It's All About the Pitch for United

Federal officials had promised to transfer the federally owned site to the District, but a proposal in Congress could put the land on the open market.

City officials remain confident they will get the land but have not determined whether they would partner with the soccer team or with another developer to build on the land. One selling point to residents and public officials is that the team's owners -- with decades of experience in real estate development -- plan to use their own money, instead of asking taxpayers to build the stadium, part of a push by Major League Soccer to build soccer-specific stadiums in the cities that are home to its 12 teams.

Three stadiums have been built since 1999, another is scheduled to open in Chicago next year, and two are slated for the following year. The goal, as with the United plan, is to have the sites active year-round. The development around Pizza Hut Park in Frisco, Tex., used by FC Dallas, has 17 championship-quality fields and is used more than 300 days a year for concerts, soccer matches and even high school football.

"The stadium will bring spending that otherwise wouldn't be there," Payne said, noting that a typical housing development would not do that.

The group pushing the land trust idea also wants the land to develop hundreds of new homes at the site for people with low and moderate incomes. Buyers would own their homes, but the land would be held by a common trust organization, allowing qualified buyers to get a $300,000 house, for instance, for as little as half that amount.

It would stabilize the neighborhood and preserve it from gentrification by stipulating that new owners could sell only to buyers with qualifying incomes and that they could only recoup their investment with an adjustment for inflation, keeping the properties affordable in perpetuity.

Promoters said it's a way of evening the field. "The free-market system does not provide for most of the people who live in Anacostia, and it won't," said Richard Carr, a developer who is part of the land trust group. "It's important for people who understand how the system works to make it work for everybody."

Dianne Dale, president of Frederick Douglass Gardens Inc., is backing the land trust proposal. Over the past 50 years, she said, urban renewal and now gentrification have typically meant that black residents get pushed out, as was the case in Southwest, in Georgetown and on Capitol Hill. The prime riverfront property, she said, should be preserved for those who stuck out the hard years instead of the thousands of outsiders.

Even though her pet project, a national garden, is included in the soccer proposal too, United's promises make her uneasy.

"The soccer people are coming in there with gifts and promises," she said. "You can promise anything, but will you deliver?"

Others are enjoying the attention for the area east of the Anacostia River, where residents have long complained of neglect in services and amenities compared with the rest of the city.

"This is the best outreach from an outside group that I've seen," said Phil Pannell, executive director of the Anacostia Coordinating Council, hired to help organize the Ballou meeting. "They're treating us like we have value."

Soccer officials said that's also the way the sport treats its fans. "Our athletes are incredibly accessible and spend a lot of time after the game signing autographs," said Mark Abbott, chief operating officer for Major League Soccer. "They have an understanding that we're trying to build something here."

Because United has spent 10 years in the city and plans to stay many more, Payne said the team is mindful of not antagonizing potential new neighbors, as many have charged Major League Baseball with doing in its proposal for a new, publicly financed stadium for the Nationals. That has resulted in noisy protests by residents who consider public financing an example of misplaced priorities.

"I certainly would not have done things the way Major League Baseball has done," Payne said.

But to people who live near the site, soccer needs a lot of help to persuade them it is the way to go.

At Ballou, images of famous soccer players flashed across a screen in the auditorium, the marching band belted out tunes while decked out in D.C. United T-shirts and, later, hundreds stood in line for free, regulation-size soccer balls autographed by members of the team. Frieda Murray, 87, got two. "One for me and one for my grandson," said Murray, a retired schoolteacher and longtime member of the Anacostia Garden Club.

She said the attempts to build a baseball stadium left a bad taste in her mouth, but the soccer stadium appeals to her because the team owners are spending their own money and offering to build things that the community has always wanted.

"I'm for upscaling the community," she said. "I don't know if I will be around to see it."