So let’s get this straight. It’s become an annual ritual for Major League Soccer commissioner Don Garber to offer his frustrations over D.C. United’s inability to secure a stadium of its own. I can’t remember the last time he didn’t. So when he did so again on Thursday? Ho hum.
“I remain very concerned and I am continually frustrated,” Garber said during his state-of-the-league remarks on a conference call with reporters. “This team has been an important asset for the community, has delivered on everything a pro sports team should be focused on. They’ve been successful, for the most part, on the field. They’ve been engaged in the community. They’ve been operating with minimal resources and yet have had a major league presence in the community. And by the way, they’ve lifted a couple trophies, more so than perhaps some other teams over the last 10 or 15 years.”
Okay, so the next part takes it to a new level, but as you’ll see below, Garber didn’t keep it there.
“We have to aggressively figure a solution out, and that solution needs to be figured out soon,” Garber said. “I am concerned about where this team will be in 2012. They’ve been operating without a new lease. They’ve been in discussions on a lease to try to improve their terms. I’m shocked to say they could be paying more for their lease in RFK than any other team we have in the league. There is no doubt in my mind that it’s a stadium that is substandard to what soccer fans are able to experience in many other markets.
“We need a solution, and I’ve been pushing [D.C. United president] Kevin [Payne] and [D.C. United owner] Will Chang to try to find that solution. If that means, if they can’t get a new and improved lease in D.C., and they’ve got to move to another facility in the region, I will be supportive of that, and in fact, will help them do that. If it means they can’t find a solution in Baltimore, then we’ll have to go through a process as we did with San Jose [which relocated to Houston in 2006] to think about potentially moving the team.”
If we take Garber at his word, it’s all on the table now, not just relocation to Maryland, but actual pulling stakes and dropping the franchise into another part of the country altogether. Where will that be? I was unable to get a question in about whether or not the investor groups that are trying to land MLS’ 20th team might be willing to buy one of its charter members.
But I did ask Garber, in light of the current economic environment, whether the onus was actually on D.C. United to add investors to give it the financial clout to build a stadium of its own without relying on a government entity.
“Short of having somebody say, ‘You privately finance a stadium on your own with no support, no tax advantages, no land, no public participation at all,’ we have not been either offered an opportunity to participate with the public on a mechanism that would both make financial sense and also work for the community and for what we are trying to achieve from a business perspective, there are very few 100 percent privately financed facilities,” Garber said. “That’s not something that would make sense for us in D.C., and that’s not at all because the owner isn’t capable of doing it. Our challenge is, we have started and stopped a half a dozen times over the last number of years, and at this point, it’s very clear to me there is some traffic jam taking place in your city that probably rivals some of the other traffic jams that take place in your city. It’s been frustrating to get a green light on any road whatsoever that will lead us down a path to have a stadium.”
Of course, D.C. mayor Vincent C. Gray tweeted exactly that last week: “We value DC United & hope they stay in DC. But District is in a challenging fiscal environment now & publicly funded stadium not possible.”
And if that’s the case, I asked Garber one more question, why doesn’t D.C. United just say it’s leaving Washington and move forward in that direction?
To me, the answer is because right now, there is nowhere to go. Buzzard Point or Baltimore? If there’s an investor group that D.C. United has stashed, or if Chang can actually fund the deal himself, the sooner either plan can be unveiled, the better. But getting government buy-in and assistance is the place where the team has repeatedly fallen short. College Park? There’s no alcohol sales beyond the suites at Byrd Stadium, and revenue streams are the reason the team wants out of RFK. The team has been twisting in the wind for years, and yet it seems resigned to keep doing so for the foreseeable future.
Garber had a chance to say D.C. United was as good as gone. He didn’t. And he’s frustrated. Same as last year.
“I don’t know where Kevin Payne is in his most recent conversations with the mayor,” Garber said. “All I know is that part one of this project is not asking the mayor to give us money to build a stadium in D.C.; the first part is to try to renew a lease in RFK that makes economic sense for a soccer team that is delivering great value and employing lots and lots of people and has been a good member of the community.”
