The Washington Commanders received a significant boost on Friday toward their dream of returning to the District of Columbia in a new stadium.
The D.C. City Council gave initial approval, in a 9-3 vote, to a revised deal for a 65,000-seat stadium, the centerpiece of a $3.8 billion, multi-use development project on and around the old RFK Stadium site on East Capitol Street. The public-private deal is one of the largest in the city’s history.
The team will spend $2.7 billion to build the stadium, with the city committing $1.1 billion in public funding toward the project. The investment will bring retail, restaurants and hotels to a new entertainment district adjacent to the stadium, located approximately two miles east of the U.S. Capitol building. The project also calls for the construction of 6,000 housing units at and near the stadium site by 2040, 30 percent of which are to be set aside for lower-income residents.
A second and final vote on the proposal is scheduled for Sept. 17, after the Council returns from summer recess. That will only require a majority, or seven votes, of the 13-member Council. (Ward 8 Councilman-elect Trayon White, who won a special election earlier this year, has not yet been sworn in to his position.)
“The era of a crumbling sea of asphalt on the banks of the Anacostia is finally coming to an end,” D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, the primary force behind the city’s push to bring the team back to the site where it played from 1961 through 1996, said in a statement after the vote.
“In its place, we will bring our team home and deliver a state-of-the-art, Super Bowl-ready stadium for our Commanders, more than 6,000 new homes for D.C. residents, a SportsPlex for our kids, parks and recreation space for the community, and so much more. With the Commanders as our partner, we will deliver jobs and opportunity when our city needs them most. And we will build a campus that makes our city proud for generations of Washingtonians to come.”
Bowser worked through elongated bipartisan discussions on Capitol Hill over the last several years to try to secure a deal that would give the District control over the 180-acre RFK footprint. The land was initially controlled by the U.S. Department of the Interior, and the city had tried unsuccessfully for years to gain control of and develop the land.
The lobbying paid off, as the U.S. Senate, in a shocking unanimous vote passed in the early morning hours of Dec. 21, passed a bill giving the District control of the RFK site. That accelerated discussions between the Commanders and the city, moving Washington well ahead of Maryland, where the Commanders have played at what is now called Northwest Stadium since 1997, and Virginia.
“I’ve always kind of believed that this is kind of where we were with the votes,” Bowser said in a press briefing after the vote. “In all economic development deals, especially ones this big, that get this much attention, there are going to be puts and takes. I think when we lay this one up against other projects in our city, they’re going to be very similar.”
The deal keeps alive the Commanders’ hopes of moving into the new stadium in time for the 2030 season, and will also allow the team and city to make a bid for the 2031 Women’s World Cup, which will be held in the United States and Mexico. The design calls for a roofed stadium, which would also make it attractive for Super Bowls, NCAA basketball Final Fours, major concerts and other premier events. The initial agreement between the team and the city projected that the new stadium would be used up to 200 days a year, a lot of activity compared with other recently built NFL stadiums.
But the main attraction will be the Commanders, who have played in Landover, Md., for the last 28 years since moving from RFK. The return of the team has been a dream of tens of thousands of fans, including Bowser, who led the effort, working with team owner Josh Harris and his executive staff for more than a year.
While keeping the lines of communication with Maryland and Virginia open, Harris made it clear over the last year that he wanted the team to return to the place where he’d watched the then-Redskins play games as a teenager.
Statement from Managing Partner Josh Harris after the first vote to approve the RFK Stadium Bill pic.twitter.com/5KJDq5oLc1
— Washington Commanders (@Commanders) August 1, 2025
When the Commanders return to the District, it will mark the first time that all four major U.S. men’s team sports play inside the city at the same time. The Capitals’ and Wizards’ ownership group, Ted Leonsis’ Monumental Sports, reached agreement with the city last year on a massive $800 million renovation of Capital One Arena that will keep the two teams in Washington through their 2049-50 seasons. The Nationals are in their 18th season at Nationals Park, which opened in 2008. The WNBA’s Washington Mystics (CareFirst Arena) and Major League Soccer’s D.C. United (Audi Field) also play in D.C.
Phil Mendelson, the Council chair, noted the deals with Monumental — as well as one with the Nationals struck last year that creates a Ballpark Maintenance Fund from current revenues, which is contingent on the team extending its current lease out 20 more years, through at least 2054 — as examples of the city leaning more into sports and entertainment projects as ways to mitigate the losses of federal jobs in the first months of the Trump Administration.
“We need to diversify our economy,” Mendelson told The Athletic after the vote. “About 20, 25 percent of our economy is dependent on the federal government. And the current administrator has struck a blow against the District, as well as the region. We are reeling from the cuts. Sports is not the answer, but it is part of diversifying. And I just wanted to make the point that we, the Council, are actually doing a lot, that I think the public doesn’t realize.”
The deal was approved after Council members won further amendments to the revised deal, after a day and a half of negotiations between Council members, the Mayor’s office and the team. A key agreement reached early Friday morning provides for two labor agreements for the stadium and all hotels that will be part of the project, which will provide union jobs at both sites. The Commanders had already committed to union workers at the stadium site and one of the hotels in the entertainment district, but unions and Council members wanted the entire project covered.
“This binding commitment for union jobs during and after construction reflects a significant improvement over the previous commitment of only a PLA (Project Labor Agreement) on the stadium and one hotel,” Council members Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5) and Janeese Lewis George (D-Ward 4) said in a joint statement Friday morning.
Skeptics on the Council remain. The Council voted down an amendment by at-large member Robert C. White Jr. that would have assessed an annual $2 million penalty on the team for every year it was late finishing construction in the mixed-use portions of the development — and would have given the District the right, by 2042, to reclaim any lands in the project that still had not yet been developed.
He noted recent Council votes that cut resources for working- and lower-class families in the city to help deal with the city’s $1 billion deficit, the same week it committed more than $1 billion toward the Commanders’ project.
“It doesn’t sit right with me,” said White, one of the three no votes on the bill.
“It doesn’t sit right that we don’t have money for school buildings, but we have money for a stadium. It doesn’t sit right that we don’t have money to fix our police stations, or fire stations, but we have money for a stadium. … I have to ask, who is our commitment to?”
Multiple Council members wanted to return to the table with the Commanders before the second vote on Sept. 17 to get more teeth into enforcement mechanisms, in case there are substantial delays in construction, particularly with housing units, as there have been in many recent development projects. The Commanders are acting as the de facto Master Developer for the project, which the team says should limit delays in finishing the bulk of the project by 2040. The Commanders won’t have to pay any financial penalty for substantial construction delays until well into the 2050s.
Among the planned developments in the project are:
• A “Plaza District” that would be the main entertainment area, with housing, hotels, restaurants and retail shopping. The Commanders will be the de facto Master Developer for the Plaza District.
• A “Riverfront District” development along the Anacostia River, which would also have housing, retail and restaurants.
• A “Kingman Park District,” which will provide additional housing and recreational opportunities for the existing community near the stadium.
• A “Recreation District” that will maintain and renovate the existing Fields at RFK, a 27-acre sports complex adjacent to the stadium built in 2019 that has three turf fields for baseball, softball, lacrosse and soccer. The indoor SportsPlex will allow D.C. athletes competing in gymnastics and indoor track to play and practice there, rather than having to go to venues in Maryland and Virginia.
• An “Anacostia Commons” development of the 30-acre stretch of riverfront community, which is anchored by the Anacostia River Trail. Thirty percent of the entire campus will be set aside for green spaces and parks.
The initial agreement had to pass strict scrutiny from the Council, however.
Among the myriad concerns from several Council members were the impact of vehicular traffic in Kingman Park, Hill East and other neighborhoods near the RFK site, as well as the lack of public transportation options for a new stadium beyond the single Stadium/Armory Metro stop. Environmental groups decried the potential deleterious impacts, including pollution by massive trash dumps from the new stadium and the entertainment district, into the Anacostia, whose water quality has improved significantly after a series of recent cleanup initiatives. Multiple Council members asked pointed questions to Bowser and Commanders president Mark Clouse during their testimony Wednesday.
Mendelson led the charge to get financial concessions from the Commanders before supporting the legislation. He announced last week, just before two days of public hearings on the stadium proposal, more than $670 million in potential revenues and another $100 million in benefits, including $50 million for a Community Benefits Fund, that were clawed back from the team’s initial agreement with Bowser.
The team committed additional resources to the project in a letter to the Council on Tuesday, including committing to pay all cost overruns for stadium and parking lot construction, paying out $50 million over 30 years in community benefits, concentrating on residents in Wards 5, 7 and 8 — including $20 million for a “Commanders Youth Academy”; $7 million, to be invested over 10 years, for local business subsidies and $3 million for “grocery subsidies” for residents in Ward 7, along with a commitment to build a grocery store in Ward 7, which currently only has two supermarkets in its boundaries.
In addition, the team pledged to work with the NWSL’s Washington Spirit “in a collaborative manner” going forward, with sources indicating that the Spirit, who currently play home games at Audi Field, could play some games at the new stadium.
(Photo: Jonathan Newton / The Washington Post via Getty Images)
