The Washington Commanders and the District of Columbia are set to announce a deal to fund a new football stadium at the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial site in the coming days, three sources told NOTUS.
Mayor Muriel Bowser and Commanders controlling owner Josh Harris are expected to announce the deal in a joint press conference Monday, one of the sources said.
The announcement would cap months of talks between the team and the district and a decade-long effort from Bowser and other D.C. leaders to bring the team back to RFK.
The Commanders currently play in Landover, Maryland, and have not played at the now run-down RFK stadium since 1996.
Clark Construction, the same company working on the new Capital One Arena in D.C., is expected to be the construction firm in charge of development, one of the sources said.
The Commanders and Bowser’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Bowser declined to answer questions about the potential deal at a press event last Monday, but said she saw a fervor for “bringing our team home,” calling D.C. “the sports capital.”
While the D.C. government and Commanders ownership — led by Harris — may have a deal, the agreement would still need to be ratified by the D.C. Council and, potentially, voters.
The team would pay for the majority of the stadium redevelopment, an estimated $3.2 billion, D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson told The Washington Post earlier this month. D.C. taxpayers could be on the hook for more than $800 million toward the effort, according to Mendelson.
Before leaving office, President Joe Biden signed a bill transferring control of the 174-acre RFK site over to D.C., adding momentum to the district’s efforts to bring the Commanders back to the city.
Some district leaders were wary of the impending deal. Councilmember Charles Allen on Friday told WAMU 88.5 that “public investment on this is going to be more than a billion dollars already, and I don’t think that’s a good deal for D.C.”
The district itself is facing fiscal strain as DOGE makes cuts to the federal workforce and the House drags its feet on a Senate-passed funding bill that the mayor says would allow D.C. to spend around $1 billion in funds collected from district residents.
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Reese Gorman is a reporter at NOTUS. Mark Alfred is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.