Courtesy D.C. United.
Just before Memorial Day weekend, Mayor Vince Gray sent a plan to the D.C. Council to bring a D.C. United soccer stadium to Buzzard Point.
That bill, entitled The District of Columbia Soccer Stadium Development Act of 2014, currently sits in the Council’s hand, but before it moves forward, it’ll undergo a public comment and suggestion period, where D.C. residents can express concern, questions, or comments about the proposed bill. The deal includes major land-swapping between the City and development firm Akridge, in which the city will trade the Reeves Center for a majority of the land the stadium will be built on. The city will also swap land with Pepco, who will acquire parcels at 1st and K streets NW for a new substation. The cost of the whole project is expected to be about $300 million, with the city taking half for land acquisition and infrastructure, and the team taking the other half to build the 20,000-25,000-seat stadium.
Currently, the entire legislation, with new amendments added, is available to view online and you can chime in with comments/questions/concerns here. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson has referred the bill to the Committee of the Whole. On top of that, the legislation will need to go through three separate panels “related to the soccer legislation,” the Post reports: The Committee on Economic Development, the Committee on Finance and Revenue, and the Committee on Government Operations.
There’s a Committee of the Whole hearing for the bill scheduled on June 26, but as Mendelson told the Post, he “[expects] there will be multiple hearings.”