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The brand new house owners of the Washington Commanders face a prolonged to-do listing to enhance the franchise, and creating a brand new stadium is amongst their high priorities. However with restricted time earlier than the beginning of the season and restricted entry to group executives all through the sale course of, the group, led by personal fairness and sports activities investor Josh Harris, has but to earnestly start an intensive seek for a stadium location — and should begin the method anew.

“We’re conscious [FedEx Field is] an older stadium, and … if somebody’s coming to your home, you need it to be a lovely place and all that,” Harris mentioned in an interview with The Washington Submit this week. “We’re going to get to work. … There’s a lot of opinions, a lot of factions, a lot of politics, and we’re going to principally attempt to dig in and give attention to how we offer the perfect fan expertise. However we don’t actually have solutions coming in proper now.”

NFL house owners ratified Daniel Snyder’s $6.05 billion sale of the Commanders to Harris’s group Thursday, concluding an up-and-down course of that started greater than eight months in the past. The deal might shut as quickly as Friday, leaving little time for Harris to make vital adjustments earlier than coaching camp opens Wednesday.

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“It’s a bit of little bit of a loopy course of, however we have now a complete group,” Harris mentioned. “We’re going to attempt to do what we are able to by opening day. I don’t know the way a lot that’s going to be.”

Harris’s group might focus totally on assessing the group’s operations to start out and making smaller enhancements to fan expertise. The plan for after 2023 is much less sure.

The seek for a brand new stadium is amongst new possession’s long-term priorities, however the course of is fraught with problems and can span D.C., Virginia and Maryland.

“We do not know the place we’re going to construct the stadium,” mentioned Mitchell Rales, the co-founder of Danaher Corp. and a high investor in Harris’s group.

Harris and Rales, together with restricted associate Mark Ein, a D.C. philanthropist and enterprise capitalist, grew up within the space as followers of its NFL group, and commonly attended video games at RFK Stadium and in Landover, Md.

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“My dad dropped my three brothers and myself off at Friendship Heights bus station in Chevy Chase, and I began going to each sport after I was 10 or 11 years previous and by no means missed,” Rales mentioned. “I grew up with Sonny Jurgensen as my hero.”

Added Harris: “I bear in mind actually going up and gazing up at Jack Kent Cooke [Stadium, now FedEx Field] and being like, ‘That is unbelievable.’ So, yeah, I used to be a legit actual fan and lived via all these experiences and all these years. … It’s a part of my DNA. It’s a part of who I’m.”

The 190-acre RFK web site is one choice for the Commanders’ new residence, however the federal authorities owns it, and its lease with D.C. consists of restrictions on how the land can be utilized.

“Pay attention, I really like RFK. I grew up there. However is it the suitable place? I don’t know till we do the work,” Rales mentioned. “We haven’t seen the work that the Commanders did throughout their course of, however my guess is we’re going to must get out a clear sheet of paper and begin another time.”

“We’re going to have to usher in some assist sources on this stadium, and we’re going to take a look at this from the bottom up,” Rales added. “It’s not nearly cash. It’s about placing a stadium the place you’ve received the power to construct a neighborhood.”

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Fan expertise, one other pillar of the house owners’ long-term plan, can also be rooted within the stadium.

“You wish to create the perfect general expertise,” Harris mentioned. “Clearly, the historical past with RFK is the historical past with RFK. However actually it’s a wider query than that.”

FedEx Area is a crumbling eyesore that Snyder had hoped to ditch for years. However measures to drum up competitors between D.C., Maryland and Virginia proved fruitless. In recent times, group executives narrowed their give attention to roughly six websites throughout the three jurisdictions that might be choices for the group’s subsequent stadium, together with its present location in Landover. However a number of federal and league-led investigations slowed progress.

Earlier this 12 months, the Commanders ramped up lobbying efforts in D.C. to make RFK a viable choice, both via a land switch or lease extension and modification.

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Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the chair of the Home Committee on Oversight and Accountability, is making ready to introduce a invoice that may lengthen and amend the lease to permit for the development of a stadium or mixed-use growth on the RFK web site, a number of folks with information of the proposed invoice informed The Submit this month. A kind of folks mentioned the invoice would contain a 99-year extension, and a Home Oversight Committee spokesman confused that it might not embrace a land sale.

If launched, the invoice might face challenges, nonetheless; some in native authorities, together with D.C. Council chair Phil Mendelson (D), oppose utilizing the RFK land for a brand new stadium.

In Virginia, lawmakers haven’t reintroduced the stadium authority invoice that failed final summer time, and the earliest they may strive once more to kind a stadium authority is in the course of the subsequent legislative session, which begins in January. Ought to the dialog restart, it might present a financially engaging choice to Harris; final 12 months, lawmakers mentioned incentive packages that ran as excessive as $1 billion earlier than they in the end scrapped the plan.

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Final 12 months, Maryland provided $400 million to enhance the world round FedEx Area, however the cash couldn’t be used to construct a brand new stadium. Gov. Wes Moore (D) has mentioned he helps spending some taxpayer {dollars} to maintain the group within the state.

“[The stadium] is an actual precedence for our group,” Rales mentioned. “If I had been to border up a few the priorities, it’s actually placing a aggressive group on the sphere, each soccer and operations; constructing a stadium; and rehabilitating the best fan expertise ever. If we are able to do these three issues, every little thing else is simply form of secondary. And we are able to’t do it abruptly. You simply have to actually give attention to a pair key priorities.”

Sam Fortier contributed to this report.

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