Reply to NFL Commanders building $3bn new stadium in Ward 7 on the old RFK site

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

Nope. DC is putting up $500 million towards prepping the land for the stadium. Bowser initially claimed that this was all for “horizontal” work but it seems to actually include foundations and a lot of other stuff that is integral to the stadium construction.

The Commanders will also pay no property tax (as DC owns the stadium and will lease it to them for $1 a year), no sales taxes on the parking, and sales taxes generated by the stadium and associated development will go straight back to the stadium in the form of a maintenance fund.

The city plans to pay for its investments through extending the Ballpark Levy that paid for Nationals Park. This is a tax that is applied on any company that earns more than $5 million in revenue. Not a great idea when the city needs to be attracting private business to the city to offset the loss of federal jobs.

I would say that Josh Harris rang rings around Muriel Bowser in this negotiation, but it’s not even clear that her interests are at all aligned with those of the city. If she seals this deal for the Commanders, I’m sure the NFL will have a very nice gig waiting for her in November 2028.[/quote]

Of course her interests are not aligned with the city. Why would they? She staked her career on getting the team to play in DC again. Kind of hard to get the best deal possible for your voters and taxpayers when all you care about is being able to tell low information voters you brought the team back to DC.

And local pols always get circles run around them in stadium deals. The team has highly paid and highly educated businesspeople while the District has a smart CFO but a low information mayor. But this is where the Council is supposed to come in and fight for the best deal possible because Muriel gave Harris everything he wanted and gave DC taxpayers a shit sandwich.[/quote]

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