WASHINGTON, D.C. — Councilmember Brianne K. Nadeau, D-Ward 1, made the following remarks today at the First Reading on the RFK development plan bill in the Committee of the Whole.
From the start, I have opposed the use of taxpayer dollars to support a stadium for a private organization, owned by billionaires, that will make them billions of dollars.
The more the deal is analyzed, the clearer it is that in a very rushed process, with artificial deadlines, the city has negotiated a deal that will pay well for the team, but not for the District or its residents.
What have we learned about this deal?
We have learned from the Chief Financial Officer that subsidies are not needed to make this private venture viable.
We learned that the $4.4 billion we are being asked to spend on the stadium over 30 years will return only $1.3 billion to the city.
We know that we could build an additional 5,000 housing units – nearly twice the number currently envisioned – if not for the stadium and its many parking spaces. And we’ve learned that the financial return to the city on that housing would be more than it would be from a stadium.
And still the deal’s timelines for housing lack any teeth. In fact, of all the last-minute concessions, the Commanders refused to negotiate on meaningful guarantees for a housing timeline, which tells us all we need to know about the likelihood that housing development will occur on the timeline in the deal.
The Commanders really want to be in DC.
Of course they want to be here. The RFK site is likely one of the most prime locations in the country! Metro accessible, lots of room, by the water, in a major city and media market, in the nation’s capital.
Many people, including the Mayor, worked very hard for years to secure DC control of this land.
But the District has rushed in to give it away all over again, negotiating as if we are some sort of backwater town that would be lucky to get anything, and that we should take what we can get.
The city does not owe it to this private organization to subsidize its profits with residents’ money and land giveaways. The team wants to be in D.C. and will do very well financially without handouts from D.C. taxpayers.
Over the past 36 hours, since the public hearing, some of my colleagues have successfully negotiated to make this deal better, speaking with team officials and fellow councilmembers to add safeguards for the environment, and labor. And I applaud them for those efforts and for making meaningful improvements to this deal. If this passes, residents for many years to come can thank these colleagues for looking out for all of us.
But we should not be forced into approving a multi-billion-dollar deal that will lock in the future direction for a major part of the city and its economy for the next century or more in mere hours, based on an artificial deadline set by the team and the Mayor. It’s irresponsible.
I’m a ‘no.’
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