We take a final look at the politicians, business owners and teams involved in the efforts to keep all the Washington Wizards and Capitals at Capital One Arena.
Yesterday was a big day for Monumental Sports & Entertainment as well as the D.C. government. In a press conference on Wednesday evening. Monumental Sports CEO Ted Leonsis and D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser announced that the Washington Wizards and Capitals will stay at Capital One Arena through 2050. It includes a $515 million package to renovate Capital One Arena and improve Gallery Place, among other things. The announcement also officially kills a previous proposal to move the Wizards and Capitals to a new arena in Alexandria.
With this deal to keep all of Monumental Sports’ flagship teams which include the Washington Mystics and Capital City Go-Go, let’s make some final determination on who the winners and losers are in the announcement. I’ve separated this section based on three groups: Monumental Sports’ teams and key players, non-Monumental Sports affiliated businesses and politicians.
Monumental Sports & Entertainment entities
Overall, Monumental Sports is a winner. However, not everyone benefits equally.
Biggest Winner: Washington Wizards — The Wizards are the crown jewel of the Monumental Sports family, being worth more than any of the business’ other entities. The city’s NBA team is back where former owner Abe Pollin wanted it all along: in the heart of downtown. In addition, the Wizards will get a new practice facility, possibly in Gallery Place or elsewhere in the city. What’s not to like for the Wizards?
Winner: Ted Leonsis — Ted wanted more business space for Monumental Sports. He has that now by getting space in Gallery Place which is next to Capital One Arena. Also, the Wizards will get a new practice facility somewhere in D.C., and there will be measures to improve the accessibility to Capital One Arena for employees and patrons. It is true that his perception also took a big beating over the last three months (which is why he can also be called a loser), but time will heal his wounds in that respect. In the end, Ted came out ahead, so he’s a winner.
Neutral: Washington Capitals — The Wizards may be worth the most money, but the Capitals are the flagship team in the Monumental Sports family locally, especially in Northern Virginia and Maryland suburbs west of D.C. The Capitals aren’t winners or losers because their home didn’t change, and they’re not getting a new practice facility.
Neutral: Capital City Go-Go — The Go-Go weren’t in line to move due to the Alexandria arena and will stay at the Entertainment and Sports Arena. However, if ESA expands, they may find themselves without a home during such a project.
Neutral: Wizards DG and Team Liquid — Same as the Go-Go.
Loser: Washington Mystics — The Mystics stood to gain the most economically from the Wizards and Capitals moving, because they would have been at Capital One Arena if the Alexandria arena project passed. However, the Mystics may be left in a 4,200 seat facility for the long term if an expansion doesn’t happen. Most of their fans believe that ESA is too small for the WNBA. Most other teams (except the Atlanta Dream who play in an even smaller venue) play in NBA or near NBA sized ones.
Monumental Sports will be able to move the Mystics to Capital One Arena for four regular season games and possibly the playoffs, but this causes more disruption for season ticket holders. At this point, hopefully ESA gets that expansion very soon.
Non Monumental Sports & Entertainment entities
Biggest Winner: Chinatown businesses — The neighborhood around Capital One Arena will still be a dining and nightlife destination for years to come.
Winner: Congress Heights and Ward 8 — The home of ESA is where the Mystics and Go-Go play, but the coronavirus pandemic stunted development around there. With the teams in ESA for the long term, Congress Heights and Ward 8 now have a chance to see its full potential as a commercial hub in one of D.C.’s underserved areas.
Winner: Alexandria/Arlington NIMBY’s — Residents who live near Potomac Yard and who didn’t want to see any development beyond the current strip mall get to keep their way of life. If residents, often with sufficient means and political influence are able to get to the right stakeholders, billionaires can be beaten. This is a good example of that.
Neutral: Crystal City — This neighborhood and its locality, Arlington County, wasn’t getting a new arena, but it’s just north of Potomac Yard. In the long term, Crystal City, or the new gentrified “National Landing” will still grow as current residential and business projects continue to happen.
Loser: Alexandria City — The city will not be able to generate billions of extra dollars. In addition, without those extra dollars, that makes residents, (including the NIMBY’s) more vulnerable to real property tax rate increases to pay for their city services and public school system.
Loser: Fairfax County — A report earlier this week proposed that Monumental Sports’ Alexandria arena be packaged with a casino in Tyson’s Corner. The idea of a casino is unpopular in Northern Virginia, even if there are casinos in Prince George’s County (MGM National Harbor) or Jefferson County, W. Va. (Hollywood Casino in Charles Town).
While casinos do attract some negative attention, they still bring in much needed money that can keep property tax rates lower and school budgets fully funded. Fairfax County has some very high real property tax rates compared to Loudoun County ($1.095 in Fairfax vs. $0.875 per $100 in Loudoun). Without a casino or some other major commercial revenue engine, they’re in the same boat as Alexandria.
Losers: Josh Harris and Earvin “Magic” Johnson — The Commanders owners may not speak publicly about Monumental Sports, but they undoubtedly would have monitored what D.C., Maryland and Virginia would or would not do in terms of stadium financing. Before this week, the Commanders were all three jurisdictions’ number one target. Now, D.C. just gave Monumental Sports $515 million and Virginia, the state their team’s headquarters is in, doesn’t like funding stadiums. Worst case scenario, they may be stuck at Jack Kent Cooke Stadium (or the place formerly known as FedEx Field) which is over an hour drive away from Ashburn! We will discuss more of that further in this piece.
At the end of the day, Harris and Johnson can kiss any idea of a bidding war goodbye between states, though you never know if two counties in the same state make bids.
Biggest Loser: Virginia getting any major pro sports team — Today, the Greater Richmond Region is the fastest growing area in the state, with many of these new transplants coming from Northern Virginia. One thing these residents will want, sooner or later, is an expansion team in a major sports league. With certain legislators and other key players being openly hostile to Monumental and other teams in the past, we now know that Virginia is for Lovers, Virginia is for (most kinds of) Business, but Virginia is hellbent against major professional sports. So to the 804, I don’t ever see a major sports team coming your way.
Politicians and political bodies
Biggest Winners: D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser and the D.C. Council — Last December, D.C. looked like they were out of luck with Monumental about to move out of town. But Mayor Bowser kept all lines of communication with Ted, they got an assist from one Va. State Senator who I will write about later, and ultimately got the Wizards and Capitals to stay. Persistence pays off!
Winner: L. Louise Lucas — The Virginia state senator single-handedly killed the Potomac Yard project because she is the chairwoman of the Finance and Appropriations Committee. She wouldn’t hold a hearing on a bill passed by the House of Delegates. If she did, this article will have a different set of winners and losers right now. In addition to her chairwoman role, Lucas is the President Pro Tempore of the Va. Senate when Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears can’t preside.
Before this project, Lucas was known to the 703/571 simply as a State Senator in Hampton Roads. Today, she’s a household name in the DMV which is a four hour drive from Portsmouth, her hometown. In addition, her social media game is so damn good that U.S. President Joe Biden should get her (or her team) to run his accounts for his re-election campaign.
If you are a Virginian against this project, perhaps she should make a run for Governor next year to replace incumbent Glenn Youngkin. Sure, she’s 80, but like Biden, age is just a number when she is as sharp as anyone out there.
Finally, if you are an Alexandrian against the project, Alexandria City High School should be renamed Lillie Louise Lucas High School. She deserves that because she is a True Titan, just like the kids at AC. And I think she’ll be flattered.
I’ll stop while I’m ahead, but Lucas is a big winner here, especially to those who wanted the Wizards and Capitals to stay. I say all of this seriously by the way. Again, Lucas deserves a high school named after her in Virginia, whether in Alexandria or Hampton Roads.
Winners: Prince George’s County, Md. Council and Executive Angela Alsobrooks — Monumental Sports was never moving to Maryland, even if they sort of entertained a proposal by the county to the jurisdiction that Washington Sports & Entertainment, their predecessor called home during the Wizards’ heyday in the 1970s. But they also come out of this news in a position of strength because of the Washington Commanders NFL team.
Currently, the Commanders play games in Prince George’s County, but former owner Daniel Snyder was flirting with the idea of moving the team to a new stadium, hopefully in D.C. With Virginia making themselves unfriendly to sports teams and the District spending $515 million to keep the Wizards and Capitals, PG County is now in prime position to keep the Commanders there.
And I’ll take it a step further: perhaps PG County should try to convince Harris and Johnson to move the Commanders out of their Loudoun County headquarters and into PG County too. If Virginia doesn’t want sports stadiums, you can make the case that they shouldn’t have the headquarters either. After all, does it make sense for the Commanders players to live in Ashburn and Leesburg, yet play games in Landover, over an hour away?
Losers: Alexandria City Mayor Justin Wilson and the City Council — If the Potomac Yard arena project passed, it would have added more jobs and tax revenue for the city. Now it hasn’t happened. Furthermore, City council incumbents who supported the project are vulnerable to defeat in the next election, though Wilson is not running for re-election.
Loser: Loudoun County Board of Supervisors — Loudoun County is home to the jurisdiction with the highest median household income in the United States, so you may be wondering why they could lose in any way. So let me add this anecdote.
Loudoun County is also home to Stone Bridge High School, Northern Virginia’s best public school football program over the last 20 plus years (or at least among Northern Virginia’s best Fairfax and Prince William County folks!). Commanders players have been known to attend the Bulldogs’ games over the years, whether against local Ashburn rivals like Broad Run, or other regional foes like James Madison High School of Vienna, the team Stone Bridge played the most in school history. Note of disclosure, I am a graduate of Stone Bridge High School.
Obviously, Loudoun County, which is over 30 miles west of D.C., was never going to be the home to Monumental, even though it’s now a prime hockey (as well as volleyball and lacrosse) county now instead of a basketball one. But Ashburn is the home to the Commanders’ headquarters, which is why Loudoun County gets thrown into this article.
If PG County can take advantage of their new leverage from Monumental’s arena deal with D.C., Loudoun County could be at risk of losing a valued partner. Also, Lucas effectively killed any chance of a new Commanders stadium in Loudoun County because of what she did to Monumental even though the county has been open to trying make a bid for them.
Just saying…
Though Loudoun County may be a loser with the Commanders, at least it is the one singular local jurisdiction handling the bulk of the world’s internet traffic. While those data centers may look ugly, they are keeping real property tax rates low!
Biggest Loser: Glenn Youngkin — The incumbent Virginia governor is a friend of Ted’s back from his days as a business executive. Youngkin came into Richmond in 2022 by promoting parents’ choice in school matters, while also not being too abrasive to suburban voters. Given that presumptive Republican presidential nominee (and former U.S. President) Donald Trump is known for being abrasive toward his opponents, it had to be comforting to some voters that Youngkin was someone who may support Trump’s policies without being … “Trumpy.”
Youngkin has always been a popular governor in Virginia, a state that leans Democratic though he is a Republican. He has remained that way throughout his entire term, despite what some Democratic politicians want you to believe. But Youngkin made some unforced errors that killed his chances of getting the arena passed which had bipartisan support in both chambers.
The biggest of his errors is that he apparently thinks Virginia is much more Republican leaning than it actually is. Sure, Virginia is more conservative than D.C. and Maryland. But Virginia is not truly Republican leaning outside of Southwest and Southside Virginia.
Perhaps Youngkin shouldn’t have given partisan speeches for the Republican Party that rubbed Lucas the wrong way. He should have also reached out to her from the beginning. And perhaps he should have dug into bipartisan economic issues from the start of his term as his main focus instead of culture wars. If he approached his term as governor on the former, I think this arena project would have passed.
Before November 2023, Youngkin was considered to be a dark horse challenger to Biden for the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election. But after losing the House of Delegates to the Democrats AND this arena project snafu, Youngkin has probably killed his own chances of any future higher office besides a post in a possible future Trump presidential administration next year.