Jack Kent Cooke was running out of time. He wasn’t well and he wanted to build a new stadium for his beloved football team. The District didn’t work and the deal at Potomac Yards fell apart. In desperation, he settled on apiece of land in Prince George’s County. Unfortunately, he died before the stadium was finished, leaving the region with a stadium built in a hurry, on the cheap, in a location that nobody liked.
I was on the D.C Council when the team left the city in 1997 and have worked with mayors Tony Williams, Adrian Fenty, Vince Gray and Muriel Bowser and with Dan Snyder, Brig Owens, Bruce Allen and others to bring the team back to the RFK site.
The starting point of all discussions was that the owner would pay for the stadium and the city would pay for the infrastructure, a common formula nationwide. (Remember, Abe Pollin paid for the MCI Center, and the city paid for the baseball stadium.)
Unfortunately, we were never able to make a deal. With Josh Harris and Mitchel Rales buying…
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