Fans have sat in them to cheer on Super Bowl victories and D.C. United championships, witness a Tibetan Freedom Festival cancelled after a lightning strike injured 11 concertgoers, celebrate the return of major league baseball to the city, and take part in the World Cup.
And now some of RFK Stadium’s old seats can be yours.
As part of a “Farewell RFK Stadium” campaign leading up to the demolition of the aging (and currently unused) facility next year, Events D.C. has started selling off old stadium turnstiles and wooden and plastic orange seats from the stadium’s lower bowl.
A single seat starts at $300 and a pair goes for $500, while a turnstile goes for $600. Purchased seats and turnstiles will be available for in-person pickup between Dec. 16-18; a portion of the proceeds from the sales will go to The Boys and Girls Club of Greater Washington and St. Coletta of Greater Washington.
Burgundy plastic, gold plastic, and gold wooden seats from the stadium’s upper bowl will go on sale in early 2023.
“The Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium holds special memories for many of us in the community. We watched D.C.’s football team win division championships. We saw baseball return to the nation’s capital here. We also saw our favorite bands like the Grateful Dead and Traffic, among others,” said Events D.C. Board Chairman Max Brown in a statement. “This stadium is woven into the fabric of Washington, D.C.’s past and present.”
RFK was last used for large-scale events in late 2017, when longtime tenant D.C. United played its last game there before its move to Audi Field. Since then, city officials have floated ideas of what could come of the 190-acre campus, much of which is made up of parking lots that served the stadium. In 2019, Mayor Muriel Bowser announced what everyone knew was inevitable: the stadium would be demolished. The original target date of 2021 has slipped, though, and Events D.C. now says the $20 million project to deconstruct and raze the facility will be completed by the end of 2023.
What will become of the sprawling riverside campus, though, still remains up in the air.
Bowser has said she’d be open to seeing a new football stadium built on the site, though she has limited the use of public funds to prepare the land. A majority of the D.C. Council opposes any new stadium, with lawmakers saying they’d rather see the site devoted to housing, parks, and recreation. (Events D.C. has already converted some old parking lots into athletic fields and a playground; the city’s 2023 budget includes $60 million for the construction of an indoor athletic facility.) That opposition hasn’t changed for some lawmakers even after hints that Washington Commanders owner Dan Snyder may be considering selling the team.
“Finding a better billionaire to own the team won’t make building a massive & rarely used NFL stadium at RFK a good idea. Let’s focus on more housing, jobs, & parks instead,” tweeted D.C. Councilmember Charles Allen (D-Ward 6) on Wednesday.
The debate over the future of the campus may well be academic, though. D.C. officials have yet to come to any agreement on what should go there, thus holding up congressional action to give the city control over the site. The RFK campus is currently controlled by the federal government, and the lease with D.C. mandates that it be used for sports and entertainment through 2038.
In the meantime, Events D.C. says it will convene “a diverse group of key stakeholders from RFK Stadium’s lifespan and surrounding neighborhood that will guide the planning of public celebratory events through the end of 2023.”
Martin Austermuhle