Ballpark’s Final Tag: $693 million – The Wash. Times
Now that nationals.com has caught up, I’m wishing I had written about the above blog post (which you should really read) when I was alerted to it yesterday. Nevertheless we have a final total on what the District spent on making Nationals Park happen — $693 million. That is a big number and specifically $82 million over the so-called cap of $611 million. Before you get the pitchforks and torches out for a march on Lerner Enterprises know that a big chunk of the increase came from greater costs for land through eminent domain than anticipated, plus environmental cleanup which would need to have happened for anything that got built there.
Original cost estimate: $111,615,782
Actual money spent: $168,969,126
In other words, buying all the land through eminent domain cost about $57 million more than expected.
Also, keep in mind that public works projects are often budgeted as best case scenarios and at least in many federal projects, going over is common and accepted, if not desirable. None of the land acquisition or cleanup was part of the “hard cap” either. That cap limited what could be spent on hard and soft costs on the actual ballpark. Land acquisition, sidewalks, LEED certification (about $1 million), contributed to the other $25 million. If the “green” features of that resulted in the LEED certification are as advertised, the savings will be found over the ballpark’s life, probably several items, so that is probably money well spent. You might be able to get mad at the Lerners for the legal and accounting fees going over budget $2 million though. They will probably be punished at the turnstiles for their withholding rent payments whether they were right to do so or not for some time.
Nationals Park cost $693M to build – nationals.com
