As the public comment period for the RFK master plan comes to a close on August 14, GGWash staff share their thoughts. See our RFK collection for deeper dives.

The stadium is in the way

The RFK master plan says it wants to achieve a variety of goals: to improve access to the Anacostia River, to create a retail destination, and to connect surrounding neighborhoods to the river and the retail. A stadium literally gets in the way of all of them. You can’t draw people to the water if there’s a stadium blocking the view. You can’t create a cohesive retail district if shoppers have to walk around a stadium to get from one part to the other. And you can’t connect existing neighborhoods to those two things with a stadium in between.

It’s been said a million times already, but NFL stadiums are different from the other stadiums that have helped revitalize other parts of central DC. Walking out of Nats Park after a game with tens of thousands of other fans is absolutely electric, and during baseball season you can have that experience multiple times a week. It’s a boon for anyone lucky enough to live or run a business or work nearby.

The Commanders will play eight home games a year. Tailgating–sitting in a parking lot and grilling–is a big part of the culture in a way that just doesn’t happen with baseball or hockey or basketball or soccer. Mark my word: it’ll take one season of tailgating and people won’t want the parking lots intended as placeholders for future development to go away. It’s okay to admit that a football stadium can’t support a lively urban district, because if it could, another city would have figured it out by now. –DR

City-building is tangential to the current plan

City-building should be central to the RFK master plan, assuming all the reasons we were told to build it are true. They’re not, but our job now is to hold decisionmakers accountable to those promises we’ll be paying for for decades. It’s not TV and we can’t switch channels because this show has become predictable, trite and unsettling.

This plan is about accommodating a stadium. The District of Columbia’s future and our residents are seen as flexible tools to achieve that.

A lot left to the imagination on transit, walking, biking: Transformative transit was what we were told we’d be getting for this stadium. But as we all know, a new station at Oklahoma Avenue has been taken off the table by WMATA right out the gate, as has even a new entrance to the existing Stadium-Armory station.

We’re told the Gold Line, which has a lot of good selling points, is a reasonable transit substitute for more Metro capacity. But it shouldn’t be either-or if this is truly a development –which is expected to draw tens of thousands of attendees at peak times–that will protect us from the hordes of traffic we all know are coming to Capitol Hill, Hill East, and will surely impact the wider transportation network. Rather than using the project to create one of the region’s premier transit-oriented developments, the plan simply tries to accommodate the transportation demands created by the stadium itself. No big wins there for transit; the best case is status quo (and I struggle to think why we’d expect it to be best case).

The plan gives similar short shrift to walking to or from anywhere else. There seems to be good internal connectivity within the grounds. But GGWash would want it to feel like an extension of the existing communities east of the Anacostia, and in Kingman Park and Hill East, so that residents don’t experience it as a massive impenetrable barnacle on the edge of their neighborhoods (which stands between them and a waterfront), but rather a part of the District’s urban fabric all year long.

It’s the same story with biking. A new district built around tens of thousands of visitors should be designed to maximize arrival by bike, to lessen the burden on other, more resource-heavy modes. The plan acknowledges nearby trails and bike lanes, but anyone hoping we use this opportunity to create more high-capacity bike infrastructure (and given DC’s stated climate and mode shift goals, why wouldn’t we?) will be disappointed. It’s all about the stadium.

Too much land for non-residential use: We’ve repeatedly argued that the greatest opportunity cost of the stadium is housing production. Every acre devoted to stadium uses, “event plazas”, or parking is an acre that can’t become homes. The plan does talk about “housing districts”, but it’s hard to read this plan without seeing them as an afterthought; an area that can be sacrificed or postponed indefinitely.

Doing the minimum on affordable housing: While the plan complies with DC’s affordable housing requirements, it doesn’t go further in any meaningful way. The District owns the land; RFK is an opportunity to deliver a lot more affordable housing than would normally happen: for example, by calling for earlier delivery of affordable units, stronger commitments on levels of affordability and family housing, and guarantees that housing isn’t pushed off forever. Why not? I’m not going to offer an answer, because it would be inherently sardonic.

Mutton dressed as lamb (or, a stadium dressed as transit-oriented development): In several places the plan invokes TOD language, but the details suggest more a stadium with a mixed-use development attached. A real transit-oriented development would maximize density near Metro stations (ideally a new one!), prioritize daily residents over occasional visitors, create a more consistently interactive area for street activity, and use transit investment to reduce car dependence rather than accommodate traffic.

I think the biggest question that any stadium feature should be expected to respond to is: “Is this the highest and best use of scarce urban land?” –CR

Concepts of a plan for 100 acres

So much of the RFK redevelopment deal involved “concepts of a plan” to build needed housing, implement vital transportation improvements, mitigate the inevitable deluge of vehicular traffic, and limit the displacement of long-time residents in nearby neighborhoods. The stadium itself has a real plan and timeline.

The kind of infrastructure that serves as the anchor of vibrant, livable communities—like an infill Metro station—have been scrapped by WMATA. The housing and retail that Mayor Bowser and the DC Council promised as part of this deal may not be built until 2040. The Council approved about $856 million in new public bonds for this plan; eating into the District’s bonding capacity cap of 12% of General Fund revenues. In simple terms, this deal reduces the District’s ability to invest in things like new schools, housing, and transit projects at a time when we face shrinking budgets. The next mayor will have to grapple with this fiscal constraint as they consider how they will execute their agenda.

The housing, recreation centers, riverfront amenities, and transit connections included in the plan are all things that could be built without a stadium. And, as my colleagues have noted in this post, those things would probably work better without the stadium and its parking garages serving as physical barriers between future residents and their destinations. –KH

I’m worried about the Gold Line

Part of how the Stadium was sold to the public and decisionmakers was that it would be a “transit first” development—not just including the stadium and sportsplex but also including the thousands of new homes and commercial district slated to be built. If it was understood that the District would be putting thousands of new residents, businesses, and tourists into a brand new neighborhood, it was supposedly also understood that we would need really robust transportation options to serve that area. But what I’ve seen so far worries me.

First off, I remain unconvinced of WMATA’s insistence that a rail station would be impractical or impossible. While I can’t claim to be an engineer, the District and WMATA have successfully worked together on infill stations, most notably the NoMA station. That development catalyzed a whole new neighborhood that continues to be one of the most pedestrian and transit-friendly places in the city. Why wouldn’t decision makers want to rerun that playbook?

The plans for the “Gold Line” bus rapid transit corridor aren’t a substitute for rail. In fact, the Union Station-H Street Corridor just lost a rail system because it was hamstrung by poor streetscape and traffic management decisions. The DC Streetcar was too short to be effective. It didn’t have dedicated lanes. It didn’t have signal priority. It wasn’t center-running. It didn’t even truly connect to the one Metro station where it was close to–Union Station. All of those were genuine fixable problems that required political will to successfully ameliorate. Instead, they languished. While we do have a new mayor and Council set to begin work in January 2027, it will take serious political will to make sure that even the best bus rapid transit plan gets executed correctly and in a timely manner amidst real fiscal headwinds. And this isn’t a plan that inspires confidence in me.

To start, I’m puzzled why WMATA is claiming dominion over streetscape so aggressively. DDOT, for all its problems, has qualified expert staff that have worked on redesigning urban streets before. WMATA does not. While I’m glad that the District isn’t trying to create a breakaway transit system itself a la Circulator or Streetcar, WMATA can and should be working collaboratively with the District on this and not being reflexively defensive.

DMVMoves set out a number of bus priority corridors through which regional partners were supposed to be working in concert to create BRT or BRT-lite conditions so that we could see rapid headways for thousands of riders. One of those corridors, unsurprisingly, is crosstown DC and largely aligns with a segment of the Gold Line. If Metro is worried about different standards for supposedly MetroBus-ran BRT popping up throughout the region, the seemingly easy way to end-around those concerns is to set the standards clearly in writing and to allow the jurisdictions to deliver those streetscape projects. –MG

Remembrance of bad stadiums past

Putting RFK Jr. itself aside, let’s pour one out for Northwest Stadium (once known as FedEx Field, or Jack Kent Cooke Stadium if you’re an oldhead). The Landover area already has one massive crater where a large-scale project once lived. In 2030, it will have another. As if last year’s closure of Six Flags America in Bowie was not enough, Prince George’s County once again will be left holding the bag.

Don’t get me wrong: Northwest Stadium was doomed at least in part by its own significant flaws, many of which the new RFK may replicate. While there’s talk of turning the stadium grounds into a mixed-use entertainment district once it’s demolished, what happens next is anyone’s guess.

Beyond the myriad problems a new stadium poses for DC, the Commanders’ decision to relocate adds Northwest Stadium to a growing list of Prince George’s County economic development tragedies. Let’s not repeat this one as farce. Maybe everybody could use a timeout to read City Power. –MC

My biggest gripe with the whole RFK stadium deal is that, there was never even a chance or a question over what it could be. No open RFP for planners or developers to dream up alternatives. It was always and only the stadium. Our posts detail the problems with this deal. It’s a terrible deal. We could have, and should have had, so much more, if only Mayor Bowser and the DC Council decided to ask.

My second grievance is that, in spite of a stadium deal, I thought we could at least get that infill Metro station to support more people not driving into games and mitigating game day traffic. But we can’t pay for it. Can the billionaire owner of the Washington football team pay for it since we paid for his stadium? This fits under “key amenities to serve current and future resident needs” and should be part of the RFK master plan.

The goal should have been: “How do we solve our housing and transportation problems with this site?”, rather than “How do we shoehorn housing and transportation alongside this enormous stadium?” –TC

OK, fine, you’re building a stadium. Does it have to be so bad? It claims that it will be transit-first. It’s lying. Lying to us and itself. My main gripe is that it claims to be “transit-first”. If that were really the case, there would be more than just a mention of WMATA’s proposed plan for a multi-modal transit center. The plan is not enough to support what’s slated to come in for stadium events, and it’s not enough to build multi-modal connections to the rest of the city. Nothing about this plan says to me that people will be discouraged from driving here.

We can count on our neighborhood streets clogged with traffic, absolutely making walking, biking more difficult and you can certainly count on an increase in car crashes. –SL (Cap Hill resident, with a family who frequently bikes and walks to the RFK Fields and Maloof Skatepark.)

We told you so. –AB

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Rats are ubiquitous enough in D.C. that nearly everyone has a story (or many) of a close encounter, not to mention an opinion or two about what the city should do about the rodent problem.

As The 51st reporter Sam Delgado worked on a story about D.C.'s recent efforts (coup d’rat?), we asked our readers to share their stories… in all their sickening detail. Read these tales (lightly edited for length and clarity) at your own risk. At least finish your lunch first. 

“One night, I woke up at 5 a.m. feeling something crawling on my back. I caught a glimpse of a rat falling into my laundry hamper and then running into my closet. I tried to find where it went, but couldn’t, so I got back in bed and eventually fell back asleep. In the morning, I found a tiny hole in the corner of my closet, and I packed it with steel wool and covered it with several layers of duct tape (which is all still there). I asked my landlord to send an exterminator, who looked around, found no evidence of any points of entry, and basically just said, ‘Call us back if you see any more.’”
— Ben

“My partner and I were returning home and noticed that the 10-gallon bucket we usually keep overturned was upright. When I went to flip it back, I saw it was full to the brim with water from recent rainstorms and that there was a bloated dead rat floating in it…  the smell! We got a shovel to scoop out Lil Bloatie, but when the shovel touched the carcass, it broke apart into a million little pieces: tufts of fur, bits of skin, unidentifiable organs, an eyeball. Every time we tried to scoop out rat bits, they broke into smaller and smaller pieces, and now we had a 10-gallon bucket full of water and rat bits… in the middle of a D.C. heatwave.”
— Stephanie

“I ordered DoorDash, but didn’t realize it had arrived for 15 minutes. I eventually brought it up to my bedroom for a late-night meal and opened the bag. I pulled one container out and a rat immediately jumped out and into my face before scurrying around the room. I couldn’t find where it went so I set traps and closed the door. I left my house, went for a walk to plan my next course of action. When I came back, I realized it had chewed a hole through my window screen and thanked god it was gone. Jarring experience. Maybe the wildest part is that the food bag was still stapled shut when I picked it up.”
— Anonymous 

“We had a couple of rats get into the basement of our old house in Columbia Heights but couldn’t find any obvious entry points to close up. It turned out that they had chewed a tunnel through the concrete to get in.”
— Michelle

“A week earlier, my friend had made a comment that she couldn't believe I wear tennis shoes after our beach volleyball games. I explained that the D.C. streets can get pretty gross, but, despite my better judgment, the next week I wore sandals. On the way to the Metro station, a rat not only ran across my bare foot, but changed directions, fully doing a 360 on top of my foot. It left a decent scratch and I ended up in urgent care with a tetanus shot and antibiotics. Which I threw up that night."
— Emily

(One thing we learned: Rats are regularly running across our neighbor’s feet! This one was the most detailed.)

“I worked at a restaurant many years ago and a rat ran under the tables and up a guy’s pant leg. He got up, shook the rat out, and stomped it to death in the middle of dinner service. My manager said nothing. Just put a bucket over it and slid it away.”
– Chrissy

“When my partner and I were first dating, we were walking along a city street in the evening. As we got closer, we saw an enormous rat sitting on the rim of the trash can. We paused, waiting to see if it would be startled and leave before we had to get closer to pass by. It did not leave. In fact, it looked us dead in the eyes. We eventually started slowly trying to walk by the trashcan without getting too close, and all of a sudden, the rat JUMPED STRAIGHT AT US! No physical contact was made, but it was a classic D.C. bonding experience that strengthened our budding love.”
— Georgia

“Years ago, on an evening out on U Street, I heard rattling in an alley as I was passing by. I peered down the alley and tons of rats started cascading like water out of a trashcan.”
— Caity

“Walking home from the 18th Street bars in Adams Morgan with friends, the hour was late and the lights were dim. We heard a horrible popping sound from just ahead. That particular section of the sidewalk was extra dark. My friend had stepped on a dead rat, exploding its bloated corpse. Heinous. An insidious memory.”
— Monica

“Rats ate through my trash can, removed the remains of a blue crab dinner, and left the picked-clean shells neatly arranged, as if taunting us, outside the hole to their burrow in our little yard.”
— Steve

“Rats invaded the tree box in front of my house in Adams Morgan last winter. I played whack-a-mole with dirt and rocks, and enlisted DC Health for abatement and poison assistance. A few corpses appeared, but burrow holes kept opening. So I went full on Caddyshack and flooded out the space with full hose strength. Nothing for close to a minute. I was despondent. But then about 8-10 baby rats broke through the surface in new places. I was disgusted. Until the 4-5 fat adults fled. But I ultimately didn’t accomplish anything other than spraying rats toward my neighbors. The only thing that solved the problem was destroying the tree box.”
— John

“I went to check my engine’s oil this March because I had been hearing a clicking noise. Found a large, dead rat in my engine compartment partly under the radiator and part under the engine block. I also found several chicken and rib bones on my splash guard where it had been having a snack.”
— Kate

“In our recently renovated rental row home in Petworth, we ended up with a full rat infestation. American Pest kept coming out and setting traps but they didn't seem to be improving the situation. They finally sent their district manager, and when he came to check the work, three rats ran across his hand. (He screamed.) … They finally sealed the house with chain-mail netting and metal sheets. But not before the day I was doing my makeup and, out of the corner of my eye, saw the hangers in my closet start to swing. I turned around and there were three rats sitting on my clothes rail. After we sealed the closet and the rest of the house, you could hear the rats every night throwing themselves against the metal for months and months.”
— Amber

“First night in a house in Columbia Heights, ground floor. Left my window with a screen open. Awakened at 2 a.m. to teeth chewing a two-inch hole through it.”
— Audrey

After 10 years of renting and street parking, we bought a rowhouse with private parking in the back. Less than a year later, rats chewed up a bunch of wiring in our car’s engine bay. It required a $6,000 replacement of the entire engine wiring harness and took about six weeks. (Luckily insurance covered it.) Three months later, it happened again. And now I street park!”
— Ian

“I live in Quebec House. If you know you know...”
— Lily