The major players in deal that would transfer ownership of the dilapidated RFK stadium site from the hands of the federal government to the District of Columbia is stuck two yards in front of the goal line.
“Everyone’s focused on the election,” said Josh Harris who’s the managing partner of the National Football League’s Washington Commanders, a team that would presumably occupy a new venue at the site eventually. “This is the kind of thing that would have to be part of a series of bills that would go through in the lame duck session. So, it’s not really realistic to think that’s going to happen before the election.”
Harris made the comments while talking to reporters on Monday. The Commanders currently play their home games at a facility in Landover, Maryland and are under contract to play there until at least 2027.
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Team ownership has expressed a desire to return the team to Washington and at the very least would like to have another option besides the current site in Maryland.
Today the team announced the Landover stadium inked a new naming rights deal with Northwest Federal Credit Union. The stadium will be rechristened as Northwest Stadium with the deal running through 2031.
The Commanders, which used to be called the Washington Redskins before a name change in 2021, played at RFK stadium from 1961 – 1996. RFK is in the District of Columbia about two miles east of the U.S. Capitol building, but sits on land owned by the federal government.
The Feds have been leasing the land to the District for free with the term ending in 2038. D.C. has expressed an interest in wooing the team back to the city limits, but the stadium would need to be rebuilt.
“I do think that both the city and the Commanders will need to make some decisions about the land in the near future,” said D.C.’s Mayor Muriel Bowser.
“It is clear to a lot of people that the best site in the region is one centrally located. It’s on Metro, it’s been a stadium, and it has a lot of emotional attachment for players and fans.”
Legislation that would speed the transfer of the 174-acre site, known as the “D.C. Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium Campus Revitalization Act,” passed through the House in February but has been stuck in the Senate since May.
In addition to a new stadium D.C. has floated a redevelopment plan that includes commercial and residential elements that are forbidden under the current lease arrangement.
Transferring the stadium to D.C. has bipartisan support in Congress, putting Rep. James Comer R-Ky., chairman of the House Oversight Committee, and D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton who serves in Congress as a non-voting member, on the same team.
Last December Washington found itself in a tussle with Virginia’s Republican governor over his plan to move the National Basketball Association’s Wizards and the National Hockey League’s Capitals out of their current arena in the Chinatown neighborhood of Washington to a brand new built from scratch facility in Alexandria, Virginia.
The plan collapsed from resistance from the state legislature and local opposition. In
The District has an active history of tapping public finance to build and maintain arenas and stadiums. It attracted what would become Major League Baseball’s Washington Nationals from Montreal in 2005. D.C. partially relied on a $534 million bond issuance to build a new stadium from the ground up in 2008. The Nationals played their first two season in RFK while the new stadium was being built.