Just when people in this town were getting all excited about drafting Robert Griffin III, the Redskins have gone and reminded fans of a particularly, um, interesting episode in the team's recent past.
Seems that late Monday night, The Washington Post reported that the Redskins have received the go-ahead from Prince George's County to remove an additional 4,000 seats from FedEx Field. That alteration would be in addition to the 8,000 seats that were taken out last summer, and reduce the stadium's capacity to around 79,000.
A few moments after the Post story broke, a press release from the Redskins landed in our inbox. We quote after the jump.
The club will complete the project that was started last year by installing standing decks on the upper level of the stadium and a video wall on lower level concourse in the west end zone.
The Redskins are also adding unique Executive Suites to FedExField. The suites will contain additional amenities for fans to enjoy.
You will recall that the Redskins initially announced plans for the party decks in June 2011. A month later, FedEx Field's VP of Operations went on the radio and said, essentially, "not so fast." It later came out that the team couldn't sell season tickets for the seats that were being ripped out and still needed to apply for permits to convert the empty space in the upper deck behind each end zone into someplace that fans would actually want to visit.
It seems like another step in the agonizing process has been completed, and not a moment too soon. We hope this step isn't followed by months of radio silence, no pun intended.