Washington gets its stadium
April 29, 2025
by Steve Thomas
The Washington team and the District of Columbia government announced a deal between the two parties on Monday for the construction of a new stadium complex on the site of RFK stadium, as widely reported by many different media outlets. As the deal appears to be constituted, the Josh Harris ownership group will be responsible for construction of the stadium itself as well as some surrounding commercial and residential development, and the District will retain rights to some other surrounding property at the site.
The total cost to the Harris group is reported to be around $2.7B, with the District’s contribution coming in at approximately $1.1B in the form of non-stadium construction, parking construction, utilities, and a separate but nearby sportsplex. Critically, the stadium complex will reportedly not be subject to property taxes, which represents a major savings to the Harris group, but a major loss to the District.
The District’s participation will require approval from the D.C. City Council, and will almost certainly face legal opposition from various local interest groups who have been opposed to a stadium development for many years. This opposition could potentially be in the form of ballot initiatives and lawsuits.
The proposed timeline is reportedly as follows:
- Summer, 2025: City Council approval
- Summer and fall, 2025: Commencement of planning for parks, housing, and recreation
- Fall / winter, 2026: stadium construction groundbreaking
- 2029: Plaza District groundbreaking
- 2030: Sportsplex ribbon-cutting
- Fall 2030: Stadium opening
Harris obviously scores majors points with the fanbase as a result of this move. As everyone knows, RFK Stadium is the historic home of Redskins greatness, so there’s no small amount of nostalgia associated with it, even taking into account the fact that the “Redskins” name is gone forever. Plus, this is a more centralized located site than either Maryland or Virginia, so that’s also a benefit. I suspect that neither Maryland or Virginia was going to agree to contribute significantly more money than did the District, so Harris decided to make the move that is the clear and obvious first choice for everyone involved.
The money, of course, is the biggest issue here. The Harris group is going get construction financing to fund the vast bulk of this project, so they will have an enormous amount of annual debt service they’ll have to pay. No matter what Harris says right now about making the stadium affordable for average families, the fact of the matter is that large ticket cost increases are basically mandatory. A big part of the increase will come in the form of PSLs, or “Personal Seat Licenses”, which are commonplace in newer NFL stadiums. For those who aren’t aware, a PSL is a scheme wherein the prospective buyer must pay a fee that varies by location, often several thousand dollars per seat, to buy a “license” to buy season tickets. This is a completely made up, phony construct invented to give owners a mechanism to raise prices. Stadium owners don’t always make every seat in the building subject to a PSL, so it’s possible that when Harris talks about affordability, he intends to leave some nosebleed-level seats without PSLs in order to provide some opportunity for “normal” families to buy season tickets.
Harris will also get income from his surrounding planned commercial and residential properties; of course, those properties will be subject to their own construction financing, so it isn’t really free money for the stadium. The point is that everyone needs to be prepared for a big price increase. No matter what else happens, prices are going to raise, dramatically. Some fans will probably be priced out, no matter what Harris says.
More importantly, I do not believe that a local city government should commit to over a billion dollars in public funds to commercial development. The District is prohibited by federal law from contributing to the stadium, but they will still be responsible for the utilities, parking, and more, as well as metro line modifications, as I mentioned above. In my view, this is an irresponsible use of taxpayer dollars. No city, including the District, has this amount of cash lying around. The usual way that a city raises this amount of construction financing is through public bond sales, with the bonds typically purchased by investors such as major national financial institutions. The trick to this, of course, is that bonds have to be repaid, and that usually comes in the form of increased excise taxes such as hotels, car rentals, and “sin taxes” on alcohol and tobacco. Debt service on a billion dollars in debt is going to end up being tens of millions of dollars per year that the District doesn’t current have, all collected from the public via one method or the other. Philosophically, I don’t believe that the public should have to pay for this. Also, in this case, none of this property will be subject to local property taxes, which is good for Harris but a negative for the District. Regardless, this is the situation in which D.C. is about to put itself.
The five year development period is doable. I do not believe that it’s an overly optimistic timeline. The major time hangup, if there is one, beyond the potential legal challenges from the local residents, will probably be environmental-related. All construction projects of any size and scope have to have environmental studies. I’ve been involved with many projects over the years that have suffered major delays because of unexpected environmental problems. I don’t have any specific knowledge of this particular site, but it wouldn’t surprise me very much if the environmental studies as a 174 acre site that has been sitting vacant and rotting for decades has contamination to one extent or the other. Keep an eye out on this issue. There are very few environmental problems that can’t be fixed with time and money.
In summary, the fans should justifiably be excited for this development. I’ll have much more on this story in the future.