How does Kansas City have a stadium done and we don’t? How is it that a smaller city, with less fans, and worse team (historically) has found value in building a stadium than DC? I just don’t understand the problem. The fans here are guaranteed to show up! These fans showed up in away games in Mexico. You know they’ll show up to a DC United stadium.

DC United’s losses can’t be something Will Chang didn’t know about when he bought out Victor MacFarlane only months ago. If the losses concerned him, he would have hired someone to look for partners right away.

The better interpretation, it seems to me, comes from DC United’s three mistakes in pursuing a stadium:

1 They wanted too big a project (stadium + neighborhood development around it)
2 They put all their eggs in one basket, location-wise (they even did it a second time when the first option fell through)
3 They didn’t cement an alliance with anyone that had local pull (even going back to Anschutz, who was an out of town businessman, who worked mostly with the Feds on getting the Poplar Point land transfered because he had deep connections with the Republican then-majority, and assumed the District stuff would get itself worked out if he got them essentially free land).

This represents Chang’s attempt to correct the third mistake.

As to the other two, Chang has said his requirements are simpler (a 12-13 acre plot to stick a stadium on), and DC has dallied with every location willing to take Kevin Payne’s phone calls, even as far away as Baltimore (knowing in all likelihood that a move to Baltimore means it becomes a different team, almost as much as if it moved to St. Louis).

There is no avoiding the idea that this could be a sign of real danger. However, there are also reasons to look at this as simply a reasonable move by a man who wants DC United to remain DC United. For example, as Chang himself says, he bought out MacFarlane and Blue Devil Holdings; if he had wanted group ownership for the sole purpose of sharing the losses, that wouldn’t have happened. MacFarlane wanted out the moment Poplar Point died, so his share probably needed to be split up, but Blue Devil Holdings would have been retained if Chang was simply looking for someone else to take some of the hits.

I agree with Sgc on the point that Chang needs to find local investors that have sway with the local governments. That means a real connection, not just support from Marion Barry after he looked at the plans. Despite the congestion, there are still multiple areas large enough to fit a 20K seater with parking that are near Metro and/or within the Beltway.

The other thing this bid to build needs is pretty simple: More money. We can’t ask any local jurisdiction for public funds for building. Hell, we couldn’t even ask DC to do the roadwork and sewer systems at Poplar Point – which will have to be done no matter what is eventually built there – without the Post’s Metro desk turning it into “United wants a massive public handout for their stadium” and then never correcting it (and the Post is one of the most soccer-friendly papers in the country). We can probably get a plot of land for free, and after that it seems like we’ll be very lucky to get anything else. Until the economy is recovering in all facets, and local and state budgets aren’t all requiring massive cuts, this project is strictly DIY.

Thx. Having lived in DC I was aware of the congestion problems, but the other insights give me some hope Chang is in this for the long haul. I always felt too that United were trying very hard to stay in DC proper, rather than move out in the suburbs, and this makes the job harder. I think it was Steve who made the point that Pizza Hut Park is nice, but out of the way, and I think DC is trying really hard to avoid that error.