Our whole expectation is that we can get an agreement that the council will feel good about voting on before we ever get to the point of binding arbitration. |
So far as we can tell, the late night revisions made by the Council do not jeopardize the deal and mostly reaffirm our existing plans. |
The mayor believes strongly that it's impossible to truly reform rent control laws without breaking the lock that some wealthier tenants have on subsidized apartments that could more justifiably go toward helping low- and middle-income residents. |
The mayor is absolutely relieved justice has been done. He was horrified by the testimony. |
The new plan includes a cap on construction costs, a youth academy to get more young people involved in baseball, additional free tickets to Nationals games so more disadvantaged youth can attend and a vital agreement to use private development to pay for costs around the ballpark. |
The second we've got a deal that we feel is locked in place, we're absolutely going to go forward with it. |
There was a time during the negotiations where we thought we were going to take it out, mainly to save money. It's not decided for sure. |
This region has been amazing. |
We feel we're in good shape. Even in the worst-case scenario, we should be okay. |
We think we'll be in a spot within a week or so, maybe two weeks tops, where the Council will have had time to look at it and approve it. Our thought is shortly after that we'll be able to pull the trigger and start building the new stadium, which is what everybody's been hoping we'd do all along. |
We're delighted, and I'm betting millions of Nationals fans are too. This clears one of the last hurdles in the process and gets us ready to finally break ground on a ballpark that gives the Nationals a new home and sparks an exciting economic revival in southeast. |
We're just not there yet. There are some people who feel a little more confident in saying. I'd rather have it hand before I claim that we've got a deal. |
We're still on course. Everybody knew there'd be hiccups. This is pretty small; we're not too worried. The [technical changes] are very minor. |
We've been working with the CFO's office during this whole process and we will continue to do so. If he was not briefed before the change, it was an oversight. He's an important partner in this. |
When we built the MCI Center, if we had included every little thing we did to upgrade the area into the cost of MCI, it would be in the billions. You have to think of it just as city development. |