The RFK Stadium endeavor looks like it’s dead in the water for now, as the stalling from the House Republicans on the spending bill its legislation is included in led to its chopping from the docket.
So we’re back to square one…and maybe, square one is the best spot? That’s what Maryland Rep. Glenn Ivey, who represents Prince George’s County and Maryland’s fourth district in the House (and who voted nay on the bill as it passed the house), tried to convince Grant & Danny of in a surprise call-in Thursday after the RFK bill was cut.
“I certainly want to keep the Commanders in Maryland, right where they are. Our goal is to be able to build them a new stadium there and do a lot of redevelopment around it, and Gov. Wes Moore has been working hard to be able to pull that off, so we’ll see how it goes,” Ivey said. “
Grant is now resigned to DC being too complicated a nut to crack for a new stadium, so much to Danny’s chagrin, he’s on team ‘build a new stadium in Landover and give me the bars and restaurant and all the stuff you didn’t give me near FedEx 1.0 that was promised.’
So, that’s why he asked Ivey to try to convert Danny, who will never go to “Nubs Field” voluntarily, why this is now a good idea.
“I think we've got a chance to really build a destination that's gonna be phenomenal. We’ve got a new stadium, with designs that we’ve seen about how spectacular that can be, and the development around it can make sense,” Ivey said. “We can do a lot of great things to build up mixed-use, retail oriented and transit-oriented development. We have Metro there, we’ve got the new construction by the hospital, we can put the amenities like the restaurants and things nearby and make it look pretty much like Nationals Park does now. We just need the help of having the stadium there so we can get the whole thing jumpstarted.”
According to Ivey, the goal is to put the new facility itself a little southeast of the current Northwest Stadium and build an overpass over the Beltway, so it will be accessible to the Downtown Largo Metro station as well as still close to the Morgan Blvd. stop, giving riders two choices.
“That would actually be better than what you've got at the RFK site right now, and you'd still have the parking availability and great access from the Beltway there, which is actually better than the road access you get at the RFK campus,” Ivey said. “So we got a lot of advantages, and we want to have a chance to build on it.”
Sounds great, right? But…what’s going to be different this time in terms of building more than just the stadium itself?
“Two words: Dan Snyder,” Ivey said. “He’s gone, and now that he is, all of that land is owned by the Harris team and those around him. They’re people who actually run businesses, built businesses, and made billions of dollars, which is how they could afford to buy the team to start with. They believe in trying to build out on the property there, and it's a win-win. It's good for the community, but frankly, it's also good for them, because as we build and add things to that area, the value of the land goes up and it puts extra value in the land that they purchase. So, we think there's a win-win there, and when you put the new stadium with the new amenities and everything together, it's also better for the fans and they can have a better experience.”
Ivey joked that ‘I don’t think anybody knew how bad Dan Snyder was gonna be’ before calling him ‘maybe the worst owner in all of professional sports,’ but in all seriousness, yes, the difference in regimes is palpable even to those in the business of the business.
“This new guy comes in, they bring in the new coach, they bring in the new GM, and all of a sudden we got a team that's ready to go, even though they built a team off a rookie and nobody carried over from the previous regime,” Ivey said. “Pretty much everybody's new, but it’s outstanding. Before the season started, I thought maybe we'd win five or six games, but this is miraculous. I have six kids aged 24-37, and they’ve never seen Washington have a winning football team that they can recall until now. So, they're geeked up now that we, we've had 30 years in the desert with the Snyder regime.”
Take a listen to Ivey’s entire call-in above, as he also goes deeper into Maryland’s vision for the new site and potential financing ideas, what DC agreed to that convinced Maryland’s legislators to keep the RFK part in the bill, and more!