DC Mayor-elect Muriel Bowser yesterday said that she "would move to 'de-link' the sale of a valuable city property from a broader deal to build a stadium" for DC United, a move that "could ease political concerns but create new complications" for the $300M proposal, according to O'Connell & DeBonis of the WASHINGTON POST. Bowser: "I support building a soccer stadium in the District of Columbia, and, more than that, I support spending public dollars to get it done." But she added that she "was trained on finding a 'deal that’s fair' that reduces the city’s risk and protects taxpayers." Bowser "made clear that she would nix the transaction at the deal’s core, which would sell the Frank D. Reeves Center, a hulking 30-year-old city office building, to the Akridge real estate firm in return for cash and land on the proposed stadium site," at Buzzard Point in Southwest DC. Bowser, who takes office Jan. 2, said that she "wants the deal to be through the council before year’s end." Bowser’s council committee "has tentatively scheduled a markup of the soccer legislation for Friday, although that meeting could be delayed until next week." Bowser said that she "will work with Mark H. Tuohey, a lawyer who helped arrange the deal that came together nearly a decade ago to build" Nationals Park, to "reassemble the DC United deal without the Reeves swap." The team "has pledged to build the actual stadium, for a little more than half the project’s total cost" (WASHINGTON POST, 11/19).
SHELTER IN PLACE: Boston Mayor Martin Walsh's Press Secretary, Kate Norton, yesterday said that a plan to build a Revolution stadium on city property on Frontage Road "would not deter Boston from building a temporary homeless shelter on the site." Norton said that the projects "would not conflict with each other," and added that the shelter "could be constructed over the next several months; the soccer stadium, meanwhile, hasn’t even been formally proposed and would not be built for several years" (BOSTON GLOBE, 11/19).
