Washington DC seems to be moving towards a new football-only stadium. According to councilor and influential community leader Jack Evans, it’s not even a matter of economical viability, the city should treat this as a cultural asset.

Councilor Jack Evans who worked for major projects in Washington already, is sure the new stadium for DC United is just a matter of time. Currently 14 out of 19 clubs already have their own stadia with San Jose building one and Seattle Sounders not needing any since they have average attendance of some 40,000 per game at a larger American football venue.

“There will be a stadium,” he said in an interview on NewsChannel 8 on Tuesday. “Look, you start with the Verizon Center. Everyone opposed it and it has been a smashing success. The National Stadium - we couldn’t have had more opposition to that: Smashing success. Soccer will be the same way. You will bring life to a part of town that has none now. It will be a synergy with the baseball stadium and it will produce economically everything we would want it to do. More importantly, there is a civic pride that comes from it.”

According to Evans the city shouldn’t look at the stadium as a commercial investment, but as a cultural one. “When I was pushing the baseball stadium, I used to say to people: ‘We do it because we want a team. Start with that. Whether it’s economically viable or not, who cares? We want a baseball team, because Washington D.C. was the only major city in America without one.’ It’s the same with soccer. We have a great soccer team. We have a team that people want to go to see. Do we economically analyze every museum we build? If we did we wouldn’t have any museums. It’s a part of our culture, and people have to get their hands around that and stop trying to defeat these things on an economic base. But soccer will be economically beneficial.”