D.C. and The Washington Commanders struck a $3.7B deal to build a domed arena at the RFK Stadium site, in a project that will reshape the area with retail, housing and park spaces. Public financing is expected, with plans to begin construction in 2026 and open for the 2030 NFL season. Approval from D.C. council is still pending.
Government of D.C. render
A rendering of the proposed stadium.
The District of Columbia and the Washington Commanders of the National Football League reached a $3.7 billion deal in late April 2025 to transform the dilapidated RFK Stadium site on the banks of the Anacostia River into a new home for the NFL team.
The new stadium will be surrounded by retail, housing and park space — a generational development project likely to shape the legacies of Mayor Muriel E. Bowser and Commanders owner Josh Harris.
Sprawling across 177 waterfront acres, the massive development anchored by a covered 65,000-seat stadium would be funded primarily by the Commanders, who would put up $2.7 billion, according to the terms.
The Washington Post reported that the total cost to D.C. taxpayers is expected to top $1 billion, including stadium infrastructure, parking facilities, recreation improvements and other water and electric infrastructure.
Any cost overruns will be covered by the NFL team, Harris said.
The D.C. council still must approve the deal, and Bowser is expected to include the public financing components in the 2026 capital budget submission in the coming weeks.
The team and city are hoping to move quickly, said the Post. They propose to begin construction in 2026 and have the new stadium open for the 2030 season, a plan that would require the council to approve the terms of the deal by July 2025, and lawmakers could propose changes.
At a joint news conference April 28, an elated Bowser took the stage alongside Harris and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell.
"This is a big deal. I've been working on this for the 10 years since I've been mayor, and now we have the right partner at the right time," she said. "We were joined in our goals to advance a deal that we could be proud of: a development that would serve the city for generations to come and support the best professional sports franchise in the world."
The deal is a significant victory for Bowser, who has staked part of her legacy on major transformations of D.C. sports arenas, from Capital One Arena to RFK. The stadium would also be legacy-defining for Harris, who grew up in Chevy Chase, Md. before going to Wall Street and becoming a billionaire with the means to return his downtrodden favorite team to what he called its "spiritual home," according to the Post.
"This project is about so much more than building a stadium," Harris said. "It's about a once-in-a-generation opportunity … for long-term transformational economic growth here in D.C."
The Commanders have no immediate plans to relocate their corporate headquarters in College Park, Md., or its training facility in Ashburn, Va. It's also unclear whether the new stadium would be named after Northwest Federal Credit Union, as the current stadium is, or whether the team would find a new partner.
The decision to put a roof on the stadium was not easy, Harris said, because he liked that RFK was outdoors. But he saw it as necessary to attract major events. Goodell noted that the new stadium "dramatically" increases the city's chances of hosting a Super Bowl.
New Stadium Development Has Several Components
Bowser administration officials pitched the project as the development of an entirely new neighborhood, replacing cracked asphalt and unused grassy expanses with lively retail, restaurants and recreation opportunities surrounding the stadium, in addition to thousands of residents living in new housing developments.
The vision includes several large districts, including the stadium, a plaza district for entertainment and festivals, a riverfront district for housing, retail and restaurants; a new Kingman Park residential district and an expanded recreation district where the District plans to build an $89 million SportsPlex next to the Fields at RFK.
City officials expect to create 5,000 to 6,000 housing units — 30 percent of which they pledge would be affordable for people living below 30 to 60 percent of the area median income. But officials could not offer details about how they will finance the affordable housing, which may require additional investment.
Under the terms of the development deal, the District would put up $500 million toward the stadium development over four years. Officials said the city would finance that portion of the deal by extending the Ballpark Fee, a tax on businesses earning more than $5 million. The fee was expected to expire in 2026, after the city paid off the construction bonds for Nationals Park, home to Washington's Major League Baseball team.
Instead, the city plans to rebrand the fee as the "Sports Facilities Fee" and ask businesses to keep paying, a move that could cause consternation in the business community given that they were expecting the fee to end. The D.C. Chamber of Commerce, for one, announced its support of the Commanders deal.
In addition to the half-billion dollars in stadium development costs, taxpayers would pay $202 million for roadways, utilities infrastructure and a transit capacity study on whether transit improvements, such as a new Metro station or entrance, would be needed.
EventsDC, Washington's convention and sports authority, would put up $181 million for a parking facility, while D.C. would purchase other parking facilities from the Commanders in 2032 for $175 million, a future cost that is not part of the current financial plan. The city plans to use revenue generated from the stadium to pay for the garage.
However, the parking situation will make pregame tailgating more difficult, the Post noted. The team's current home, Northwest Stadium in Landover, Md., has approximately 22,000 parking spaces, while the new stadium will have approximately 8,000, which would all eventually be in a garage.
A Commanders official, who spoke to the newspaper on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly ahead of the announcement, said fans could hang out in the mixed-use areas the team will develop nearby.
The NFL team can finance part of its share of the costs through the league's stadium loan program; currently, it is eligible for a loan of as much as $300 million, subject to the approval of team owners.
Deal Needs to Clear D.C. Council
The development opportunity was a product of bipartisan action in Congress last year that gave the city control of the federal property at RFK, and the deal likewise drew bipartisan support when it was announced.
But only four D.C. Council members attended the recent news conference — perhaps indicative of the political battle ahead as Bowser and Harris lobby lawmakers to support the deal.
Backers will need seven votes on the 13-member council; Chair Phil Mendelson, who is opposed to public financing of the stadium, told the Post that some lawmakers he has spoken to were expecting the costs to taxpayers to be "much, much smaller."
Council member Charles Allen put it simply: "It's not a deal I can support," he said in an interview, decrying the high price tag for taxpayers and saying the city can offer retail, recreation, housing and jobs without a stadium.
On the other hand, Council Member Kenyan R. McDuffie, who chairs the economic development and business committee, called it a "tremendous opportunity" to grow the city's economy at a time of financial strain. His colleague, Wendell Felder, whose neighbors surround the dilapidated RFK Stadium, had been vague about his position on publicly financing a stadium last year, but after seeing the deal, he said his support was "unequivocal."
Bowser acknowledged some of the divides in speaking with the Post, including the optics of investing hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer funds in the development while the city is in a financial pinch.
D.C. is facing a $1 billion shortfall in its operating budget over the next several years due largely to federal workforce reductions, expected cuts in the 2026 budget and hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts to the 2025 budget unless Congress fixes a significant funding restraint.
But Bowser stressed that the investment in the RFK development, which would be through the capital budget, is separate from the strains on the operating budget that are forcing potential furloughs and facility closures.
"If you need to add revenue, as we do, you can't leave 180 acres vacant," she said. "If you need to add jobs, as we do, you cannot wait for an anchor to show up to start developing there. When you need to attract business, you have to be about business."
Today's top stories
