Councilmember Charles Allen at Wednesday nights ANC6C meeting.
CM Allen Says He Will Work to Change a Bad Stadium Deal
by Larry Janezich
Posted: May 16, 2025
CM Charles Allen told ANC6C Wednesday night in his presentation on the DC budget that the city will spend over a billion dollars to build a new stadium on the RFK campus.
Allen said, “Right now a majority of the council does not support the proposal…I think actually a good number of my colleagues want to get to a yes but they are not there yet…A majority is absolutely opposed to the deal as is because it’s not a good deal for the city and it’s not a good deal for the taxpayer.” Allen said that for more than a decade he has been consistent in pointing out that NFL stadiums are not economic generators.
(More than a half dozen prominent economists and the St. Louis Fed point to data showing that using public funds for new stadiums is a poor investment.)
Allen cited one example out of what he said is many regarding why this is a bad deal. He said that the proposal as it now stands is that DC would build, fund, own, and maintain parking garages for 8,000 spots. The two parking garages at Nats Ballpark provide 1250 spaces for a 45,000 seat venue. For the 65,000 seat stadium, the Commanders want 8,000 spaces. “That,” Allen said, “would create a wall of parking garages right next to the fields and block off the fields from the community.”
“I think it’s a really bad idea to build that much parking … also that we all need to foot the bill and on top of that…we get no parking tax revenue so we will own, build, maintain, and operate parking garages and then we get zero revenue from it.”
Allen said that there is no money in the proposal for another Metro to serve the site, and “that makes no sense if we’re going to be building a stadium and provide for 15,000 new people … as we build 6000 homes.”
ANC6C Commissioner Mark Eckenweiler asked Allen if the proposed deal includes “sweeteners” for the city as is sometimes the case for municipalities providing subsides for sports arenas.
Allen said that right now there’s no revenue sharing from things like naming rights. The Commanders are also tax free on things like concessions and sales – not just on the stadium – but entire RFK campus…”and so the commanders will get all of that for a dollar a year and build everything on it…we will not get property tax, we will give up all parking revenue tax and sales tax….If you look at Nats Park the way that that works right now is that the District and the Nationals split 50/50 parking revenue on large scale events that are 5000 or more. So why would we treat one stadium very differently than the other?”
Allen said it makes no sense that we’re just giving it all away “so that’s what I mean that this is a bad deal. If it’s going to pass we’ve got to make a lot of changes to it.”
Allen’s position seems to be that in the event the city council passes the bill, it will need to be a better deal – that being the case, he did not say that even with major changes he could support the bill.
CAPITOL HILL CORNER 
It is difficult to imagine a more-raw deal for the city, and for taxpayers and Hill East residents in particular. We give everything and get nothing. (Oh, yeah, we get football. I guess that’s something.) It strikes me the proposal is just an opening round in what was expected to be a negotiation with the City Council, in which case, the Council should demand much, much more.
Absent from all this discuss is that Hill East lacks the transportation infrastructure to support vehicle traffic for an NFL-sized game audience. Game-day traffic in the vicinity of FedEx Field (or whatever they’re calling it now) was awful, and that was right off the Beltway/I-95. All that traffic will now wind up on New York Avenue, Bladensburg Road and Benning Road. How’s that going to work?
Oh, but it’ll only be on 15 or 20 days a year? My point exactly.
What a horrible “investment” for the people of DC.
At last count, four council members support the stadium project, five are undecided (meaning they will get off the fence at the opportune moment), and only three are opposed (opposed as in more loudly or misleadingly undecided than the five undecided). Out there in the community, 55% of DC residents support the project, and only 39% oppose. The project will be tweaked, improved from DC’s point of view, and then passed. That’s my guesstimation.
Council chair Mendelson is coming off the fence and is now I think it’s fair to say a leaning yes, meaning, tweak the numbers and it will pass
https://www.axios.com/local/washington-dc/2025/05/16/commanders-stadium-dc-council-mendelson-support?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axioslocal_dc&stream=top
I’m not a big fan of Allen. While he’s on the right track here, he’s not going far enough as he backtracks on his opposition to the stadium.
If there’s going to be a stadium, the District has get more revenue out of the deal. But, with only about 10 home games/year and a limited number of noxious rock concerts, there isn’t going to be sufficient revenue to justify DC’s cost of infrastructure around the stadium and there’s going to be little if any return on investment even after 10 years.
As a DC/Ward 6/Capitol Hill resident, I’d rather see business development that cleans up Benning Road* and multi-use parks in the current site, especially along the river including separate biking and hiking trails, large open dog-owner play areas, kid play areas, fishing sites along the river, a winter skating rink, and just old fashioned do-nothing-stare-at-the-sky places to hang out. And a frozen custard stand.
*If there’s business development, housing will follow.
Councilperson Allen is spot on and is clear-eyed as to what needs to be done. Tommy Wells was at the forefront of the Yards planning and Allen is following in his footsteps.
Nationals Park was done quite differently from what is being proposed for RFK. The entire Navy Yard area was designed by the planning department under Helen Trevelyan and was laid out well before any construction started and done according to the best urban planning principles.
The fact that the ballpark went in early was only because of the slowdown in the economy at the beginning of the project–financing for the commercial and housing parts became scarce and it slowed that part of the development by several years. There is no cause and effect from Nationals Park, that is revisionist history.
We need to do the same for RFK: Planning done by experts from the Department of Planning focused on what is the best for the community, as was done at the Yards. Only this way will the best solution for the community be implemented.
Hire back Helen Trevelyan (or someone with the the same forward vision) and do it right.