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Hello Washingtonians. I am not a native of your land, rather a person from the North East who travels to various cities to attend sporting events and meet new people. I know enough about your city to know that you value sports as much as anything else.
I wanted to ask your opinion on the future of the football team. There has been quite a lot of controversy surrounding the name of the team, and if you want to add your opinion about that you can. I wanted to ask if you think the team should actually move to D.C.? All other of your sports teams are in the city and that is good for locals who want to use public transportation.
Is RFK stadium still around? How would you feel about moving the team there and maybe putting a new stadium in that site? People from Virginia and Maryland have access to those places and they deserve a good team.
How do you feel about the points I just made?
If they want to move into the District and pay for their own land and stadium they are welcome too. But I am personally indifferent to their location inside or outside the District proper, my only preference is they always locate in walking distance from a Metro stop.
I don't think DC has any control over the RFK site, and that part of the city is slowly revitalizing/gentrifying anyways even without a sports facility. Heck, at this point the gentrification and building rehabs are starting to push out along the Metro lines to Minnesota Avenue and, to a lesser extent, Benning Road.
In my opinion, if a sports team is affiliated with a city, they should be located within that city. I understand that can be easier said than done depending on zoning, available real estate, taxes, etc. However, to have sports teams affiliated with certain cities, I feel they should be in those cities. I would love to see the RFK stadium site have the WFT as their home base even though I'm not a WFT fan. That area of town is still pretty depressed.
Pro football, in particular, is particularly ill-suited to a busy city. It's only played a few times a year (leaving the stadium empty for 99.5% of the hours of the year), the stadiums are too large for basically any other use, there's a huge culture around BYOB and tailgating (hauling food in from a suburban Sam's Club via a big truck and sitting in a giant open-air parking lot, rather than enjoying neighborhood businesses), and it draws fans from a far beyond just transit distance.
Over in Honolulu, a state senator has called for the state to replace an abandoned football stadium with 30,000 affordable homes. I'd like to see that kind of ambition for DC.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Folks3000
I don't think DC has any control over the RFK site
NPS owns the land, and it's under a long-term ground lease to DC.
City lines don't matter much in such an interconnected metro area. Just because the District's boundaries were fixed in the 18th century means that we are somehow obliged to give over 190 acres of land + billions of taxpayer dollars (these things are never privately paid for) so that one especially terrible filthy-rich guy can do his eight-times-a-year circus.
Very few other major cities have their giant stadiums within their original city boundaries; that land is just too valuable. If they do (like, oh, Cincinnati or St. Louis) it's probably because their downtown is hollowed out.
What do the folks in Kingman Park have to say about it?
Not sure, I'd guess they would flip out like literally any other neighborhood where anything gets proposed ever.
There would probably be cries about gentrification despite that area gentrifying regardless; I think some would see the stadium as fueling it (which is almost never the case but the claim will be made regardless).
What if NFL forced Snyder to sell controlling ownership? Lets say Goddell got A-Lo or Lebron or some other beloved human/celebrity to buy in as controlling interest? If the team could get a modern facelift with not-elderly, admirable owners who know sports and money, could be fantastic and of course the games would naturally want to be located inside the District
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