Robert White, one of the at-large members of the DC Council, became the fifth Council member to visit Grant & Danny to discuss RFK 2.0 when he joined the guys in-studio Tuesday.
And while, technically, he is in favor of the Commanders building a new stadium in DC, he did explain why, if the vote was on the current iteration of the deal, he would vote no:
That statement came soon after he told G&D that ‘Most people don't want to be the face or the voice of somebody raining on the parade, and I don’t either, but I have a responsibility to look at this deal,’ and that he’s in a similar boat as Council Chair Phil Mendelson in that ‘he’s looking at the numbers and it's not making sense to him yet either.’
But, that said, he is a huge fan and was a teenager when the team left for Landover, so he understands how it looks that a majority of polled fans want it, even if members of the Council have questions and/or are against it on principle.
“That matters a lot, but residents are counting on me to have a full picture, and so when they say they’re comfortable investing $850 million, they're counting on me to know whether or not the actual cost is a lot more, and if we're going to make more,” White said. “They're assuming we're not making an $850 million gift, but rather an investment, and right now as the deal is structured, it is not an investment, it’s a gift. So, they are counting on us to not get swept away in the excitement. which I'd love to do as a fan, but, but to rather dig into the details. I say put aside politics, because we don't really need the politics here- a good investment is a good investment, a bad investment is a bad investment, and I think what residents are saying is the same thing I’m saying: yes, if the deal is good for DC, so let's get there.”
Part of that is understanding that all of the extra mixed-use development that is planned and hoped for doesn’t just appear, and White pointed to Landover, where, as he put it, ‘the plans didn’t say we’re going to build the stadium and it’s going to be desolate otherwise.’
So, he’s also honest in understanding the thinking that if it’s not a stadium, it’s hard to see how the current RFK land gets developed in a meaningful way any time soon, even if he’s not so sure.
“No one’s pursued it, and some folks would argue, well, it's been 30 years and there are no other options on the table – but I used to work on Capitol Hill, so one of the things I know is that the district was coming at the tail end of a previous lease with the federal government, so we couldn't be planning for land that we weren't going to control,” White said. “This debate only became viable within the past few months when we got a 99 year-extension on the lease, so right now is when we would be saying to the best minds in the country, give us your best ideas. So, I don't know what else we would do for this land because what else we do with the land because we haven't pursued it – but I don't necessarily think we need to right now, we need to figure out how to make this deal work.”
Take a listen to White’s entire visit with Grant & Danny above!