At the Wilson Building Wednesday afternoon, about two dozen Commanders fans waited for hours for the final City Council vote to be cast. When it was, a cheer rose up in the council chamber.
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Outside the hearing room, many voiced their pleasure that the Commanders are coming home.
“Go Commanders! Let’s win the Super Bowl this year!” said D.C. resident Dottie Love Wade. She said she and her husband are lifelong Commanders fans. “Welcome home!”
The D.C. Council voted 11-2 on Wednesday to approve a deal valued at around $3.7 billion to build the team a new stadium on the old RFK Stadium site.
It’s been a long, often contentious process. Many groups opposed the project and still do. Several members of the D.C. chapter of the Sierra Club sat silently in the council chambers during the vote. Outside, chapter director David Whitehead spoke to WTOP.
“The Commanders have a really good opportunity today to really take the lead,” Whitehead said. The Sierra Club has opposed the project, saying the stadium would negatively impact the environment. But he says he looks forward to making the project better.
“This could be one of the greenest stadiums in the country,” he said.
The Commanders have made several concessions in the stadium’s construction, agreeing to use environmentally friendly materials and to preserve many “legacy” trees surrounding the site that are more than 60 years old.
Whitehead said it will be a long time before construction actually starts, and his group plans to use that time to help shape the stadium project in a way that will be environmentally better.
“We’ve got the zoning commission, and we’re going to have lots of different community meetings, and the development team will be talking with neighbors for the next couple years about what’s going to be happening there,” Whitehead said. “So we have a lot of points of intervention to try to improve this.”
Back at the Wilson Building, fans were elated.
“It’s a beautiful day. The city deserves it,” said Cookie Whiting. “It’s time to celebrate!”
In a statement, Mayor Muriel Bowser thanked the council and the Commanders organization for collaborating on the $3.7 billion project, the largest in the city’s history.
Congress passed a bill transferring the RFK Stadium land to the District that was signed by then-President Joe Biden in early January. That paved the way for making it possible to replace the old stadium with a mixed-use development, including the new venue for the Commanders.
“The redevelopment plan for the RFK Memorial Stadium Campus is a BIPARTISAN SUCCESS STORY, and I commend the D.C. Council for taking the final step today to turn this long-awaited vision into REALITY for our nation’s capital,” U.S. Rep. James Comer, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee, posted on social media.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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