Ballpark Is Ready, but the Neighborhood Isn't

One of the loudest voices in the stadium financing debate was Adrian M. Fenty's. As a council member, he questioned the wisdom of such a big investment. Now, as mayor, he must ensure that it pays off by riding herd on the blossoming development in hopes of boosting the city's tax base.

Fenty (D) said that he still thinks the city could have gotten a better deal to build the ballpark more cheaply but that what matters now is getting the project done.

"It's going to be a great boon for the city, both for civic pride and from a revitalization perspective. What the stadium has done is to help give a spark and an energy level to projects that were already going to happen and to those that wouldn't have happened," he said.

Putting the ballpark in Southeast was just as important to Williams as bringing baseball back to Washington after a three-decade absence. Three other locations were seriously considered, but none, he and other city leaders decided, would have had the ripple effect in the surrounding neighborhoods.

But the choice was not without risks -- and that's why a big payoff is no sure thing. Unlike Verizon Center, which opened in Gallery Place in 1997 and has become a nightlife hub, the baseball stadium location was removed from the downtown core, easily reachable by just one Metro station. As Nationals owners have found out, parking is hard to come by -- one reason many fans will be shuttling to the games via buses from the Nationals' old home, RFK Stadium.

The idea that a city that was nearly bankrupt in the mid-1990s would shell out the full cost of a stadium for rich Major League Baseball owners outraged residents in poorer neighborhoods. Even now, many of the project's loudest critics continue to argue that the massive public subsidy was misguided.

"Whether or not a stadium spurs development does not answer the question of whether a city investment of $650 million or $700 million is justified," said Ed Lazere, executive director of the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute, a liberal think tank, who spearheaded the opposition. "It's not clear that the development we're getting relative to the cost is a great deal. The city could have spent $650 million lots of ways on lots of development."

Business leaders, asked to pay much of the stadium costs through a new "ballpark fee," were divided, with many smaller companies balking. Barbara Lang, president of the D.C. Chamber of Commerce, said some members remain unhappy.

Lang has adopted a wait-and-see attitude. "We try to say if the city overall benefits from development near the stadium, that will lessen the tax burden on everyone, and that's a good thing," she said.

By comparison, developers eagerly backed Williams's ballpark proposal. And they saw reasons to get excited about the location. The neighborhood had already seen its first wave of growth after the Navy Yard's mission expanded in the late 1990s to include the Naval Sea Systems Command, attracting several new buildings along M Street to house military contractors.

The new headquarters of the U.S. Transportation Department came next. After that, in 2004, the federal government opened up the Southeast Federal Center for development. Forest City, a nationally known developer, now controls 44 acres just west of the Navy Yard, from M Street to the river, with plans for offices and condos and a waterfront park.

Other developers took note. Monument Realty, a company formed only in 1999, began to buy land just as talk of the ballpark possibly coming to the neighborhood began to filter out.