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The new owners of the Washington Commanders face a lengthy to-do list to improve the franchise, and developing a new stadium is among their top priorities. But with limited time before the start of the season and limited access to team executives throughout the sale process, the group, led by private equity and sports investor Josh Harris, has yet to earnestly begin a thorough search for a stadium location — and may start the process anew.

“We’re aware [FedEx Field is] an older stadium, and … if someone’s coming to your house, you want it to be a beautiful place and all that,” Harris said in an interview with The Washington Post this week. “We’re going to get to work. … There’s lots of opinions, lots of factions, lots of politics, and we’re going to basically try to dig in and focus on how we provide the best fan experience. But we don’t really have answers coming in right now.”

NFL owners ratified Daniel Snyder’s $6.05 billion sale of the Commanders to Harris’s group Thursday, concluding an up-and-down process that began more than eight months ago. The deal could close as soon as Friday, leaving little time for Harris to make significant changes before training camp opens Wednesday.

“It’s a little bit of a crazy process, but we have a whole team,” Harris said. “We’re going to try to do what we can by opening day. I don’t know how much that’s going to be.”

Harris’s group may focus primarily on assessing the team’s operations to start and making smaller improvements to fan experience. The plan for after 2023 is less certain.

The search for a new stadium is among new ownership’s long-term priorities, but the process is fraught with complications and will span D.C., Virginia and Maryland.

As D.C. eyes Commanders, tension with the city’s other pro teams simmers

“We have no idea where we’re going to build the stadium,” said Mitchell Rales, the co-founder of Danaher Corp. and a top investor in Harris’s group.

Harris and Rales, along with limited partner Mark Ein, a D.C. philanthropist and venture capitalist, grew up in the area as fans of its NFL team, and regularly attended games at RFK Stadium and in Landover, Md.

“My dad dropped my three brothers and myself off at Friendship Heights bus station in Chevy Chase, and I started going to every game when I was 10 or 11 years old and never missed,” Rales said. “I grew up with Sonny Jurgensen as my hero.”

Added Harris: “I remember literally going up and gazing up at Jack Kent Cooke [Stadium, now FedEx Field] and being like, ‘This is unbelievable.’ So, yeah, I was a legit real fan and lived through all those experiences and all those years. … It’s part of my DNA. It’s part of who I am.”

A year-by-year look at Daniel Snyder’s ownership of Washington’s NFL team

The 190-acre RFK site is one option for the Commanders’ new home, but the federal government owns it, and its lease with D.C. includes restrictions on how the land can be used.

“Listen, I love RFK. I grew up there. But is it the right place? I don’t know until we do the work,” Rales said. “We haven’t seen the work that the Commanders did during their process, but my guess is we’re going to have to get out a clean sheet of paper and start all over again.”

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“We’re going to have to bring in some support resources on this stadium, and we’re going to look at this from the ground up,” Rales added. “It’s not just about money. It’s about putting a stadium where you’ve got the ability to build a community.”

Fan experience, another pillar of the owners’ long-term plan, is also rooted in the stadium.

“You want to create the best overall experience,” Harris said. “Obviously, the history with RFK is the history with RFK. But certainly it’s a much broader question than that.”

FedEx Field is <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/13/commanders-railing-collapse-lawsuit/" target="_blank">a crumbling eyesore</a> that Snyder had hoped to ditch for years. But measures to drum up competition between D.C., Maryland and Virginia proved fruitless. In recent years, team executives narrowed their focus on roughly six sites across the three jurisdictions that could be options for the team’s next stadium, including its current location in Landover. But multiple federal and league-led investigations <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/03/15/washington-commanders-stadium-dc-maryland/" target="_blank">slowed progress</a>.

From 2022: Commanders’ efforts to build new stadium hitting roadblocks

Earlier this year, the Commanders <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2023/05/04/commanders-lobbying-rfk-bowser-mendelson/" target="_blank">ramped up lobbying efforts</a> in D.C. to make RFK a viable option, either through a land transfer or lease extension and modification.

Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, is preparing to introduce a bill that would extend and amend the lease to allow for the construction of a stadium or mixed-use development at the RFK site, multiple people with knowledge of the proposed bill <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/07/06/rfk-stadium-commanders-comer-bill-dc/" target=_blank>told The Post</a> this month. One<b> </b>of those people said the bill would involve a 99-year extension, and a House Oversight Committee spokesman stressed that it would not include a land sale.

If introduced, the bill could face challenges, however; some in local government, including D.C. Council chair Phil Mendelson (D), oppose using the RFK land for a new stadium.

In Virginia, lawmakers have not reintroduced the stadium authority bill that <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/09/virginia-commanders-stadium-bill-dc/" target=_blank>failed last summer</a>, and the earliest they could try again to form a stadium authority is during the next legislative session, which begins in January. Should the conversation restart, it could provide a financially enticing option to Harris; last year, lawmakers discussed incentive packages that ran as high as $1 billion before they ultimately scrapped the plan.

Last year, Maryland offered <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/04/11/maryland-commanders-deal-set/" target=_blank>$400 million to improve the area around FedEx Field</a>, but the money could not be used to build a new stadium. Gov. Wes Moore (D) has said he supports spending some taxpayer dollars to keep the team in the state.

“[The stadium] is a real priority for our group,” Rales said. “If I were to frame up a couple of the priorities, it’s really putting a competitive team on the field, both football and operations; building a stadium; and rehabilitating the greatest fan experience ever. If we can do those three things, everything else is just kind of secondary. And we can’t do it all at once. You just have to really focus on a couple key priorities.”

<i>Sam Fortier contributed to this report.</i>

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, BA in journalism

Nicki Jhabvala joined The Washington Post in July 2020 after spending six years covering the Denver Broncos, first for the Denver Post (2014-2018) and later the Athletic (2018-2020). She has also been an editor and producer for the New York Times, Sports on Earth and Sports Illustrated.

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