On Sundays, DCist publishes opinion pieces about life in D.C. The views expressed below are solely those of the author.

On Friday night, MLB and District officials announced they had reached an agreement on the lease for the new stadium, leaving a City Council vote on December 20 as the last obstacle between the design and the construction of a new home for the Washington Nationals. Come that long-awaited day, it will have been a full year since the cliffhanger of a vote last December that gave tacit approval to the agreement bringing baseball back to the District.

In those 365 days, there has been plenty of debate and disagreement over the merits of building a new stadium for the Nats, and more importantly, using public funds to do so. I’ve often sided with the anti-stadium crowd, though have remained sympathetic to using a new stadium as a means to spur development in an otherwise bleak and industrial part of town. Yesterday, I headed down to the area from which the stadium would rise, hoping for a bit of insight as to what the new stadium might mean for the District.