WASHINGTON — The Prince of Potomac Yard spoke of water.
“When I first came to this site,” Ted Leonsis mentioned Wednesday, “and stood on top of the roof of the building next door, and looked over, we forget the power of having two rivers flow right into this community. And, iconic real estate is incredibly important. We have access — you can see the Washington Monument from here, Washington, D.C., the border’s one-and-a-half miles from here.”
That have to be cool! So good that the billionaire proprietor of the Wizards and Capitals will have a swank view of the Potomac and Anacostia confluence from his soon-to-be floor-wide workplaces in Alexandria, the place he will middle his leisure and sports activities empire. It can be unfair to say he actually will be wanting down upon the people who find themselves financing his JerryWorld, his BallmerVille, in Crystal City, or National Landing, or no matter identify they like for his or her neighborhood across the river. But it will be a swell view.
It is, nonetheless, a view for one, for an viewers of 1. Which, in the finish, is how anybody who cares about and loves the District of Columbia ought to view this seemingly imminent departure of the Wizards and Capitals for Virginia.
Some of us are sufficiently old to recollect the “done deal” between Jack Kent Cooke and Virginia state representatives from a technology in the past on that exact same property for a brand new soccer stadium that got here aside like cotton sweet. So, perhaps, the Virginia General Assembly will elevate objections to this new mission that will be too nice to beat. Maybe NIMBYs in Alexandria will make their voices loud and annoying sufficient to power reconsideration.
But, I doubt it.
“Hold me accountable,” Leonsis mentioned Wednesday. OK.
This is about one man’s grandiosity, and readiness to depart when the metropolis that has offered him a lot over the final a long time wanted somebody together with his voice and affect to say, post-COVID, and post-Jan. 6, and which is grappling with crime outbursts all through the metropolis which have so many in poor health comfy, “You know what? Some things may be bad here right now. But I’m blessed enough to be financially secure enough to ride it out with you. I want to be part of the solution. So, I’ll be slightly less rich. I’m staying.”
Don’t inform me wealthy males don’t do that. That’s exactly what Abe Pollin did, when he constructed what’s now referred to as Capital One Arena downtown, remodeling the metropolis, in 1997 — principally together with his personal cash.
By distinction, Leonsis went for the bucks. Which, as I’ve mentioned and written dozens of occasions over the years, homeowners of professional sports activities groups are completely inside their rights to do. They can play wherever they need their groups to play. They could make no matter offers line their pockets, and permit them to create the sort of multi-use “entertainment districts” that will convey the well-heeled and well-connected to their new playgrounds. No one doubts that Virginia will construct Leonsis a state-ahead-of-the-art area to be envied and admired.
But, it will be exhausting to take at face worth any future speak from Leonsis about his love of the District.
Because he is aware of how the Wizards, irrespective of their present lot, imply to generations of basketball followers in D.C. I’m effectively conscious that the Wizards have been as soon as the Bullets, who as soon as performed in Baltimore — and, earlier than that, Chicago. I’m effectively conscious of the historical past of franchise roulette, in lots of cities, with many groups. That doesn’t imply it doesn’t damage, deeply, when your crew leaves city. When the Senators left, first, for Minnesota — after which, when the crew that changed them left for Texas, it damage this metropolis, badly. Some of us then adopted the Orioles, as a result of they have been the closest crew. We didn’t love them.
And when the then-Redskins left for Landover, Md. despite the fact that it was just some miles from the D.C. line, it felt terrible. It nonetheless does.
Add this to the ledger.
Because Leonsis is aware of, greater than anybody, that the crowds who come to Wizards video games, and have come to them for the final 25 years, are amongst the most various in the NBA – racially, economically, socially. Maybe Atlanta has related varieties of crowds for Hawks video games. Most of the league’s buildings, lately, are once more full, post-COVID. But, in the foremost, their fan bases are very White and really wealthy. That hasn’t been the case right here since I began overlaying the crew, then taking part in at Capital Centre in Landover, in the late ’80s. Wizards crowds appear like the District — at the very least the way it used to look. They will not achieve this when the crew strikes across the river.
(I’m not mentioning the Capitals’ crowds as a result of the Caps recurrently bought out Capital One. Caps followers have represented for almost 20 years. I can’t then think about they received’t proceed to take action in Virginia.)
Every proprietor swears that his or her fanbase will observe the crew “just down the road” to the new place. The Warriors swore that gentle rail and categorical transportation would imply most of their middle-class followers would come from Oakland, across San Francisco Bay, and observe the crew to the new Chase Center in downtown San Francisco.
They didn’t.
To ensure, Chase is full — however not with the individuals who crammed what’s now referred to as Oakland Arena for 3 a long time. You need to pay for a $2 billion area; you don’t achieve this with $15 tickets. You do it with six-figure suites and five-figure courtside seats. As John Salley, who received 4 championships again in the day taking part in for the Pistons, Bulls and Lakers, famous when the Pistons moved from downtown Detroit 31 miles north to the Palace of Auburn Hills in the late ’80s: “We used to play in front of the auto workers. Now we play in front of the executives.”
It will be inconceivable to neglect what now seems like appropriation of the metropolis’s tradition, by nicknaming Washington’s G-League crew the Capital City Go-Go, and centering D.C. at each alternative – plastering “For the District” and “The District of Columbia” in your Twitter feeds and the jerseys of Wizards gamers, or hawking this 12 months’s alternate jerseys with breathless historical past about the metropolis’s Boundary Stones, or slapping “D.C.” on caps and clothes — solely to stroll away from all of that, for the sweetheart deal across the river, your Braves New World.
And if there may be any reality to the reporting that Leonsis was irritated by teenage children performing … Go-Go music, outdoors of Capital One? Well, it’s exhausting to know learn how to course of that. Buskers? That’s a difficulty?? Good Lord.
(After this was initially revealed, I used to be knowledgeable that Leonsis’ situation will not be with the road musicians who carry out in entrance of Capital One on occasion nights, however there’s a priority about one particular person particularly who has been aggressive with passersby, each in entrance of the area and different companies close by.)
If you’re not from right here, chances are you’ll not perceive why a Wizards/Capitals transfer to Virginia is very troublesome for D.C. residents to simply accept. It’s simply 4 miles away from Capital One, Leonsis mentioned Wednesday.
It seems like the Grand Canyon, psychically.
First, site visitors. The dance of placing a 20,000-seat area, follow facility, and new eating places/leisure venues into an space surrounded by Reagan National Airport, Amazon II and a big, busy mall, with many incoming and surrounding roads which might be at present one- or two-laners, is daunting. Sources concerned with the discussions mentioned Wednesday that important enhancements to the roads surrounding the proposed website, together with elevated light- and heavy-rail providers, are a part of the deal. It will be, nonetheless, a for much longer commute for a lot of — in the event that they choose to return.
Will followers who’ve taken a 30-45-minute Metro trip from the Maryland suburbs to Gallery Place downtown be prepared so as to add one other 20-Half-hour of using time spherical journey to get to and from Alexandria? For 7 p.m. begins for Wizards or Caps video games?
Second … effectively, put it like this. The method that many Virginia residents really feel about coming into the District for an evening out, once they have One Loudoun or Reston Town Center out there, closer-in? District residents really feel the identical method about going out to Alexandria for an evening out, when now we have Penn Quarter or Columbia Heights or NoMa to patronize. You don’t really feel secure arising right here? Many of us don’t really feel secure going on the market. You have your causes. We have ours.
It simply seems like, once more, the District’s been kicked in the abdomen – blamed, as a result of COVID minimize the variety of workplaces working downtown down like a scythe, leaving eating places and bars with fewer patrons for lunch or dinner. Make no mistake, although: Mayor Muriel Bowser takes a Big L right here. Her job was to stop one thing like this from occurring, as a result of you’ll be able to’t substitute the Caps and Wizards, and the power they’ve dropped at downtown. I do know it was troublesome to search out the sort of cash wanted to maintain Leonsis from wanderlust. That, nevertheless, is the job. They can’t go away in your watch. They are leaving on hers.
I don’t doubt that the resolution was troublesome, perhaps even painful, for Leonsis. It would have been thus useful to him to specific what he was feeling Wednesday to reporters who requested to talk with him after the press convention, fairly than rebuff them. And he and his crew have concepts for learn how to rework Capital One, now free of having to cross off dozens of potential days on the calendar yearly for Wizards and Capitals video games, to maintain the constructing busy as a rule. Ice reveals. Concerts. Activities in tandem with the D.C. Convention Center, and/or Events D.C. The return of the Mystics to Capital One, after taking part in at the Entertainment and Sports Arena in Southeast. (Speaking of which: what precisely does Leonsis plan to do, now, with ESA, about which he spoke so grandly, just some years in the past?)
But, nothing replaces a sports activities crew in a metropolis’s soul. Nothing.
You know considered one of the massive causes I got here to The Athletic in 2018? I used to be in San Francisco in the spring of that 12 months, watching the Capitals play the Penguins in the Eastern Conference semifinals, in my lodge room, whereas overlaying the Warriors and Rockets. If you’re from D.C., you knew, whether or not you Rocked the Red on the common or not, how massive a ache in the butt the Penguins have been to the Caps for a decade, how desperately Alex Ovechkin and Nicklas Bäckström wished, wanted, to beat Sidney Crosby and the Pens. It was Town Business.
So when Evgeny Kuznetsov scored on that breakaway time beyond regulation objective to seal the collection over the Penguins, and the broadcast minimize to the cheering crowds outdoors of Capital One, in Penn Quarter, deliriously completely happy, and younger, and various, having lastly slain the beast, it did one thing to me. I mentioned to myself, in that lodge room, “look at how happy the city is. That is awesome. I’d like to be a part of chronicling that.”
And I used to be, as I witnessed first-hand the Nationals successful the World Series, and the Mystics successful the WNBA title behind “Playoff Emma,” inside weeks of each other in 2019. And the pleasure that these franchises dropped at my hometown was immeasurable, and perpetually.
I like this metropolis, my metropolis. And my metropolis was wounded, grievously so, Wednesday morning, when women and men on the different aspect of the river toasted their luck, their deal effectively completed, and didn’t appear to offer a rattling about the ache left behind.
(Photo of Ted Leonsis and Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin: Win McNamee / Getty Images)
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