HOUSE PANEL ASSAILS COOKE STADIUM DEAL (2024)

Cooke said this week that neither he nor his representatives would attend the hearing because too many details remain unresolved between him and the city concerning a final lease. He also is frustrated that city officials have not effectively lobbied on the Hill to win support for the proposed $206-million stadium. Cooke's hopes of having the stadium ready for the 1995 season have been dashed by delays in an environmental impact study and other governmental hurdles.

"What you have here is robber barons in football uniforms," subcommittee Chairman Bruce F. Vento (D-Minn.) said in criticizing the stadium deal, which he repeatedly noted, gives Cooke virtually all money from parking at the site. The city now gets the parking revenue. "Jack Kent Cooke's absence does not help his advocacy."

Legislators also blasted Cooke for wanting only to pay for a new 78,600-seat stadium instead of helping to finance the renovation of the Redskins' current home, 56,880-seat Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium. The new stadium would stand beside RFK in the Kingman Park section of Northeast Washington.

"In other words, the {team} owner has put a gun to the District's head and said, 'If you want to build a new stadium, I'll pay for it, but if you want to reconfigure the old one, I won't,' " Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii) told the packed hearing.

"Would he {Cooke} own the stadium?" Abercrombie asked Robert Stanton, national capital region director for the National Park Service, which supports the project.

"Yes," Stanton replied.

"Oh, Jesus," Abercrombie said.

Although Cooke is paying to build the stadium and is guaranteeing the infrastructure bonds, lawmakers complained that there is no direct return to the federal government for use of the land, which is leased to the city and would be subleased to Cooke for $1 a year.

In a move that caught the hearing off guard, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) grilled City Administrator Robert L. Mallett as to why more consideration was not given to renovating RFK in lieu of building a new structure.

When Mallett responded that the decision to build a new stadium was the result of negotiations between Cooke and the District and that renovating RFK to meet the same needs was not practical, Norton responded, "That {renovation} is a completely unviable option is hard for me to accept. That was not a credible response."

Although she supports keeping the Redskins in the District, Norton's concerns about a second stadium next to RFK raises further doubts about the project's prospects in Congress, which must approve the new complex because it would sit on federal land.

Norton introduced stadium legislation in the House last summer at the request of D.C. Mayor Sharon Pratt Kelly but has remained distant from the issue since.

Witnesses against the project included environmentalists and community activists. Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell (D-Colo.) also testified in favor of changing the Redskins' name, which American Indian groups and others have decried as racially derogatory.

"To understand our feelings, you need only to ask any Hispanic American how he would like a team, particularly one in their U.S. Capital, to build on land owned by them as American taxpayers to be called the Washington Spics," Campbell told the hearing. He has introduced legislation to prohibit the building of the stadium at the current proposed site unless the name is changed.

Cooke, who has refused to change the name, declined to comment on the hearing yesterday.

District officials, along with the Park Service and its environmental consultants, tried to hold the line during yesterday's proceeding, touting what they said were the project's economic benefits and challenging arguments that the stadium would be an environmental risk.

The project would provide 1,500 full-time construction jobs at a time of high unemployment in the District, Mallett said. And the stadium actually would improve the water quality of the polluted Anacostia River, he said, because toxic runoff from parking lots would be treated before entering the waterway.

With Cooke paying $160 million to build the stadium and eventually repaying the District the $46 million it would raise through bonds to cover infrastructure improvements, Mallett said the deal "is more favorable to the District than similar agreements in other cities."

Stanton and environmental consultants explained that renovating RFK, which could cost as much as $110 million, is not feasible because it would violate limitations on building heights in the District and could not accommodate enough skyboxes. They also said RFK is configured for baseball, which makes watching football games difficult in many sections of the stadium.

D.C. Armory Board officials said they were confident that RFK would remain competitive with a new stadium by hosting Olympic and World Cup soccer games and various concerts.

But Vento was pessimistic about city hopes of attracting Major League Baseball to RFK. "I don't think a baseball franchise would come to Washington if they don't have the incentives of parking" revenue, he said.

He also said stadium supporters must better explain how the cumulative effects of the stadium, the proposed National Children's Island theme park nearby and a federally funded freeway project would affect neighborhoods.

District officials later played down the significance of the hearing, noting that only four of 25 sub committee members were present. But that was not unusual given that it was a nonvoting hearing held on a Friday, congressional aides said. Moreover, they said, yesterday's criticisms are likely to set the tone as the project moves through Congress.