Wilson Building Bulletin: The Commanders get their stadium

It wasn’t really in doubt going into Wednesday’s final vote, but there were still sighs of relief and scattered applause in the D.C. Council’s chambers after lawmakers gave final approval to the $3.7 billion deal to bring the Washington Commanders back to D.C. – and into a 65,000-seat roofed stadium at the old RFK site. (The vote was 11-2, with only Ward 1’s Brianne Nadeau and At-Large Councilmember Robert White voting against.)

The core of the deal remained the same from when the council gave its initial approval in August: The Commanders will spend $2.7 billion to build the stadium, while D.C. will put in more than $1 billion to prepare the site for construction, utilities, two parking garages, and a transit study to explore whether a new Metro station is needed near RFK. (And there’s plenty more in subsidies by way of tax breaks, largely on property taxes that won’t be applied.)

The council did make some changes ahead of Wednesday’s final vote, but they weren’t particularly significant. Some flexibility on the deadlines for completing the mixed-use development was offered (though there will still be some penalties if those deadlines aren’t met), and language was added to clarify that the Commanders will aim for a high environmental building standard for the stadium. (The team also agreed to protect as many existing heritage trees on the site as possible.)

But lawmakers also batted away multiple attempts to ratchet up the financial consequences if the Commanders don’t build out the planned residential and retail development that will surround the stadium – the land for which the team is getting for free. 

We’ve been reporting on the stadium deal since it was first unveiled by Mayor Muriel Bowser in late April, and here are some takeaways for what is certainly going to be a consequential project – and D.C.’s single biggest investment in any sports team to date.

D.C. is now the sports capital, like it or not

On Wednesday, the council passed a largely ceremonial bill declaring D.C. the “sports capital.” Whether or not that’s to your liking is one thing, but it’s largely true. Not only will D.C. soon boast more than a dozen professional sports teams – and their respective facilities – within city limits, but D.C. has been putting buckets of public money into them.

It’s almost a distant memory, but nearly two decades ago D.C. put some $700 million of taxpayers’ money into building Nationals Park (which is soon to be upgraded). Then there was the $150 million to cover half the cost of Audi Field, $69 million for what’s now known as CareFirst Arena, and $515 million to renovate the Capital One Arena. And there may be more to come: D.C. United has been agitating for Audi Field to be expanded. (There’s been no interest in a stadium for professional cricket, though.)

Boosters of public spending on sports say one need only look to Nationals Park and the Capital One Arena for apparent evidence of how stadiums and arenas can either revitalize neighborhoods (like Chinatown and Gallery Place) or create entirely new ones (Capitol Riverfront, anyone?). But critics point out that such spending is merely taxpayer subsidies for billionaire-owned sports teams, and that if these facilities were so profitable on their own, why would any public funding be needed anyhow?

That dynamic was certainly evident during the debate over the Commanders stadium deal, but it was also partially offset by the reality that, as the federal government is scaling back its presence in D.C., city officials are looking for something – anything, really – to reinvigorate the local economy. Can that thing be more sports? Maybe. It’s hard to argue with the reality that Commanders fans who now spend their money around Landover will instead be spending it in D.C. But it’s also tough to say that the types of permanent jobs that stadiums do produce will fully replace the ones offered by the federal government.

Regardless, by 2030, you’ll be able to watch just about any professional sport you want within city limits – and get to those respective stadiums and arenas using little more than public transit.

Bowser gets credit for sealing the Commanders deal

You can question the wisdom of bringing the Commanders back to D.C. (and using public dollars to help build their new stadium), but that we’re even at this point is undeniably a political and symbolic win for Bowser. Setting aside football, that Bowser negotiated with Republicans in Congress to transfer the 190-acre RFK site to D.C. (after years of asking for it) is itself a monumental victory. Land transfers of this sort don’t often come easy (and even the RFK one faced last-minute hiccups), and there’s no doubt that the prospect of a new football stadium probably enticed House Republicans who aren’t otherwise predisposed to do D.C. many favors. Still, the land transfer got done, allowing the negotiations with the Commanders to kick into high gear and produce the stadium deal that lawmakers ultimately approved. 

But the council gets credit for making the deal better – mostly

When Bowser and the team unveiled the deal, they each swore it was about as good a deal as anyone could hope for – and urged the council to approve it post haste. That so much pressure was put on lawmakers – especially for a deal this size – was almost unprecedented; the second-fastest deal the council ever approved was for Audi Field, and that was a fraction of the cost and in a few more months than what the council got for the Commanders. (And as we pointed out a few months ago, it was Bowser herself, then just a councilmember, who slowed down the Audi Field deal to scrutinize it better.) 

Ultimately, the Commanders deal could be improved, and it didn’t take much prodding from the council for some of that to be evident. Ahead of the first vote in August, Council Chairman Phil Mendelson extracted a number of new (and low-hanging) concessions from the team, largely by steering more of the expected tax revenue from the stadium to the city and reversing a proposed exemption for the team on the city’s parking tax. Depending on who you ask, that could amount to anywhere between $700 and $900 million of revenue that otherwise would have stayed with the Commanders. The council also formalized the terms of a $50 million Community Benefits Agreement that the team will have to sign and abide by, and redirect some funding to potentially improving mass transit to the site.

Still, it’s hard not to think that given a bit more time, the deal could have gotten even better for the city. It’s understandable that the Commanders wanted a quick vote; the team needs to get a stadium built in time for a 2030 opening, after all. But rushed lawmakers are rarely good lawmakers. The council gets credit for commissioning an outside assessment of the deal, but even that left something to be desired – it was only a few dozen pages long, while a similar assessment of the Audi Field deal was hundreds of pages long (and laid the groundwork for changes to that deal). And despite an analysis from the city's CFO saying that property tax breaks worth more than $1 billion weren't needed for the development to happen, the council didn't make any changes to them.

On Wednesday, lawmakers showed that they were still susceptible to pressure from the Commanders. A letter from the team seemed to imply that any more changes to the deal would force them to walk away; most proposed amendments that lawmakers floated were then voted down.

A new neighborhood at RFK helped sell the deal

For some lawmakers, the selling point of the deal wasn’t football itself – but rather how a new stadium could kickstart development on the rest of the RFK site. Love it or not, large-scale development projects in D.C. can take a long time. That’s great for community input, but it can be frustrating for residents who are sick of vacant or underutilized plots of land. City officials pointed to Reservation 13 adjacent to RFK as proof; it took more than a decade from when the federal government transferred the land to D.C. and when development started happening. (And don’t even mention McMillan Reservoir.)

RFK, though, should be different. The non-stadium parcels of land – which will include up to 6,000 homes, restaurants, a hotel, and more – are largely in the hands of the Commanders. Boosters of the deal say that to best maximize their own profit, it’s of obvious benefit to the Commanders to move quickly on developing all that land. There’s simply not much money to be made on acres of asphalt, after all. (A council study estimated that the stadium could accelerate the mixed-use development at RFK by 11 years.)

Still, how quickly they will move remains an open question. Yes, the deal does include some penalties if certain development milestones aren’t met. But critics argue that the penalties aren’t particularly tough for a team worth billions of dollars, and that if residential and retail development doesn’t come to pass (or is way behind schedule), the city won’t have much recourse. Some lawmakers – including Ward 3’s Matt Frumin and At-Large Councilmember Robert White – tried to change that ahead of the final vote on Wednesday, proposing an escalating scale of penalties they said would further incentivize the team to move on the mixed-use development. White even proposed an amendment that would allow the city to claw back any land that remains mostly undeveloped by 2050, though his colleagues rejected it.

In pushing for speedier development, though, D.C. might be leaving money on the table – a possibility the council’s study on the stadium deal mentioned directly. 

“The mixed-use development anchored by a new stadium would generate new revenue for the District sooner, since the team is promising to complete the entire development by 2036. However, a mixed-use only development would generate more tax revenue over 30 years. A key difference is that while a stadium likely generates more tax revenue than an equally sized residential development, the stadium proposal comes with a significant amount of land dedicated to large parking garages, which do not generate sizeable revenues,” it noted.

Regardless, that the development may happen more quickly was enough to sway some of the council’s more ardent stadium critics, including Ward 6’s Charles Allen. “I’ve long been clear that an NFL stadium alone isn’t a good investment for the city. But building 6,000 new homes, creating good-paying jobs for D.C. residents, protecting the Anacostia River and Kingman Island, and expanding the number of youth sports fields and facilities are huge positives,” he said on Wednesday. “And the investments in transit and meeting our environmental goals improve the deal a hundred-fold.”

What happens to existing neighborhoods is a big question

If a new neighborhood rises at RFK, what about the neighborhoods around it? That includes Hill East, Kingman Park, and Rosedale most immediately. If D.C. history is to serve as a guide, big investments (like stadiums) tend to increase property values in surrounding areas, which can result in displacement – usually of longtime Black residents. 

This exact concern was mentioned during Wednesday’s debate, when White unsuccessfully tried to create an anti-displacement fund and direct some parking tax revenue to it to help pay for programs to keep longtime residents in their homes. "When stadiums go up, long-term residents get pushed out," he said. (This may not happen for a few years; the stadium is expected to open in 2030, and the first phase of development between then and 2032.)

Still, Ward 7 Councilmember Wendell Felder did successfully make a change to the final deal, clarifying how much money will go into a Community Reinvestment Fund and specifying that the fund should be used on programs to mitigate the possible displacement of residents.

More immediately, residents in Kingman Park will be pushing D.C. and the Commanders on where two expected parking decks will be built. While initial plans had the two decks rising somewhere between the neighborhood and existing sports fields on the northeastern edge of the site, residents’ protests haven’t totally fallen on deaf ears. City officials now say the parking decks could still be moved.

It’s time to retire the football puns

Seriously. I don’t ever again want to hear that the deal is on the one-yard line, or that the council could fumble it, or that a new stadium will offer commanding views of the U.S. Capitol, or that someone punted on a big decision. We have many more important things to tackle, people.