D.C. Council advances Commanders stadium deal at RFK site

The D.C. Council on Friday advanced the $3.7 billion deal to bring a Washington Commanders football stadium and accompanying mixed-use development to the RFK Stadium site, a massive financial investment from the city involving upward of $1 billion in public funds and more than $1 billion in tax breaks for the football club.

The vote — with nine lawmakers in favor and three opposed — came after the Commanders agreed to guarantee more union jobs on the development project, delivering the backing of the local trades, hospitality and service unions and the votes of two council members whose support was contingent on stronger labor agreements.

The deal, if finalized through a second council vote in September, will transform the roughly 180-acre waterfront site on the Anacostia River to a new multiuse site expected to bring in about 10,000 new residents and hoards of tourists and fans.

The development proposal includes hotels, housing, an entertainment district, enhanced sports and recreation areas, park space and other amenities like restaurants and a possible grocery store. The Commanders, acting as master developer, are expected to deliver on most of those elements by 2040, with the stadium expected to be complete by 2030.

The District’s more than $1 billion in public investment funded in the most recent budget will include $500 million to support stadium infrastructure, more than $356 million for parking garages and $202 million for other utilities and a transit capacity study. The city is also building a new Sportsplex near the existing Fields at RFK.

D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D) said Friday’s vote was “not just about the Washington Commanders,” nor just about football. “It’s about looking at other ways we can grow our economy than just relying on the federal government,” he said, noting the city’s investments at other arenas including Capital One Arena and Nationals Park.

The council’s initial approval brings D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) one step closer to her decade-long goal of redeveloping the RFK site. The project required years of lobbying in Congress, which finally approved the land transfer in a midnight vote in December. Bowser’s revelation of the $3.7 billion deal with the Commanders kicked off months of fierce debate about how much public funding should go to support the football stadium. Bowser framed the deal as a generational economic opportunity for the city, while stadium skeptics questioned the return on taxpayer investment.

“Can you imagine if we continued to have 180 acres with a falling down stadium surrounded by asphalt?” Bowser said after the vote, saying she was “very grateful” to the council for advancing the bill. “Last year when I sat across the table from [Commanders owner] Josh Harris and we said, we can do this … we set out on a course to make that happen. We’re getting real close to that.”

In a statement Friday, Harris called the council’s vote a “historic moment.”

“Like many fans, RFK was the site of memories that fueled my love for this team and this city,” Harris said. “Now we’re closer than ever to reigniting that energy for a new generation.”

Notably, several lawmakers who had for weeks been openly skeptical of the deal — including Janeese Lewis George (D-Ward 4), Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5) and Charles Allen (D-Ward 6) — ended up voting for it after final negotiations with the team netted the city hundreds of millions of dollars in additional tax revenue, made the development more environmentally friendly, guaranteed higher worker pay and imposed some deadlines on affordable housing construction.

Lewis George said she and colleagues “turned what started as corporate welfare into something that actually puts money in working people’s pockets.”

“Our persistence paid off for workers, for the environment, and for all District residents and fans,” she said.

Still, several lawmakers remained unsatisfied and said they wanted further changes to the deal - including stricter penalties if the Commanders do not deliver on the mixed-use development on time.

That concern was enough for Council member Matthew Frumin (D-Ward 3) to oppose the deal; he said he asked the Commanders repeatedly to consider agreeing to earlier penalties for late delivery of affordable housing and they did not budge.

Robert C. White Jr. (D-At Large) — who unsuccessfully sought several amendments related to housing preservation, accountability measures and revenue boosters — and Brianne K. Nadeau (D-Ward 1), who has long been a hard no on the stadium deal, joined Frumin in opposing the bill.

In addition to Lewis George, Parker and Allen, the remaining lawmakers - Brooke Pinto (D-Ward 2), Wendell Felder (D-Ward 7), Anita Bonds (D-At Large), Kenyan R. McDuffie (I-At Large), Christina Henderson (I-At Large) and Mendelson — voted yes.

The vote comes about a week after Mendelson released renegotiated terms for a deal that he said would recoup for the city more than $674 million in future tax revenue and days after a public hearing where lawmakers grilled Bowser and Commanders officials on issues ranging from environmental protection to parking to labor agreements.

The timeline was unconventionally fast-tracked and compressed. All in a matter of hours on Friday afternoon, council members voted the RFK legislation out of two committees in back-to-back hearings, then held an immediate legislative meeting to give the bill the first vote.

The council’s unusually fast action on such a major development project largely appears to be the result of a broad pressure campaign directed at lawmakers by the mayor and pro-business allies to move the bill quickly and to avoid the remote possibility of the Commanders walking out on D.C., which the team has called its ancestral home. President Donald Trump also made a brief appearance in the debate after threatening to intervene in the deal if the Commanders didn’t change their name back to a racial slur against Native Americans.

Mendelson’s amended deal with the Commanders made changes intended to capture more revenue from new sales tax arrangements, including setting a tax on parking — like at all city parking garages — and directing sales tax from merchandise and food and drinks sold at the stadium into the general fund rather than into a stadium reinvestment fund.

It also sets up a fund for transportation improvements and creates a $50 million community benefits agreement, including a youth sports academy and grocery store subsidy for Ward 7.

And Mendelson’s revised deal creates new deadlines and penalties if the Commanders, acting as the master developer, do not deliver certain developments such as affordable housing on time.

The Commanders would pay $1 in rent for nearly 30 years, a perk some lawmakers questioned but that Commanders President Mark Clouse said was an adequate incentive to push the team to move quickly on the developments. For every deadline missed, the team will have to pay full rent one year sooner than expected, with a cap of five years sooner as a penalty.

But Frumin and White both argued that that accountability was not nearly strong enough. The Commanders would not owe rent until the 2050s, meaning the penalty for missed development deadlines — set in 10 phases between 2030 and 2040 — may not even materialize for more than two decades. Frumin said he was deeply troubled that the Commanders would not accept more meaningful penalties that kicked in earlier.

“The unwillingness to embrace … strengthened accountability should be very troubling to everyone,” Frumin said.

White proposed an amendment to address the issue, which failed — but even some who voted no said they intended to press the issue before the final vote.

Other sticking points were resolved in the final hours before the vote. Allen said it was not until Friday morning that he secured agreements from the team to adhere to stricter environmental building standards and consult the council before seeking waivers to certain environmental regulations.

Crucially, the Commanders also came to an agreement with a group of local labor unions on Friday, resolving a concern that was keeping both Lewis George and Parker from supporting the deal. The Commanders had previously only committed to project labor agreements guaranteeing union jobs for the construction of the stadium, parking and an adjacent hotel.

But after more negotiating, the final agreement covered an additional hotel and added more guarantees that the team would respect workers’ right to unionize for a host of other jobs in concessions, security, cleaning, parking and hospitality.

“We now have a truly transformative development project that will bring the Commanders back home to the District of Columbia and ensure that those who will build and who will work at these properties have decent wages, health insurance, and a pension," the leaders of the Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO, the Baltimore-DC Metro Building Trades, 32BJ SEIU, and Unite Here Local 25 and Local 23 said in a statement Friday afternoon.

Allen, long skeptical of publicly financed football stadiums, said his vote on the deal switched from to yes after the council’s to the deal. He said it was not a decision he took lightly, calling it a “once-in-a-generation opportunity” to design a whole swath of the city.

“The consequences of that decision are going to last for many generations and they will outlast every single person on this dais and every single person in this room," Allen said before the vote.

For Felder, lawmakers’ desire for intense deliberation over the bill had been a frustrating feature of the process. He took issue with the fact that the deal had been “met with hesitation, debate and delay.”

Still, he said, the initial approval of the deal was momentous for the historically underserved Ward 7 — finally giving the ward what it needed to drive investment and foster economic growth. “It’s much more than a football and a stadium. It’s about righting the historic imbalance of investment across our city,” he said.