jubilant. The Commanders are coming back to D.C., after all, returning a storied franchise to their old stomping grounds at the RFK stadium site that fans still fondly remember as if 30 years haven’t passed in the meantime.

But it wasn’t lost on anyone that missing in the crowd of former players and senior D.C. leaders were a majority of the D.C. Council, who will ultimately have to approve the proposed deal – or could just as well tank it. And for anyone who thinks the latter isn’t likely, let us recall how Virginia was about to steal away the Capitals and Wizards – before it suddenly didn’t. 

Celebrating the Commanders deal was easy. Getting it through the council may be less so.

I spent the last few days trying to get a read on where the council currently stands on the stadium deal. There’s two emerging camps of strong supporters and strident critics, with a critical group of five in the middle that like the idea of a Commanders return but are still trying to get their heads around all the details.

On the very supportive side we have the councilmembers in attendance at the official event: At-Large Kenyan McDuffie and Anita Bonds, Ward 2’s Brooke Pinto, and Ward 7’s Wendell Felder. For them, the stadium is a catalyst to not only transform the RFK site – but also create a new stream of revenue for a city that’s seen many of its federal workers lose their jobs.

For the opposition, there’s Ward 1’s Brianne Nadeau and Ward 6’s Charles Allen. Nadeau said she’s concerned about spending more than $1 billion “that could be invested in schools, libraries, housing, parks and recreation centers,” while Allen is more broadly against having a stadium at the RFK site at all. 

And somewhere in the middle is just about everyone else. The usual refrain is that the devil is in the details, and these lawmakers are still waiting to get all the details. (They did get a terms sheet, but more detailed leases and agreements have yet to come.) But even when they get them, the entire deal won’t be scrutinized in a vacuum; how it plays with the city’s broader budget will matter.

The deal on its own was structured to sound good: The Commanders kick in $2.5 billion to build the actual stadium, while D.C.’s roughly $1.2 billion contribution comes over the course of a decade and is tailored towards infrastructure and site preparation (which would have to happen with any use of the site), parking, an indoor sports complex for residents. Additionally, a large chunk of the city’s funding will come from an existing tax on businesses that was used to pay for Nationals Park, while some of the public money will be offset by revenue that the stadium and the surrounding development will eventually support.

But – and here’s the big but – the city’s funding will be wrapped into the 2026 budget, which Bowser is expected to unveil in the next few weeks. And that budget isn’t likely to be pretty – D.C. is already predicting that it will take in less revenue than it expected for the years to come, meaning that for the first time in a long while elected officials are going to be tightening belts. To a certain degree, every dollar D.C. wants to spend on the stadium deal could mean a dollar it can’t spend on another project. For now those tradeoffs are speculative, since lawmakers haven’t gotten the proposed budget yet. But once they do, the tradeoffs could become much harder political choices. Would they sacrifice a school modernization or two for the stadium deal? A much-needed new D.C. Jail? 

“I'm not a hard no on the stadium, but I'm not a sure yes on the stadium,” Ward 3’s Matt Frumin told me. “There are trade-offs on the capital [budget] side. Something has to come out or something isn't gonna get done that might otherwise get done. I don't know what that is right now.”

Other lawmakers are starting to put out possible additional concessions they’d like to see. For Ward 5’s Zachary Parker, it’s a “dedicated education fund” for wards 5, 7, and 8 (the deal has a Community Benefits Agreement included, but it lacks specifics); investments in National Park Service land across the city; and for the electronic Project GLOW Festival to remain at the site into the future. (Yes, that Project GLOW.) 

At-Large Councilmember Robert White also has some asks: jobs for Ward 7 residents, youth sports and arts programming, and an innovation hub to create new employment pathways. He also wants the Commanders to put a little more skin in the game in a very specific way. “There are some conversations I want to have with the team, including moving their corporate offices here,” he told me. (The team’s corporate headquarters is in College Park; asked Monday if there were any intentions to move it, team officials didn't say yes or no.)

“I don't think that's fair to ask the city to be all the way in with you if you're not all the way in with us. That's a lot of tax revenue that we're losing as we're giving substantial tax breaks, not just to the team and its entities but to future retail, so, it's a great deal for the Commanders,” he added. “I want it to be a good deal for D.C. too.”

Christina Henderson, another At-Large member, is taking a pragmatic view. She told me that one big selling point for her is how the Commanders – who would get development rights for the entire site – could get construction started on housing and retail much more quickly than if D.C. went through its regular planning and bidding process. 

“I do feel like I have a private sector partner who is ready to go,” she told me of the planned 5,000 to 6,000 homes that could be built on the RFK site. “That is definitely appealing and enticing. That something can be delivered here in five years, as opposed to, ‘Let's do a master plan for five years, and then put it out for a [Request for Proposals] for another two years, and then another 18 to 24 months for construction,’ right?”

But Henderson does also have a bone to pick with the proposed deal: that it includes 8,000 parking spots in decks D.C. will pay to build. She wants to see more emphasis put on Metro; the current deal only has D.C. study whether to add an infill Metro stop on the north end of the site, but to actually build one. Critics point to this as an additional expense D.C. may have to incur above and beyond what the proposed deal touts.

One central player in the fate of the stadium deal, though, is Chairman Phil Mendelson. He’s been critical of using any public funds at all for the project, especially if that means other capital projects get shunted aside. He’s also angry that the council was largely shut out of the process, and that the deal includes a deadline of July 15 for approval. Given that Bowser hasn’t submitted a proposed budget to the council yet, itself a huge legislative lift, a peeved Mendelson told his colleagues on Tuesday that there’s no way such a deadline could be met. (City officials said Wednesday the deadline could be pushed, if both sides agree.)

Considering what happened in Virginia a year ago, keeping legislative partners happy would seem to be good advice for Bowser. That’s even more the case when you factor in just how much power Mendelson has in moving the deal through the council – or just choosing not to. To again compare D.C. to Virginia, Mendelson is basically D.C.’s Louise Lucas.

And yes, just over two months to approve a big stadium deal is very fast. Some two decades ago Major League Baseball and D.C. went back and forth over what’s now Nationals Park for 18 months before finalizing a deal. (And the deal was rejected before it was approved.) In 2014, it took roughly six months for the council to scrutinize, change, and approve a deal to build what’s now Audi Field. 

Ultimately, what was unveiled by Bowser and the Commanders this week was a starting point for the real discussions over whether and how the team will return to RFK. “Expect several twists and turns in the months to come,” said Allen.

And those twists and turns could come quickly, starting with more hits to the budget that might make D.C. lawmakers look at the stadium deal differently. House Republicans will soon unveil proposed changes to Medicaid to help pay for Trump’s tax cuts; any decrease in what D.C. gets could have huge budget implications. And in late June the council will get another revenue estimate, which could well force them to make more cuts to the 2026 budget they’ll be working on.

Boosters may say it’s a good stadium deal. What it’s not, though, is a done deal.

Budget blues

It’s looking ever less likely that the House of Representatives will fix the mess it created in D.C.’s local budget – forcing the city closer to making unwelcome midyear spending cuts. 

Politico reported Wednesday that conservative hardliners in the House won’t back a bill that would close the $1.1 billion hole the House blew in D.C.’s budget back in March, absent unrelated add-ons that would force the city to repeal laws like one that allows non-citizens to vote in local elections. Rep. Andy Harris (R-Maryland) seemed to confirm that in an interview Tuesday on WTOP. 

“We should put some guardrails on the spending, because again, there are some items that the District wants to spend, where they want to spend money, that I think are inconsistent with the majority in Congress,” he said, referring to money raised from D.C. taxpayers – who additionally don’t have voting representation in Congress.

With the prospect of a fix growing ever dimmer, D.C. officials are preparing for budget-cutting to come. Mayor Muriel Bowser already issued an order freezing a range of spending, and she said Wednesday that more significant service and staff cuts may be coming. “We will be finalizing plans in the coming days if there is no action [in Congress],” she said.

That could include furloughs for government workers, as well as temporary closures of government facilities – though she has exempted schools, homeless shelters, and health facilities. 

So if your local rec center is closed over the summer, maybe call Harris about it.