Leaders around the D.C. region are celebrating a stopgap spending bill that would keep the government funded into March, but they’re doing it for reasons beyond averting a government shutdown.
Congress unveiled the multibillion dollar funding bill Tuesday night, and it addresses two items that are top priorities for officials in the area. The first is a provision that would transfer the land of the old RFK Stadium from the federal government to the District of Columbia. The second is full federal funding to rebuild Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge.
The stadium provision is a significant victory for the Washington Commanders and the NFL after controlling owner Josh Harris and Commissioner Roger Goodell lobbied lawmakers on Capitol Hill on the D.C. Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium Campus Revitalization Act earlier this month.
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser called it a “giant step forward” to unlocking the site’s potential.
“As a city, we have worked for years to get control of the RFK campus,” Bowser said in a statement Tuesday night. “We’re celebrating this moment, and we’re looking to the future of a field of possibilities on the banks of the Anacostia.”
One possibility is obviously a football stadium.
The Commanders are considering places in D.C., Maryland and Virginia to build a stadium in the coming years. The team’s lease at Northwest Stadium in Landover, Maryland, runs through 2027, and Harris called 2030 a “reasonable target” for a new one.
The team played at RFK Stadium two miles east of the Capitol from 1961-96 before moving to Maryland. Harris and several co-owners, including Mitch Rales and Mark Ein, grew up as Washington football fans during that era, which included the glory days of three Super Bowl championships from 1982-91.
While Bowser celebrated the RFK site provision’s inclusion in the spending bill, Maryland leaders celebrated funding for the rebuilding of the Key Bridge, which collapsed in March.
Reconstruction costs are estimated at around $2 billion and a total of about $100 billion in disaster funding is included in the stopgap spending bill.
“This has been our goal ever since that awful day the bridge collapsed. Now we need to get it passed before government funding expires this weekend,” Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen said in a post on social media Tuesday night.
The measure, which will keep the federal government funded through March 14, would prevent a partial government shutdown set to begin after midnight Friday.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
