(Populous/DC United)

(Populous/DC United)

After years of negotiations and plenty of public hand-wringing, D.C. United finally had a plan to build its long wished-for stadium. Although the details weren’t quite finalized—there is still that pesky matter of acquiring much of the land from developer Akridge—the team, the mayor, and the D.C. Council were in agreement that there would one day be a soccer stadium at Buzzard Point in Southwest.

“You could sense that the city and current Mayor were committed to this. There have been a lot of hills and valleys, though, in the last 29 months, and there were moments where we weren’t as optimistic as we’d like to be, but you stick with it,” D.C. United managing partner Jason Levien said after the Council passed the District of Columbia Soccer Stadium Development Act of 2014. “It’s a testament to the work that we did that we got a unanimous vote on this.”

But now it seems it is the team’s commitment to the site that is wavering. The Post’s Jonathan O’Connell reports that D.C. United is flirting with a move after a concerted effort from state and county officials to lure them to Loudoun County or Woodbridge. He writes:

In the past three weeks, team officials have toured sites in Loudoun County, lunched with a Loudoun supervisor in New York and hosted a meeting with Virginia economic development officials at the team’s offices at RFK Stadium.
Officials with the commonwealth and Loudoun County believe they can deliver a stadium more quickly and less expensively than the District, which late last year approved a package for a stadium in Southwest of up to $150 million in land and infrastructure plus an additional $43 million in forgone tax revenue.”

According to O’Connell, there is another advantage besides the lower cost (a report ordered by the city estimated the Buzzard Point stadium would run more than $280 million): only a quarter of D.C. United fans actually live in the District, while almost half of them reside in Northern Virginia.

But that hadn’t stopped D.C. United from pursuing a home in D.C. (or Maryland for that matter) for years. After the D.C. Council approved the construction, head coach Ben Olsen didn’t restrain his excitement about the location in an interview with mlssoccer.com.

“Going to Maryland or going to Virginia would have been crushing for this club,” Olsen said. “We can sugarcoat it all we want, but this city needs soccer. It’s as global as you get. It’s our nation’s capital, and soccer needs to be represented in the District of Columbia.”

Woodbridge United doesn’t quite have the same ring to it. But at least we’d get new renderings?

Filed Under: buzzard point, d.c. united, DCU, soccer stadium,