Is Northern Virginia ready for some football?
In recent months, the Washington football franchise has experienced perhaps more change than ever in its history, including a new name, a new quarterback, and maybe even new ownership.
Not only that, but the newly christened Commanders could also soon have a new home.
Late last year, The Washington Post reported that the team was considering building a state-of-the-art domed stadium complex in Northern Virginia, specifically Loudoun or Prince William counties. The stadium could be joined by restaurants, retail, hotels, concert hall, convention center, and even luxury housing.
The idea was that the team would move after its lease runs out in 2027 at FedEx Field in Landover, Maryland, a stadium often criticized for being inaccessible, cavernous, and full of maintenance issues.
The proposal to bring the team to Virginia is one of the few issues that folks on both sides of the aisle can agree on. In the Virginia General Assembly, bills in both the Senate and House that would help finance the stadium passed with bipartisan support.
The prospect of the Commanders calling Virginia home was so appealing to some lawmakers, they were willing to perhaps give up as much as one billion dollars in state tax revenue upfront, and no limit long term. A new plan, though, caps the funding at $350 million.
Additionally, Governor Glenn Youngkin seemed to signal support for the team to come to the Commonwealth in his first address to the General Assembly.
While the possibility seems stronger with each passing day that the Commanders will be calling Virginia home later this decade, some local officials aren’t doing a touchdown dance quite yet.
“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t kind of wary,” Buddy Rizer, executive director of Loudoun County’s department of economic development, told Northern Virginia earlier this year. This was a sentiment echoed by Debbie Jones, president and CEO of Prince William’s Chamber of Commerce. “I’m excited about the opportunity,” she says. “But I need to learn more about the details.”
At this point, there remains far more questions than answers about the new stadium and whether it’s even coming to Virginia. Where exactly would it be? What would it look like? How would it be paid for?
If history is any guide, a venue of that nature could cost a good deal more than $1 billion. Relatively new stadiums in Las Vegas, Minnesota, and Dallas all cost somewhere between one and two billion dollars. Los Angeles’s football complex that opened in 2020 needed nearly $5 billion.
“Any new stadium in the NFL now has got to be the next biggest thing,” says Terry Clower, a professor of public policy at George Mason University’s Schar School who has been studying the impact of building sporting venues on a region’s economy for years.
“Dan Snyder is not going to let [Dallas Cowboys owner] Jerry Jones outdo him on anything. It’s going to cost 100 or 200 million north of a billion dollars, at least.”
As noted above, the public would likely pay at least a part of the price, with a majority of stadiums now being built via public-private partnerships. Meaning, Snyder would put up his own money with a promise that local residents will also pay a tax or a revenue bond to help finance the stadium’s construction. In Las Vegas’s case, taxpayers are contributing $750 million dollars to the cause.
Whatever the price tag, Loudoun or Prince William residents will have to weigh if it’s worth it. “It’s a substantial public investment,” Clower says. “You have to wonder what else could be done with that public money.”
Plus, an NFL team only gets, at most, a dozen home games a year. In order to even come close to earning those dollars back, there would need to be other supplemental events at the stadium, like college games or concerts.
Beyond that, there are also related concerns of huge numbers of people pouring into the community every weekend, causing traffic problems, parking snafus, and “rowdy crowds,” as Loudoun County District Supervisor Tony Buffington wrote in a note to county officials who were in talks with the team in December.
Plus, the team is still dealing with investigations that it fostered a toxic workplace culture. In fact, more allegations surfaced in February against Snyder for sexual misconduct.
And, on the field, the team hasn’t won much of anything recently.
But there are certainly positives to building a massive sports complex, and this isn’t the first time that Virginia lawmakers have encouraged the football team to move south. There’s the potential creation of jobs, providing a boon to the surrounding neighborhood, and creating pride in place.
“That could be incredibly important for companies trying to attract talent [to the region]… this could be used as another reason that this is a cool place to live,” Clower says.
These are the pluses that local officials are dreaming of when envisioning the stadium coming to their county.
Rizer noted the project’s “lifestyle center” with other amenities, like restaurants, housing, and retail, integrated into the stadium complex, is an important component of the project. “We would not be interested in a stadium that was standalone … with acres and acres of parking around it,” he says.
Jones and chief operations officer Ross Snare both admitted that it’s hard to not get excited about the football team coming, despite the unknowns.
“Part of our job is to encourage strong economic growth within our region [and] a project like this could potentially do that,” Snare says. “It could be truly transformational.”
Adding in the nearly $4 billion investment in the Virginia rail system and the opening of the Silver Line Phase 2, a football team would further cement both suburban counties’ ties to the nation’s capital.
For the moment, though, Rizer, Jones, and Snare are waiting like everyone else for the Commanders to make a decision on where they want to make their new home and what that home could look like.
A quarter-century ago, the team made a similar move from RFK Stadium to FedEx Field in suburban Maryland. Even the biggest supporters at the time, like former Maryland governor Parris Glendening, admitted later the decision didn’t turn out as expected.
Development has stalled around that stadium, traffic is a nightmare, and Prince George County officials are bemoaning spending even more money to appease the team.
When asked if it’s fair to say that FedEx Field might be a cautionary tale for what could be coming to Loudoun or Prince William counties, Clower took a beat to answer.
“It could be.”
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