The National Capital Planning Commission voted unanimously Thursday to approve preliminary site and building plans for the new Washington Commanders stadium at the former RFK Stadium site in D.C.
But members raised questions and concerns about the redevelopment project’s two planned parking garages.
“The stadium looks beautiful right now, but as I’ve said previously at NCPC meetings, I have rarely have ever seen a beautiful parking facility,” NCPC Chair William Scharf said. “So I think understanding how that affects the overall project plan and what the stadium will actually look like to people once it’s complete, I think, it’s really important.”
The overall project includes as many as 8,000 parking spaces, with 75% of them in the garages and 25% in surface lots as of the stadium’s opening day.
At 11 stories high, the two garages could be nearly two-thirds as tall as the stadium itself. A map of the site shown at the Thursday meeting indicated the structures could also be as large or larger than the nearby D.C. Armory.
In renderings presented at the meeting, the garages are pictured in a few of the images, but are not the focus. In one image, the garage is transparent to better show off the stadium’s east side. In another stadium view, a garage fades into the background.
Commission staff member Laura Shipman said the parking garages will be developed independently from the stadium and will be separately submitted for commission approval.
One commissioner questioned the garages’ omission from the preliminary stadium site plan, but still voted to approve it.
“Help me understand why we’re not seeing the development of those (garages) with the stadium package,” said Tammy Stidham, an NCPC commissioner and National Park Service lands and planning director. “They don’t have independent utility. They would not be there if you were not building a stadium.”
NCPC staff also recommended that “alternative orientations” and lower garage heights be considered to reduce visual impacts of views to the stadium, from Kingman Park and from other adjacent neighborhoods.
“I appreciate the sincere interest each one of you all have shown in this garage problem, because it is truly a problem and it throws off the scale,” said Kingman Park resident Frazer Walton.
Walton spoke on behalf of the Friends of Kingman Park Civic Association, which he said supports the stadium redevelopment project, but opposes the construction of a parking garage next to the neighborhood for health and traffic reasons.
“The alternative would be that you not build these massive parking garages, multilevel garages, and that we focus on increasing the size of the Stadium-Armory Metro site,” Walton said. “We also suggest that we build a new subway stop at Oklahoma and Benning Road within the next five to seven years.”
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