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Any slight hiccups with the D.C. United stadium project are bound the raise the blood pressure of fans; who can blame us, since we have been toyed with and teased with stadium projects and ideas for close to ten years at this point. So when news broke yesterday that Washington, D.C. will miss its year-end deadline to bring together all of the land on the stadium footprint and bring the deals to a vote, the pulse of United's fans noticeably quickened.
However, when you look at the tone of all of the comments in the article, it does not seem like anyone is spewing doom and gloom quite yet. The way that I read it, there is still a fairly strong commitment to the project from people like Jack Evans and Council President Phil Mendelson. Allen Lew, who is known for bringing together such land development deals and who is in charge of the D.C. United deal for the mayor's office, believes that they will have all of the deals in place to bring before the council before Christmas. However, if deadlines continue to pass with no noticeable progress, then it will be time to actually worry.
And also of interest, from the end of the article, is that D.C. United seems to have gotten a new spokesman to replace Sarah Lerner: former Washington Examiner soccer (and other things) columnist Craig Stouffer. As a long-time member of the soccer press who was rendered unemployed when the Examiner changed formats, Stouffer is a logical hire.
Are you worried about the slipping of the stadium timeline? Any thoughts on the hiring of Stouffer?