Bowser pushes new home for Redskins as RFK site redevelopment begins
While kicking off the redevelopment of the RFK Stadium site during a ceremony Wednesday morning, Mayor Muriel Bowser made clear she wants the Washington Redskins to occupy a new football stadium on the campus.
Bowser told reporters that she is focused on obtaining “long-term control” of the federally owned land. “I think that this is really the only space in the region that makes sense for the team,” she said.
With that possibility in the offing, city officials and representatives from Events DC, the city’s sports and entertainment organization, held a ceremonial groundbreaking to turn the current stadium’s 27-acre parking lot into three turf fields and a visitors center by March 2019. Calling it a plan of “asphalt to action,” Events DC chief executive officer Greg O’Dell and others applauded the quick turnaround, though the designs are the result of a years-long planning and consultation process.
“I think this is a moment where the city is helping reclaim this space,” said Ward 6 Council member Charles Allen about the sea of parking lots at RFK Stadium.
Bowser’s football talk continued later Wednesday, when she spoke with Redskins owner Dan Snyder at an annual team gathering, according to reports from Washington Post reporter Jonathan O’Connell. The mayor told the gathering that the team needs to come “home,” according to O’Connell.
Meanwhile, the under-construction sports fields represent the first phase of a 2017 master plan that outlines several projects for the site. Two of the turf fields will be soccer-specific and the third will also accommodate baseball and softball, all part of an effort to ease the District’s shortage of playing fields that limits the growth of youth sports leagues. Restrooms, park and green space, and a walker-biker trail will also be built, according to Events DC’s filings with the National Capital Planning Commission. Some parking lot space will remain for visitors to the site, which will connect to the Anacostia Riverwalk Trail.
“With the addition of these fields, we’re going to have more opportunities to bring baseball and softball back to life in the District of Columbia,” said Ward 7 Council member Vincent Gray, who has made youth baseball a pet project of his for a decade. He was joined by colleagues Allen and Ward 2 Council member Jack Evans at the groundbreaking.
The lease for the 190-acre RFK campus requires the space be used for recreation or stadium purposes. The National Capital Planning Commission, which has review authority over projects on federal land, will decide at its Sept. 6 meeting whether to give final approval on the design.
Turning to the matter of the existing RFK Stadium, “soon we will have to bring it down,” Bowser said. The Redskins moved out of the stadium in 1996, and DC United played its last game there in October 2017, leaving it with no regular user.
Mayoral spokesperson LaToya Foster said that “Bowser has made it clear in the past and her position still remains our Washington football team belongs in the nation’s capital.”
The team’s name has long drawn controversy, with critics condemning it as a racist relic of anti-Native American sentiment. O’Connell tweeted that Bowser used the name Redskins when speaking today to franchise officials. Previously, the mayor has said she finds the name offensive.
“The mayor is not a fan of the current name of the team,” Foster said, adding: “If she did say it, it wasn’t intentional.”
On Thursday morning, at-large DC Council member David Grosso released a statement expressing opposition a new football stadium. “The current team name is an offensive racial slur that should not be displayed on a new stadium here in the District of Columbia,” Grosso said. He added that a stadium would be “a waste of land and public resources.”
During the RFK groundbreaking, Bowser highlighted other Events DC projects set for completion before the end of 2018: the Apple Store opening at the Carnegie Library downtown, and a basketball arena for the Washington Mystics with practice facilities for the Wizards in Congress Heights.
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