A Deal for D.C. Football

It was another Friday with a politician making news on The Politics Program with Mark Plotkin on WTOP. This time it was D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty letting us know that a proposal for a new stadium for the Redskins in the city is on the way.

To be clear, Fenty said the city would get the Redskins stadium proposal together "as fast as humanly possible." Of course we have heard this one about new digs for the Redskins from the mayor before.

It was last September that Fenty, again on Plotkin's Politics Program, suggested he would be open to exploring the possibility of bringing the Redskins back home. It sounds great but was a real shocker from a guy who was against publicly financing the Nationals stadium.

Last I checked the going rate for NFL stadiums is about $1 billion, give or take a couple of hundred million. Also the way things work in the NFL, the owners usually don't put up the money like the late Jack Kent Cooke wanted to do for the District. Cooked ended up doing just that in Maryland.

The Redskins also are in a no position to move. It is their stadium, and they have a deal with Maryland to play in it for years to come. In short, I appreciate the need to plan for the future, but I think spending one ounce of energy on a new stadium for the Redskins makes little if any sense at this point.

Furthermore, this talk of a Redskins stadium seems to me like a slap in the face to D.C. United which has been trying for close to a decade to get a stadium deal done. United's proposals have always included a public/private partnership, something Fenty would seem to be in favor of, but there is no clear sign of a deal getting done.

United's previous owner, Anschutz Entertainment Group, spearheaded the drive for a new stadium. AEG had a history of getting stadium, arena and entertainment complex deals done in cities, such as Los Angeles, London and Berlin, but came up short in the District.

In Major League Soccer eight of 14 teams have stadiums that are either open or set to open this year. Two more teams have stadiums under construction. Even an expansion team in Philadelphia has been able to get a stadium deal.

On Saturday there was another reminder of the need for a new soccer stadium. D.C. United was hosting the biggest soccer club in Mexico, C.D. Guadalajara or "Chivas", in an internationally televised match and several banks of lights went out in the 58th minute.

Sure, it is possible that an electrical failure could happen in a new stadium but at that moment RFK Stadium felt very much almost 50 years old. Washington is a first-class city with a first-class soccer franchise, and both the city and the team deserve better.

To get something the size of stadium deal done takes political will. Council member Marion Barry has been in favor of a new stadium for D.C. United because he understands the merits of the potential deal and has seen first hand the work United has been doing in his part of the city for years.

On The Politics Program Mayor Fenty talked about the economic impetus the Nationals Park will provide for the city. He noted he was critical of the stadium back in 2004 because he thought that city had not negotiated a good deal with Major League Baseball.

The key is former Mayor Tony Williams was able to get a deal done. The Nationals are here, and the construction cranes are up. A part of the city that people used to pass on their way out of town is now a destination.

It is time for the current mayor to show he knows how to get a deal done. The football team he needs to get it done for is D.C. United. My recommendation would be to do it "as fast as humanly possible."

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