Re: World Soccer XI: To South Africa, and Beyond!
Ok, lots of DC related comments.
Speaking as a DC resident and a DCU season ticket holder, I hope I can shed some light on the subject.
Snyder periodically whimpers about needing to move the 'Skins back to DC. No one here would miss FedExField... it's as if they looked at the region and decided "what part of our region has the transportation infrastructure least able to support hosting events with attendance in the range of 80K-90K on a regular basis?" or, similarly, "where can we strategically put a venue where it will wreak havoc with all traffic, in any direction, within 25 miles of the site and for as long as possible?"
Yep. FedEx was rushed through approvals because Jack Kent Cooke wanted a legacy built before he died. He never got to see it finished, and ultimately compromised on the final location and design. It's a poorly built and poorly located stadium. That part of PG County has very poor road access and no real transit access (it's a mile walk from the nearest Metro station, which wasn't open when the stadium was built).
I never said it was a great venue, it just seems wasteful to trash a serviceable, if imperfect, stadium after putting $250M (including about $70M of public money) into it not 20 years ago.
Oh, it's certainly a waste. But at the same time, the land FedEx sits on ought to be quite valuable for something else. The stadium has HUGE tracts of land for parking. Likewise, the stadium itself was built on the cheap and isn't holding up all that well. Jack Kent Cooke's monument wasn't quite like Jerry World.
All of the speculation on a new Redskins stadium involves Dan Snyder either selling or developing the FedEx site himself as a means to finance all/part of a new stadium.
I'm not familiar with the local issues - why can't RFK be torn down? The only thing on the Wikipedia says that the site could be used for a new stadium for the Skins "after the Nationals and D.C. United move to new stadiums in the city in 2008 and 2012, respectively", which seems like it must be out of date given that it seems to still be referring to the Nationals' move two years ago as something that will happen in the future. Granted, it looks like plans to build a new soccer-specific stadium for DC United either at Poplar Point or in Prince George's County have gone nowhere thus far, but (from my perspective anyway) there doesn't seem to be any compelling reason why DCU couldn't vacate RFK (so that RFK could be torn down) and play at FedEx Field until either their own stadium got planned/approved/built or a new stadium back in the district was ready to go. (Unless the playing area at FedEx Field is too narrow for DCU to use it; looking at a couple of pictures, it seems like this might be the case, but it doesn't seem any narrower than Giants Stadium, which sucks for soccer but has been used for it a bunch anyway.)
(Tangent: I cannot WAIT for Red Bull Arena to open.)
Lots of points here.
1. RFK sits on Federally owned land, leased back to DC on a long-term lease specifically and exclusively for the purposes of a sports stadium.
2. DCU's drive for a new stadium has stalled with the economy. PG County bailed on them (due in no small part to bad feelings in the county from the effects of FedEx, which has not delivered promised benefits), and their proposal for Poplar Point was based on using real estate development to finance the stadium - except that DC presented that master developer contract to someone else, who then promptly pulled out of the project, citing a poor real estate market (which would kill DCU's financing anyways).
3. DCU could indeed play at FedEx temporarily. They hosted Real Madrid there this year in a friendly (larger capacity and more revenue generation potential with suites), but long term is not an option, as Snyder is not likely to offer a better lease, nor would he be cool with the part of the NFL and MLS seasons that overlap, and DCU's fanbase (like myself) would be seriously hurt if the team moved to a location that's not Metro-accessible. But, as a short term solution to facilitate the construction of a new stadium, it would work. The field is narrow, but not prohibitively so for MLS (but will likely need work for FIFA).
I have a followup question about the Skins, but I'll find an NFL thread for that. Regarding DCU, what are the terms of their use of RFK? I mean, let's say Snyder blows the DC sports/convention authority away with an offer to privately fund an awesome new stadium at the RFK site if they'll tear down RFK right away. Does DCU have a long-term contract to use the site such that they would have a serious grievance about being booted? And are there other appropriate stadiums existing in the area that they could use as a temporary home if need be?
I think DCU's lease is year to year. They recently re-negotiated to get some more revenue from the Sports and Entertainment Commission. The lease isn't as onerous as it seems, it's more that RFK just doesn't generate much revenue, and the DC SEC needs a lot of money just for the upkeep on the stadium. Let's not forget that it's the first of all the donut multipurpose stadiums, and it's got the design quirks to prove it. The bouncy stands (that move for the football/baseball transition) are a maintenance nightmare. Putting any money into renovations is tough since it's got old building issues - like asbestos, etc.
DC looked at just giving it to DCU, but they found that it would cost more to renovate it than it would to build a new one from scratch - and then you'd get to fix all the quirks and errors.
I don't know the exact terms of DCU's lease, but I do know they tend to lose a lot of money by not playing in their own facility. There maybe a buyout clause for the city or a third party who planned to use the area (the site itself may be reserved for stadium use by law, but I'm not sure), in which case Snyder or DC would certainly pay it.
Hell, Snyder is wealthy enough and determined enough he might agree to contribute a substantial portion of the cost of a new DCU stadium to get them out. 50 million to him isn't really that big a deal.
In terms of temporary venues, assuming FedEx gets bulldozed and the land is sold to pay for Snyderdome (or pay for a portion of it), there are only two viable options in the area. The first is to play at Univ. of Maryland's football stadium which seats about 55,000 I think and looks like most college stadiums do. The atmosphere wouldn't be great and its accessibility from public transit is pretty bad for an area inside the beltway, but its serviceable. The other option is to relocate 40 minutes up the road to M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore, which is a 71,000 seater. Its much nicer, but further away from large portions of the fanbase and you have an MLS team that draws 18-25000 a game playing in mausoleum.
There is no buyout, the land is owned by the Feds. DC apparently has enough leverage to build a stadium on the site if they so choose (it was seriously considered for the Nats), but selling it to Snyder will require Federal action of some kind.
Either way, the city and the Feds will have to deal with RFK in some fashion sooner or later, so getting them to take action shouldn't be hard. Pushing that through in a timely manner is a different story.
Personally, I think DCU needs its own stadium, separate from a new Redskins stadium. The timeframes for the two teams are different, DCU needs a stadium soon, while the Redskins won't come to fruition for another decade at least. Even under the most optimistic scenarios, DCU will still need a stadium of a substantially different scale than the Redskins.
Given Sim City, god-like powers, I'd build DCU a new stadium now on one of the RFK parking lots (across the street from the Armory). This maintains the stadium use of the overall site for the land lease purposes, and allows RFK to be demolished and eventually replaced with a Snyder facility. Co-locating the facilities with a renovated DC Armory would offer a nice little entertainment node to compliment the planned redevelopment of the adjacent DC General Hospital campus.
Now, the approvals necessary to get all this done are daunting, to say the least - but that would be my ideal solution.
