United's Owner Looks Elsewhere

MacFarlane Criticizes Fenty's Office Over Stadium Talks

D.C. United owner Victor B. MacFarlane expressed frustration yesterday with Mayor Adrian M. Fenty's administration over negotiations for a new soccer stadium in the city, saying he has been forced to begin looking at sites in the suburbs.

United officials had been informally negotiating for months with the Fenty administration to build a 27,000-seat stadium and mixed-use development at Poplar Point, a 110-acre strip of parkland along the Anacostia River. But the mayor broke off talks during the summer and opened a competitive bidding process to solicit other proposals for the site.

MacFarlane, who bought the team with a partner in January, said it is increasingly unlikely that he will be able to enter the competition because United cannot meet the economic parameters set by the city. Instead, MacFarlane said, he has hired the Staubach real estate consulting firm to examine alternative sites in Virginia and Maryland.

"At some point, they do have to say they want us," MacFarlane said during a meeting with Washington Post reporters and editors. He added that he felt misled by the mayor's office. "The biggest problem was that no one was forthright and upfront in saying, 'This is what we're going to do,' so I didn't have to waste time and energy doing something people didn't want done. We spent a lot of money and effort creating something we didn't have to create."

Fenty administration officials, who met with MacFarlane yesterday, said they remain open to working with United to find a suitable new home in the city. The team plays at 46-year-old RFK Stadium, which lacks luxury boxes and other modern touches that could help United turn a profit.

"Right now, we are totally enjoying having them here in D.C. and hope for a much longer-term relationship," Neil O. Albert, deputy mayor for economic development, said of the team. "But Poplar Point is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and we have to see what great ideas are out there for the site."

Other influential D.C. leaders rallied on MacFarlane's behalf yesterday, including D.C. Council member Marion Barry (D-Ward 8), whose ward includes Poplar Point. Barry said MacFarlane's plan to build a stadium, along with housing and retail, would be a boon to the city's poorest ward.

"If we lose the stadium, I put it directly at Mayor Fenty's feet," Barry said. "Victor has spent too much money and too much energy on this. He has been at 15 or 20 meetings in the community and contributed money to schools. He's done everything a citizen should do and a businessman should do, and now he's being jammed up."

Under his initial proposal, MacFarlane offered to pay for the $150 million stadium if the city contributed $350 million in infrastructure and allowed him to build 8 million square feet of development at Poplar Point.

But under the terms of the competitive bidding process established by Fenty, developers have been asked to submit proposals that limit development to about 4 million square feet.

MacFarlane said he was shocked when the Fenty administration announced it would suspend talks with United. In a meeting a few days earlier, MacFarlane said, the mayor was supportive of United's stadium plans and did not say a word about opening a competitive bidding process.

"I had no commitments or anything else, but I thought I was getting soft caresses," MacFarlane said. "We were progressing."

Albert said the administration negotiated in good faith but decided the public subsidies United was seeking were too steep for the city.

MacFarlane stressed that he is committed to keeping United, whose average attendance of more than 17,000 has made it one of Major League Soccer's most popular teams, in the Washington region. He said he had spoken with some suburban jurisdictions about building a stadium but declined to be specific. The team also would be open to other locations in the District, he said, including building a soccer-only stadium on the RFK site.

He also acknowledged that he is talking with another developer about teaming up to enter a formal proposal for the Poplar Point site.

"I don't regret buying the team," MacFarlane said. "I enjoy owning the team very much, except for the frustrating part of building a stadium. . . . The stadium, quite honestly, has been a distraction."