Where in the World are the Washington Commanders?
March 9, 2022
by Paul Francis
The Washington Commanders’ lease runs out at FedEx Field in 2027. Dan Snyder has been searching for opportunities to build a new stadium, and that effort will accelerate in the years to come.
I’ll be doing a 3-part series on potential locations for the new stadium of the Washington Commanders. Each part of the series will focus on one of the locales: DC, Maryland or Virginia (i.e., the DMV). Today we look at the potential for the team to return to its historic home in Washington D.C.
The District
In an ideal world, the Washington Commanders would play in Washington DC. This scenario makes sense on every obvious level. The team returns to its city’s namesake and plays in a new stadium built on the ready-made site where RFK Stadium currently stands. Public infrastructure and transportation already helps move masses from the suburbs into the city and out again, so gameday travel could happen smoothly. All the other local professional sports teams have managed to find a home within District boundaries, so you’d think that the DMV’s most enduring popular sports franchise would be able to do so as well. As far as the people (that’s us fans) go, this idea is an easy completion. Unfortunately, as far as the politics go, this idea is a Hail Mary.
The People – How does DC work for the fanbase?
The landscape of DC sports fanhood is unique. The Wizards, Capitals and Nationals all play in the city. Two of those teams have won championships in the last 5 years, and yet the DMV stubbornly remains a “football first” fanbase. Despite all the losing that’s happened on and off the field since Dan Snyder’s takeover, the lingering legacy of the Gibbs-era Skins is strong and continues to keep the locals hopeful (for now), even with years of fan attrition taking a noticeable toll on gameday. But the football team doesn’t actually play in the city. Can this aberration be corrected? I hope so.
It’s the late 80’s and early 90’s. The most uplifting local event for the DMV residents lucky enough to have a ticket is gameday at RFK. The season ticket waiting list is not a myth, but a reality. We were some of those lucky residents, having inherited season tickets from my grandfather, an original season ticket holder.
Some of my greatest boyhood memories have to do with going down to the games at RFK stadium. My journey starts at Shady Grove station on the end of the Metro Red Line. At each of the next 13 stops, the metro car incrementally adds a few more fans decked out in burgundy and gold. By the time we arrive at Metro Station, the subway mobs with Redskins faithful. Jumping on the Orange or Blue line for a couple more stops is like packing into a party train. Standing room only and were jammed in like sardines, but everyone is smiling and the strangers pressed up against you aren’t strangers – they’re fellow citizens of Skins Nation.
Riding up the long escalator at the Stadium-Armory stop is a slow ascension into one of the biggest, most exciting block parties I ever attend. People of all races and social status are mixing and mingling in the street, while locals with brass trumpets belt out “Hail to the Redskins” on the street corners. Taking our sweet time making our way through the gameday mardi-gras, I hear the roar of the crowd from outside – the players are taking the field! Hurry, we’ve got to get through the turnstyles before kickoff! I never heard so many people cheer for something together like that in my life. All that, and the game had not yet even begun.
In the heyday of the Gibbs Era, the Washington Redskins united the DMV. Can something like this happen again?
Getting the team back in the city would be a tremendous boost for everyone. I think the sentimental power of a DC-based gameday would go a long way towards wooing back many of the local fans whose appetite has waned, as well as giving the younger generation who never knew the days of the Redskins Dynasty something to be excited about. Regardless of which side of the sociopolitical tracks you reside on today, I think everyone would agree that social and political divisions have taken a toll on us all in recent years. This is especially true around a politically-charged place like Washington DC. For the Washington Commanders to get back to winning ways and bring that unifying element into the city would do wonders far beyond the football field.
When Abe Pollin built the MCI Center (now called Capital One Arena) in the 1990’s in the Penn Quarter neighborhood of DC, he did more than just bring the newly-named Washington Wizards back into the city to play professional basketball. He revived a community. He filled a void and anchored the revitalization of a neighborhood burned-out and broken-down since the race riots of the 60’s.
If Dan Snyder is truly seeking to flip the narrative of his mostly disastrous ownership tenure, then a move like this would be perfect. He’s changed the name of the team and the look of the front office in ways more radical than many of us imagined possible a couple seasons ago. Perhaps he was forced into some of these moves; perhaps he’s simply become that desperate; it’s probably some of both. Returning Washington football to the city would go a long way towards helping to complete the momentum of this narrative-flip (along with actual winning of course!). The excitement and goodwill it could engender towards Snyder as he fills a void in the city would be mutually beneficial. Local polling shows that almost 70% of DC residents support bringing the team back in the city. It’s win-win.
Unfortunately, there are a number of realpolitik hindrances standing in the way.
The Politics – How does DC work for Dan Snyder?
The business politics of the DC stadium scenario are quite complicated. The federal government owns the land on which RFK stadium is built. The National Park Service manages the land and has a lease agreement with the DC government for the stadium, who then leased it out to the Washington Redskins when they played there. There are federal and local layers of bureaucracy that need to sync up.
Currently, RFK stadium is crumbling and the land it sits on lies unused for any helpful purpose. The DC government would love to put this marquee piece of real estate to use and develop it to the benefit of the city. But Congress owns it. If Congress has a list of one million things it needs to do, making plans to determine the fate of that plot of land comes in at one-million-and-one. For years, the DC government has been trying to get Congress to sell the land to the city, so that DC can exert full control and do something positive for the city with it, but (surprise!) those efforts continue to stall in the halls of Congress.
Keep in mind that Dan Snyder is not simply looking for a stadium in which to play – he is looking to develop a profitable mini-city around it. Were Snyder and the District free to negotiate directly with each other without the inefficiency of Congress involved, a masterplan for renovating and rebuilding on the RFK site and the surrounding area might be more feasible, but that is not currently the case. Ironically, one thing that ALL the DC politicians are united on is precisely the thing that Dan Snyder does NOT want to hear: DC would provide no funding incentives for the stadium construction and Snyder would have to build the complex with his own money.
Does Congress want to give Dan Snyder a lift and help him build a stadium in DC? Years ago Congressional politicians made it clear there would be no stadium-deal in the city if Snyder did not change the team name. That box has since been checked. But Snyder has remained persona non-grata with Congressional politicians now for different reasons, as they push for more transparency into workplace sexual harassment claims. Some Congressional politicians are even going so far as to introduce legislation that would prevent local governments from offering tax incentives to build sports stadiums, specifically making Dan Snyder a posterchild for billionaire greed along the way. It would seem that Dan Snyder has an uphill battle before him, if he wants to charm the right people in Congress.
Even if circumstances changed and DC had direct control of the land, Snyder would still have to navigate the demands of the mayor’s office and the DC Council as well. Each of those stops involves diverse personalities acting as gatekeepers to the next level. While Mayor Muriel Bowser supports the idea of building on the RFK site, other DC Councilmembers have not been so open to it. There is no guarantee that all those ducks might line up. Local old-timers may recall the fallout between Jack Kent Cooke and then-DC mayor Sharon Pratt Kelly over the previous attempt to do a District stadium deal, resulting in the exodus by the Redskins to Maryland. Even though all parties purportedly wanted the DC deal to happen, “things” got in the way and the finger-pointing and blame-game went on for years. Such is local politics in the District.
Although the political gauntlet of navigating such a move is daunting, and the city doesn’t want to incentivize the building project, Mayor Bowser has been recently saying all the right things. The mayor is a powerful ally and as the saying goes: where there’s a will, there’s a way. But is there really?
In Conclusion
I’d like to think that this could happen, and that my children could make that memorable escalator ride up the Stadium/Armory stop into a Washington wonderland of football gameday Shangri-la, but it’s highly unlikely.
Abe Pollin built the MCI Center on his own dime in part because he truly believed that owning a DC sports team was not just a private business venture, but stewardship of a public trust. He viewed sports-ownership as a service to the fanbase and the city. I don’t believe Dan Snyder thinks that way strongly enough to accommodate the list of concessions necessary on his part to make a move back into DC happen. There’s too much time, effort, and political capital to spend to make it a reality. There’s also too much business profit on the line for someone like Snyder to risk the more expensive route. I give him credit for exploring this idea years ago, as he purportedly did. But it’s become clear that other venues have become more desirable. Venues that we will look at next time around…