Struggles Cloud Stadium Progress

Metro spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein said Catoe stands by his recommendation, which was made after Akridge outbid Monument and JBG Co. in a competitive process. Neal maintains his company offered the most money.

Metro officials added that they are concerned that Monument is seven weeks behind schedule on its portion of the Navy Yard Station expansion, a $20 million project aimed at increasing the number of passengers who can use the station from 5,000 to 15,000 an hour.

Neal acknowledged the delay but said his company is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to accelerate the construction.

D.C. Council member Jim Graham (D-Ward 1), who is also a voting member of the Metro board, said he is alarmed by the confrontation.

"The possibility of a lawsuit is very high," Graham said. "How do we avoid that? We're trying to figure that out right now."

The future of the Metro bus garage property has broader implications, as well. Nationals officials are trying to cobble together thousands of parking spots beyond the stadium site by striking agreements to use dozens of smaller lots.

D.C. leaders expect whichever developer wins the Metro bus property to allow 350 cars to park on the site for the first season or two until more significant construction begins.

About 1,350 spaces will be available on the ballpark property, 1,225 of them in a garage for premium ticket-holders. The D.C. Sports and Entertainment Commission, which is overseeing construction of the stadium, is negotiating with the Nationals for a deal that would provide additional parking at commission-controlled Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium, with shuttle bus service to the new ballpark.

Myriad issues remain to be worked out, however, including traffic-related objections that are almost certain to be raised by residents around RFK.

"We have to be sensitive to the community about how much parking we're going to have at RFK without baseball actually being played there," said Gregory O'Dell, the sports commission's chief executive. "We can't have a whole lot of parking there. But we're certainly going to make spaces available in a way that's reasonable to all parties."

McCarthy said he was "extremely disappointed" by the federal government's decision not to allow the team to use spaces in a garage under the U.S. Department of Transportation's new headquarters.

The spaces are used by DOT employees during workdays, and the Nationals had hoped to make hundreds of them available to season-ticket holders at night.

"We have consulted with a number of security experts at the federal and local levels," McCarthy said. "We've tried to accommodate [the DOT's] concerns about security by replicating some of the highest-level systems that the federal government's own standards require, involving thumbprint identification, iris identification, instant background checks on drivers. And we'd only do it with season-ticket holders who could be approved."

But DOT spokesman Brian Turmail said that in the post-9/11 world, opening the garage to the public would not be wise. "There has been a very strong recommendation from our security folks that doing it would just unnecessarily put the 10,000-plus DOT headquarters employees at risk."

Staff writers Lena H. Sun and Jacqueline Dupree contributed to this report.