Fenty Speaks out on Poplar Point!
DC Mayor Adrian Fenty today explained why he is opening up Poplar Point to competitive bids and not turning over the 70 acre site along the Anacostia river to Victor McFarlane, the new owner of the DC United Soccer franchise who wants to build a new stadium on the location.
Last week Ward Eight Councilman and former four term Mayor Marion Barry held a press conference to blast the Mayor for what Barry says was Fenty's reneging on his word to allow the MacFarlane project to go forward. The DC United owner wants to build a stadium with private funds in exchange for development rights and the District kicking in with infrastructure costs.
Fenty, in an interview with this reporter says the entire development community should be allowed to weigh in with ideas on what should happen at Poplar Point...and he's sure a number of proposals will include a new soccer stadium.
Click here to watch Fenty Interview on Poplar Point.
posted by Bruce Johnson @ 1:14 PM
8 comments
links to this post
8 Comments:
There goes the Mayor, selling the city residents down the river, lterally, why not sell the Point to a developer who will keep it just like it is...on another page, the city and the Mayor is complaining about traffic woes, pollution lack of bike trails and here is another rush to commercially develop one of the last large land tracts in D.C.
Al Brown
Wow, he's got a group in place, who are paying for the development themselves, who want subsidies (that won't happen unless they build, this is not tax money), who are committed to actually improving the life of those who live in ward 8 now (instead of shoving them out) and he wants 'other offers'. Dance with the girl you brought Adrian! don't cheap out on this. the longer you wait the less likely it is to happen in any form. Time to prove you care about ward 8.
I forgot to ad, Al, if you looked at the poplar point plans, you would see
1. bike trails
2. public parks
3. public art and gardens
4. metro lines and promotion of car alternatives.
this is good for anacostia.
There had already been a call for plans and proposals, THE DC plan was one, the AWC plan (cobbled from other developers and the AWC) - these were used to justify the land-swap to the Federal gov't.
Without DC United's help with that, the land would still belong to the US government and Fenty wouldn't even get the chance to give this land away to his developer buddies instead of letting Mr MacFarlane help the community out while building a destination-type facility.
It won't be worth alot to other developers to build a state-of-the-art stadium, so it will just be some basic cookie-cutter that no one will make a special trip for, and everyone loses.
My guess/hope: the other bids either never even come in, or are so bad Fenty has to accept the bid on the table. I can't see how the city would get a better deal - scratch that, I can't see how Ward 8 could get a better deal - than the one MacFarlane submitted.
Bruce - keep the focus on this. We need Fenty to be accountable and we need the soccer project in at Poplar point!
So Fenty thinks someone is going to pitch a stadium plan better than the one coming from the owner of the team? Sure seems fishy to me.
Thanks for the update.
Please keep bringing us updates on this VERY important situation.
As A DC United fan, I applaud what you are doing to get the information out to the public at large.
Thanks for all the info on this story...please keep up the great work!!!
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home