Ward 8 D.C. Council Member Marion Barry last week excoriated Mayor Adrian Fenty for his handling of the redevelopment of Poplar Point and his apparent resistance to building a $150 million soccer stadium on the valuable 110-acre swath just east of the Anacostia River.
In a letter to Fenty delivered Friday, Barry said he felt “betrayed” that the mayor’s Request for Expressions of Interest, or RFEI, to possible Poplar Point developers made no mention of a soccer-only stadium, a potential component of the redevelopment that Barry strongly supports. Barry claimed his constituents also back the proposal submitted by developer Victor MacFarlane, owner of D.C. United.
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“Mr. Mayor, I have never seen the Ward 8 community so unified behind a project as Poplar Point,” Barry wrote. “There are persons who supported the project who rarely agree on hardly anything.”
If Fenty does not withdraw his RFEI within 30 days, and rewrite it with the community’s input, Barry wrote, “many of us in the community will not cooperate with or support any development,” and “We will stop it by any means necessary.”
The Fenty administration claims Poplar Point, which will soon transfer from federal to D.C. control, could accommodate more than 3.5 million square feet of housing, retail, commercial and cultural development. It is a critical piece of the $10 billion Anacostia Waterfront Initiative.
Fenty has never committed to, nor precluded, a soccer stadium at the site. The RFEI, issued in early August, also does not disqualify a new home for D.C. United at Poplar Point.
