Plans to return the Washington Commanders to Washington have sparked excitement among many fans and residents – and resistance from others.
Ward 6 D.C. Council Member Charles Allen has always opposed building a new stadium at the RFK site and said Monday he doesn’t think the mayor has the votes needed to approve the plan.
Council Chairman Phil Mendelson told News4 he’s angry with Mayor Muriel Bowser for surprising the council with a deadline on the deal.
“I am shocked that the deal has gone this far with some of the terms that I have just learned about – that there was no collaboration or briefing with the council,” he told News4. “And I don’t want to see a repeat of what we saw in Virginia. The Commanders reached out to me late last week. We didn’t discuss any of the terms, and I absolutely want to have an open door with the Commanders. But trying to jam the council with the July 15 deadline, when the mayor hasn’t even gotten us the budget – let me repeat: The mayor will be seven weeks late in getting us the budget, and that will be all consuming for the next two-and-a-half months.”
Mendelson said he supports the Commanders coming back to the District and supports building a stadium at the RFK site.
But he said spending a billion dollars of taxpayer money is highly questionable at a time when the District will have to trim hundreds of millions of dollars from next year’s budget.
Council Member Charles Allen had this answer to the question, is your vote a hard no?
“People have loved asking that question for more than a decade, and I have been very consistent in, I don’t think an NFL stadium is the right use for this space. That is not the question in front of us today. We finally have a proposal that is coming in front of us, and as a policymaker and a legislator, I have to now decide if it’s a good deal,” he said. “The vision of what I would see for that site is delivering all the things everyone wants: housing, new businesses, jobs, grocery stores, retail, restaurants. But as we have seen across our city, you don’t have to have a stadium to anchor that, to make that a reality, and $1.2 billion in public dollars – that is something I am not comfortable with and don’t support.”
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said a new stadium would increase D.C.’s chances of hosting a Super Bowl “dramatically.”
Although many people News4 spoke with were enthusiastic about the stadium plan, some in Ward 7, where the new stadium will be built, were not.
“Our tax base is diminishing. We are going to have serious problems with this administration. And the fact we are chasing a billionaires’ stadium is just obscene,” resident Dave Carter said. “[…] I’m personally not for it. I think there could have been better uses of government funds for this. We could have brought more affordable housing. And there is going to be lots of stuff turned into parking lots.”
