During his first few months on the job, new Washington Commanders President Mark Clouse had a lot on his plate. Now, he’s working to manage a franchise that is reinvigorating fans after a playoff run last season.
“My function is really to then build the rest of the business, that both supports and amplifies the football, but also does the things that we aspire to do, whether that’s in the community, whether that’s building a new stadium and how we build the business,” Clouse told the Economic Club of Washington, D.C., on Monday.
Clouse came to the Commanders not from the sports world, but instead the food world, where he previously was the CEO of Campbell’s Company. Before that, he worked at Mondelez International, where he joked he was responsible for Oreo’s having many different flavors of stuffing that can be seen today.
The Commanders appear ready to capitalize off his corporate background.
“What I hope to be able to accomplish with the Commanders is really to create that blueprint or that playbook for the future of this intersection between sports and commercial enterprise management,” Clouse said.
He said he has hit the ground running, already being part of many negotiations with the city over the plan to bring the team to D.C. with a new stadium at the old RFK Stadium site.
“This is about much more than just simply building a stadium. This is an opportunity to take 180 acres that should be the crown jewel of the District and turn it into both an economic and community engine that is going to be absolutely part of the road map for the future,” Clouse said.
He said organization and team owner Josh Harris believes D.C. is the team’s “spiritual home” and this project is about building off the team’s heritage, which includes the Super Bowl wins at RFK.
The $3.7 billion redevelopment plan is still being considered by the D.C. Council, and several members have said they do not support the current deal, due to the more than $1 billion in taxpayer money that will go into the redevelopment.
Mark Clouse (left) and Economic Club of Washington, D.C. Board Officer, Lawrence Di Rita speak at a live event on Monday, May 19. (WTOP/Mike Murillo)
Clouse said the goal is to make the project a pipeline of jobs, similar to what he has seen building factories.
“I’ve done in a lot of building and manufacturing facilities, built the largest bakery in the world, was the development and training of folks to be able to work in the construction of the stadium and then translating that development so that they can actually go to work in the stadium,” he said.
Clouse said the team also hopes to see the entire RFK campus cater to not only Commanders fans but also people who may not follow the team. How the stadium will be built will play a role in that, he said.
“We will be the only roofed facility on this side in the mid-Atlantic … whether that’s Taylor Swift or the Final Four,” Clouse said. “We are going to be able to host everything that’s in the city, on a national stage; and because of that roof, it gives us a chance to actually create a pipeline of jobs and development.”
In his work at Campbell’s, which is based in Camden, New Jersey, he said a mistake he saw that he doesn’t want to recreate in the redevelopment plan was a lack of an anchor for the work. Clouse added that in D.C., the stadium is that anchor.
“The good news is we’re starting from a site that actually had a stadium, so a lot of the infrastructure thinking was contemplated in the original RFK, we’re just going to enhance that, and build off of it,” Clouse said.
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