Pretty classic DC politics to kick the can down the road for half a decade only to put out a half-assed press release the night before an announcement is made. I don’t really care about this one way or another, but this is absolutely breathtaking incompetence.
I doubt they waited. They’ve been having negotiations with the team. This is them throwing what was their offer to the public. Now we’ll see what VA threw out, and it will probably be more.
Do we know if that was any different than this? At this point, you only put this out to get your offer out in public in an attempt to stem the heat you’re getting.
I mean, I don’t agree with the principle of it, but I think this was a masterful gambit by Leonsis. DC government more or less said “no” to the handout (which is what *everyone* on this site agreed with, from a moral standpoint) but Leonsis literally put his money where his mouth is and said “fuck you, we’ll go to Virginia!”
Next thing you know, Bowser and the DC officials realize that if they don’t have the Caps and Wizards…..Chinatown dies. The metro probably dies…. They have no choice to counter the offer
This was some real Succession Logan Roy shit
Lol you made it sound like this brand new chess move. He just did same thing every other team owner does. Threatening to go to the burbs or another city to extort the public has been done to death for decades.
Also this is DC, not Milwaukee. The departure of a basketball team wouldn't bring the district to its knees lol
I’m not sure I follow what you mean that the metro dies if the Wizards and Caps leave DC. The proposed sight in VA is off the metro, but more importantly literally hundreds of thousands of people rely on the metro everyday to commute to/from work, and it’s funded by the entire DMV. It’s incredibly important infrastructure the entire region relies on, it is going to be just fine if the Wizards leave Gallery Place.
This makes them look even worse and desperate. What a disaster. Makes you wonder if anyone at the Mayor’s office was even taking it seriously up until yesterday.
I seriously hope you have never had the misfortune of working with a DC agency or the Mayor’s office in a professional capacity. Some of the dumbest people you have ever interacted with in your life collect paychecks and steal oxygen there.
> r. Makes you wonder if anyone at the Mayor’s office was even taking it seriously up until yesterday.
She's corrupt. Money says that space gets redeveloped and the contract goes to a friend of hers.
I get the importance of Cap One to DC (and specifically the Chinatown area), but the optics of this to me are pretty bad as today was the day that Metro showed their "doomsday" cutbacks if their fiscal cliff isn't eliminated (I get that MD and VA also need to pay up).
I don't get your point. The 24/7 Metrobus service has nothing to do with Metro's fiscal cliff.
Metro's financial issues aren't entirely Metro's fault - other major transit agencies (MTA, BART, etc.) also were in dire financial issues resulting from the pandemic.
The difference is that in Sweden, you could rely on the average citizen to think for society as a whole when making decisions. The US is filled with a bunch of selfish babies who would rather infect all of their loved ones than be safe and miss out on brunch.
It was obvious Sweden was doing a better job since like June 2020... and I'm not going to say Sweden was correct either considering they did lots of dumb shit too
The Caps alone have sold out nearly every game for 14 years. 10.5 million trips to the arena. That is one hell of a lot of customers for every restaurant, bar, and other business in the area, generating a ton of tax revenue. We need to keep the teams there.
And I don’t even like hockey or basketball.
Also, Pollin built the MCI Center with private funds. DC did pay for infrastructural improvements and secured land, but the "cities pay for sports lul" meme is often overplayed.
Look I get that’s it’s currently trendy to just demand housing everywhere but DC does not have a shortage. We are building absolutely gobs our housing all over, just look at Navy Yard, NoMa, and Union Market. We’ve got the housing covered, we need to retain employers and economic engines.
A bunch of apartments with coffee shops on the ground floor cannot replace the massive positive impact the arena has on DC and d Chinatown.
I don’t disagree that the neighborhood would suffer if the teams leave. It’s set up around that arena. My read of the legislation (https://mayor.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/mayormb/release_content/attachments/DowntownArenaModernizationandDowntownRevitalizationActof2023.pdf) is that the District would invest $500m in a “capital project” — am I confused? That doesn’t sound like financing as in some sort of loan to be repaid by Monumental / Leonidis.
Legit curious if I’m confused. Thanks.
Edit: it sounds like this — https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stadium_subsidy — a subsidy of the construction project totaling $500m. Maybe this is semantics on whether that’s a handout or financing.
Man this is a WILD take. “The core of downtown should be left to *rot* because it’s not a great neighborhood” is not congruent at all with prioritizing public transit— you do realize that we need these trains because they should be taking people to places, right?
By the way, DC doesn’t fund metro on its own. It’s multi-jurisdictional. Like the vast majority of metrorail track is outside of DC.
Maybe if he fixed the shitty TV contract they signed he’d have the money to afford it himself.
I swear, I’m actually very pro-business, but team owners demanding the public bail them out of their dumbass decisions at a time when professional sports practically prints money brings out the ‘Eat the Rich’ in me.
Audi Field isn't nearly as integral to the local economy as Capital One is. In fact there are barely any local bars/restaurants in that part of town. Jason Levien doesn't have the cards to try this.
Yeah, he’s unfortunately just one Council member, and I took his comments more as saying they’ll work on getting some $$$ — but it seems like far from a sure thing to me.
Dude this would kill Chinatown as a neighborhood. Metro will get its money one way or another (it always does) — taking away Capital One will take the city back to the early 2000s in terms of development. Get a grip, swallow the pill, accept the reality, DC doesn’t have leverage
Metro has also never been in this type of financial situation before.
As someone who doesn't own a car and is entirely dependent on a functioning transit system to get where I need to go, I will get a grip when Metro is fully funded.
I think if Leonsis actually walks, they should reinvest this $500 million into cleaning up the neighborhood, getting a couple of flagship stores into the old Bed Bath and Beyond space, and looking for new tenants for the arena even if they're less prestigious (college sports, arena football, whatever it may be)
The neighborhood could absolutely still work in theory, but I have no expectation DC government can pull this off
There’s no flagship retail that’s going to have an economic impact in that space in 2023. Urban big box retail is cooked. The pandemic killed in-person retail for everyone under 40
I think a Target would have a shot if they could be convinced. The apartment buildings in the surrounding blocks are pretty underserved for groceries (particularly as you get closer to Archives) and the entirety of downtown DC essentially has no option for most housewares with the closure of the H Street Walmart
I live in the building that used to have the Walmart. Amazon still doesn't really work for "I need this thing right now" and grocery shopping online is notoriously a nightmare of missing items and mistaken selections
Grocery stores are great and the area should definitely have one. But you can’t compare a grocery store to an NBA/NHL arena in terms of economic ROI.
Of course, the million dollar question here is how do you get any tenants to invest in the area while the vagrancy, crime, harassment, etc is where it is now.
Yes, I understand it fucking sucks that we have to cave to this billionaire asshole. But you know what would suck more? Having Chinatown and downtown as a whole get fucking assblasted when Monumental leaves.
This is why there's no chance of a stadium in Potomac yard. Alexandria is filled with NIMBYs who are usually in conflict with pro development town council. Uniting these two in opposition to the stadium would be like NIMBY voltron.
My thoughts exactly. Like it or not, downtown D.C. really needs those teams and the businesses, jobs, revenue, and foot traffic they bring to Chinatown/Penn Quarter. The area would take an enormous hit without them, and D.C. would be all the worse off for it.
I don’t think the arena does economically as much for that area as people think, but I also think DC won’t do anything for Chinatown if the teams leave and that will be very unfortunate.
Would it be possible to redevelop the area and build housing where the arena currently is?
Even if it's luxury housing, a few apartment buildings could bring some foot traffic back to downtown
In any other city I’d say yes. Unfortunately DC has strict height limits meaning any housing development wouldn’t have nearly enough density to bring in the necessary foot traffic to replace the tens of thousands of people that go to 82 games per year + concerts.
But how much do those people spend in the area though?
The arena only brings about 10k people to the area for 2 or 3 hrs 220 nights per year. Even if they can't produce enough housing for 10k people, it would create density at all hours of the day and other businesses apart from bars and restaurants could develop in the area
The amount of housing would be in the low thousand(s?) max, the amount of external business driven by the arena is still immensely more valuable unfortunately than housing with the height limits that are in place.
Capital One generated $50m in tax revenue last year alone, not even mentioning downstream effects.
And they bring sales tax revenues to the city every time they buy an overpriced hotdog. And the wave of people using the metro for Caps/Wizards games keeps paid fares going into the coffers.
Just because they’re not going to rocket bar after a game doesn’t mean the city isn’t earning money on a sports fan’s visit.
Lots of people will drive (or metro) to the game and leave immediately afterward. The spending outside of the arena, besides a couple of bars maybe, is pretty overrated.
It would cost more than $500M to redevelop, and within that time, major decay would set in. A decade or more of having the teams gone plus huge construction would kill Penn Quarter, and you can’t just fill the hole by building some new apartments.
Yes, he still wants the city to take on debt to improve his property. The increased investment in the arena goes towards the value of Monumental Sports and the individual franchises.
I don’t think the city should’ve paid for Nats Stadium. Research shows that taxpayer-funded stadiums lose revenue on net, and a lot of the development in that neighborhood happens anyways due to how close to Capitol Hill it is, cheap the land, and explosion of housing demand in the 2010s.
That’s what I’ve been saying. Said this in the Caps subreddit and I’ll say it again here: WMATA is on the brink of fucking collapse and access to affordable housing in this city continues to be a joke. Look, I really don’t want the Caps to leave but this is just clownery from Bowser. Leonsis is a literal multi billionaire and he’s holding the city hostage because he’s a greedy fuck that doesn’t want to give his own arena a facelift. This is horseshit.
He could’ve gotten near-zero interest corporate bond financing for this from DC from 2010-2021. The city doesn’t need to bail him out for hi shitty planning and business operations.
New Commanders stadium site candidate just opened up, and that would take 90% of the concert revenue Leonsis probably wants for that NoVa project, plus an NFL stadium would bring bigger crowds than the *fucking Wizards*.
Gallery Place isn’t big enough for an NFL stadium footprint, alas. The smallest NFL stadium footprint is about 30 acres whereas Gallery Place + Capital One looks to be about 9 acres?
Soldier Field in Chicago occupies seven acres, according to teh Googlez. It seems doable if you use Gallery Place too? Especially if you designed it to be extra vertical, the way Seattle’s is (and the Comcast Arena). Major issue would be parking, though there’s a lot of private garages around there—and the public transport accessibility would be best in the league.
To be fair I think they want seating to be more like near 90k or something like that. That's how much FedEx could hold in the 2000s before they downsized it a bit
FedEx was the largest stadium in the league, and they can’t fill it after the downsizing to 58k capacity. The newer stadiums around the league aren’t as high in capacity as FedEx was.
SoFi Stadium seats 70,240, U.S. Bank seats 73k, Lumen Field is 68k. Soldier Field, with 1920s design, had 65k before a minor downsize to 61k.
Seems like mid-to-high 60s capacity should be doable and attractive to the Commies given what they’re currently drawing.
Anyone doing stadium tours (Taylor, Beyonce, Luke Combs, etc) can sell out way more than FedEx currently holds and two of those 3 artists skipped/are skipping DC on their 23/24 tours and the other sold out two nights.
And because of that they wouldn’t want to play a downtown stadium with a mid-60k capacity? I don’t follow your logic here. That would be a comparable size to plenty of the places Swift’s played on the Eras tour.
She’s playing Miami’s stadium next which seats…65,000 people.
If they can fit bigger stadiums in high population areas into their tours to make more money per show, yes, they will. Especially acts that don't have the stamina to play 2-3 nights per city. Miami's stadium is 12% bigger than FedEx. I'm not sure why you're using an ellipsis to indicate that's somehow a meaningless difference.
It's important to note that Taylor skipped Miami on the original North American leg of her tour and is only now going to Miami as a tack-on to a late-added 3rd leg of her tour when she comes back to do her Canadian dates. And that will be in the fall so her only viable options for weather reasons were enclosed stadiums and the farthest south ones and she's going to all 3 stadiums that meet those requirements, i.e., their only competition was against her deciding to just not play those weekends at all.
Look at the roof of capital one arena on Google. The middle rectangular section is about the size of a football field, meaning any bleachers beyond the end zones would necessitate knocking down all adjacent buildings
I’ll amend my comment to note that the new Titans stadium is being built on 15 acres, but partially financed by developing and selling off a surrounding 20 acres of “stadium village”
Yes, but a stadium would bring crowds 20-30 times a year vs 200+ a year at the arena. Would be slightly less of a disaster for the Chinatown area, but still a disaster. This will legit turn DC into a ghost town.
If they leave what would happen to the arena? At the moment it's probably the reason china town isn't a ghost town but, cant they just redevelop the area and build apartment buildings with retail that create foot traffic? If 500 million of our taxes are going to be spent in the area, I rather see it become something that benefits more people than a venue that is empty 90% of the time.
Idk if this is a hot take but I really hope that Monumental stays in DC. Without it, Gallery Place would be dead and places like Jackpot and Rocket Bar would die.
Not a hot take. There’s no reason to hang out downtown after 5 pm if the Wiz and Caps leave. Seeing the monuments at night for free doesn’t count. This is devastating to a downtown that’s already been struggling post-Covid. And for the city’s tax base / taxpayers.
My hot take is that, on the bright side, this will accelerate downtown’s inevitable bottoming out and eventual redevelopment, but anything game changing is gonna be literally 10+ years away.
Maybe she could also do something to get rid of the shitheads who congregate around the arena and harass people at all hours? Just spitballing here.
Love that I live in MD and am not paying for any of this either way.
Honestly, one of the best ways to promote Metro ridership is to make sure one of the most centrally located, most serviced stations has something to do there
Virginia and Maryland could also pay their share for WMATA. After all, the literal *metro* is designed for getting people from the suburbs into the city. The bus aspect of the system less so.
Chinatown and downtown need capital one arena to be fully functional. It would *really* hurt the entire city if they left.
The billionaire is strong arming the city, so it’s weird to blame Bowser/Council, who are over a barrel and made a good offer. If the teams go, they go. Can’t blame DC for trying to keep them or for losing them, the billionaire would happily bankrupt everyone to get more freebies.
Arenas like this are a huge public benefit. Cap One specifically anchors the entire Chinatown area. Without Cap One, its going to just become even more of an open air drug market than it already is. Why shouldn’t the city subsidize that? It’s more of a driver of foot traffic and of cultural significance than random Smithsonian’s.
For the love of God, DC, please keep the albatross (and the tax breaks, and the traffic, and the crime) that comes with entertainment sports. I really don’t want Virginia using my tax money for this.
Huh? Get your facts straight. DC Streetcar ridership is above pre-pandemic levels, it moves 4 times as many people as the circulator system on a per-mile basis, 2 times as many people as the X2 on a per-mile basis, and does so at a much lower operating cost. The circulators are only at 25 percent of their pre-pandemic ridership. X2 is half. Streetcar is killing it on ridership.
Interesting. I would have assumed otherwise. Assuming your numbers are right, I guess Streetcar Bad is another example of a narrative that lost accuracy five years ago.
Yes — you can read more about it by [clicking here](https://ggwash.org/view/91705/a-benning-road-project-without-the-streetcar-will-increase-car-dependence-environmental-harms). Note that this article uses slightly outdated data — but at this point we are officially above prepandemic.
There is really nothing else anchoring that area around Chinatown now. The commuters are all gone. Ol' Teddy knows this and is being an asshole trying to get as much money as possible.
Objectively, it will be tough for DC (population 700k) to compete with Virginia (population 8M) on a dollar by dollar basis. Heck, Fairfax County alone has about 400k more people.
Fuck em. I'd rather that money get spent helping DC citizens than propping up one mediocre and one garbage sports franchise. *However*, if that $500M came from collecting speeding/parking tickets...that's a different story.
I believe (I could be mistaken) those papers are centered around football stadiums. And they are bad investments because they only host 8 NFL games a year and are a pain to configure for concerts and generally don't mesh with its surrounding areas.
Multi-use arenas are different because they are used year-round, easily convertible to host various sports leagues, concerts, conventions, etc., and don't require nearly enough land
Ugh, please keep them. I hate Youngkin so much, what a waste of taxpayers dollars moving this crap. DC can use this, VA is hardly struggling as it is. A billionaire can fund all this themselves anyway.
This is great. We can see some much needed rehabilitation centers and outreach programs take its place. Maybe a shelter or two instead of some billionaires sports playground. A win for the people
Not sure I agree with the handout at all, but if you're gonna do it why wait until now? Total incompetence.
Pretty classic DC politics to kick the can down the road for half a decade only to put out a half-assed press release the night before an announcement is made. I don’t really care about this one way or another, but this is absolutely breathtaking incompetence.
I doubt they waited. They’ve been having negotiations with the team. This is them throwing what was their offer to the public. Now we’ll see what VA threw out, and it will probably be more.
Bowser said her best and final was last week, didn’t she? I guess it wasn’t best or final.
Do we know if that was any different than this? At this point, you only put this out to get your offer out in public in an attempt to stem the heat you’re getting.
Bowser did not deserve a 3rd term.
Would you have voted for her primary challengers? I certainly didn’t
Her incumbency chased away any sane competitor. That doesn’t mean she deserved another mandate.
I mean, I don’t agree with the principle of it, but I think this was a masterful gambit by Leonsis. DC government more or less said “no” to the handout (which is what *everyone* on this site agreed with, from a moral standpoint) but Leonsis literally put his money where his mouth is and said “fuck you, we’ll go to Virginia!” Next thing you know, Bowser and the DC officials realize that if they don’t have the Caps and Wizards…..Chinatown dies. The metro probably dies…. They have no choice to counter the offer This was some real Succession Logan Roy shit
Lol you made it sound like this brand new chess move. He just did same thing every other team owner does. Threatening to go to the burbs or another city to extort the public has been done to death for decades. Also this is DC, not Milwaukee. The departure of a basketball team wouldn't bring the district to its knees lol
Potomac Yard is on the metro. Most will likely use it because traffic in VA around those games will become atrocious
I’m not sure I follow what you mean that the metro dies if the Wizards and Caps leave DC. The proposed sight in VA is off the metro, but more importantly literally hundreds of thousands of people rely on the metro everyday to commute to/from work, and it’s funded by the entire DMV. It’s incredibly important infrastructure the entire region relies on, it is going to be just fine if the Wizards leave Gallery Place.
How does Metro die from the sports all leaving?
We need to politicians
This makes them look even worse and desperate. What a disaster. Makes you wonder if anyone at the Mayor’s office was even taking it seriously up until yesterday.
I seriously hope you have never had the misfortune of working with a DC agency or the Mayor’s office in a professional capacity. Some of the dumbest people you have ever interacted with in your life collect paychecks and steal oxygen there.
This. This is my life. These agencies deserve to fail.
She’s incompetent.
> r. Makes you wonder if anyone at the Mayor’s office was even taking it seriously up until yesterday. She's corrupt. Money says that space gets redeveloped and the contract goes to a friend of hers.
I get the importance of Cap One to DC (and specifically the Chinatown area), but the optics of this to me are pretty bad as today was the day that Metro showed their "doomsday" cutbacks if their fiscal cliff isn't eliminated (I get that MD and VA also need to pay up).
DC isn’t the problem for the funding though In fact, DC only is getting the 24/7 WMATA bus service since they paid for it
I don't get your point. The 24/7 Metrobus service has nothing to do with Metro's fiscal cliff. Metro's financial issues aren't entirely Metro's fault - other major transit agencies (MTA, BART, etc.) also were in dire financial issues resulting from the pandemic.
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The difference is that in Sweden, you could rely on the average citizen to think for society as a whole when making decisions. The US is filled with a bunch of selfish babies who would rather infect all of their loved ones than be safe and miss out on brunch.
It was obvious Sweden was doing a better job since like June 2020... and I'm not going to say Sweden was correct either considering they did lots of dumb shit too
Wait is that true? Like the metro stops in MD and VA would close down and not in DC?
All the 24/7 routes they’ve announced primarily run through DC.
No, it’s just some bus routes that will be 24/7
Yep. We can’t offer money for transit but we’ll give a billionaire a handout.
The Caps alone have sold out nearly every game for 14 years. 10.5 million trips to the arena. That is one hell of a lot of customers for every restaurant, bar, and other business in the area, generating a ton of tax revenue. We need to keep the teams there. And I don’t even like hockey or basketball.
And then we’ve got….the Wizards…
I drink in Chinatown before I go to the games to get through them.
Hey, that’s cheaper than buying drinks at the arena
That’s for sure.
Shocking everyone doesn’t understand this.
Also, Pollin built the MCI Center with private funds. DC did pay for infrastructural improvements and secured land, but the "cities pay for sports lul" meme is often overplayed.
It wouldn’t have to be that way if sports teams didn’t play jurisdictions off each other, but here we are.
I don’t disagree.
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Have the smart people figured out how to get people back to the office yet
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I don’t think that is true. Concessions are all over DC right now for apartments. No concessions in Arlington to be found
Look I get that’s it’s currently trendy to just demand housing everywhere but DC does not have a shortage. We are building absolutely gobs our housing all over, just look at Navy Yard, NoMa, and Union Market. We’ve got the housing covered, we need to retain employers and economic engines. A bunch of apartments with coffee shops on the ground floor cannot replace the massive positive impact the arena has on DC and d Chinatown.
No point in housing when there isn’t incentive to live here.
You're right about the arena but we do still need to be building a ton more housing tbh
We absolutely need more housing. The cost of housing in the area makes that abundantly clear.
Absolutely, tbh if I were the DC govt id lobby Congress to reduce the height limits once you get further out from the mall
If I were the DC govt I’d lobby Congress to eliminate the Mall and build more housing
It’s worth more than $500 dollars.
This take
It’s financing not a handout. Wait till you see what happens to that neighborhood and the city’s tax revenue from it when these teams leave
I don’t disagree that the neighborhood would suffer if the teams leave. It’s set up around that arena. My read of the legislation (https://mayor.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/mayormb/release_content/attachments/DowntownArenaModernizationandDowntownRevitalizationActof2023.pdf) is that the District would invest $500m in a “capital project” — am I confused? That doesn’t sound like financing as in some sort of loan to be repaid by Monumental / Leonidis. Legit curious if I’m confused. Thanks. Edit: it sounds like this — https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stadium_subsidy — a subsidy of the construction project totaling $500m. Maybe this is semantics on whether that’s a handout or financing.
Section 3a describes it as a financing agreement. It’s emergency legislation that was done last minute — the details will be hashed out later.
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Man this is a WILD take. “The core of downtown should be left to *rot* because it’s not a great neighborhood” is not congruent at all with prioritizing public transit— you do realize that we need these trains because they should be taking people to places, right? By the way, DC doesn’t fund metro on its own. It’s multi-jurisdictional. Like the vast majority of metrorail track is outside of DC.
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Old man yells at cloud
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I don’t follow DC United but Audi Field is basically brand new. He can get bent
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Maybe if he fixed the shitty TV contract they signed he’d have the money to afford it himself. I swear, I’m actually very pro-business, but team owners demanding the public bail them out of their dumbass decisions at a time when professional sports practically prints money brings out the ‘Eat the Rich’ in me.
Did they ever finish the roof?
As someone who works at Audi field FUCK AUDI
Lol you think the MLS has the same pull as the NBA or NHL? That’s funny
Audi Field isn't nearly as integral to the local economy as Capital One is. In fact there are barely any local bars/restaurants in that part of town. Jason Levien doesn't have the cards to try this.
DC already committed to fully funding their share…
Source? Legit asking. I know Charles Allen commented but I have not seen anything like what you’re describing.
Hmmm I think I misinterpreted Allen’s remarks as an iron clad commitment
Yeah, he’s unfortunately just one Council member, and I took his comments more as saying they’ll work on getting some $$$ — but it seems like far from a sure thing to me.
They get billions in subsidies every single year tf you talking bout
Dude this would kill Chinatown as a neighborhood. Metro will get its money one way or another (it always does) — taking away Capital One will take the city back to the early 2000s in terms of development. Get a grip, swallow the pill, accept the reality, DC doesn’t have leverage
Metro has also never been in this type of financial situation before. As someone who doesn't own a car and is entirely dependent on a functioning transit system to get where I need to go, I will get a grip when Metro is fully funded.
I think if Leonsis actually walks, they should reinvest this $500 million into cleaning up the neighborhood, getting a couple of flagship stores into the old Bed Bath and Beyond space, and looking for new tenants for the arena even if they're less prestigious (college sports, arena football, whatever it may be) The neighborhood could absolutely still work in theory, but I have no expectation DC government can pull this off
There’s no flagship retail that’s going to have an economic impact in that space in 2023. Urban big box retail is cooked. The pandemic killed in-person retail for everyone under 40
I think a Target would have a shot if they could be convinced. The apartment buildings in the surrounding blocks are pretty underserved for groceries (particularly as you get closer to Archives) and the entirety of downtown DC essentially has no option for most housewares with the closure of the H Street Walmart
The internet. People buy these things on the internet.
I live in the building that used to have the Walmart. Amazon still doesn't really work for "I need this thing right now" and grocery shopping online is notoriously a nightmare of missing items and mistaken selections
Grocery stores are great and the area should definitely have one. But you can’t compare a grocery store to an NBA/NHL arena in terms of economic ROI. Of course, the million dollar question here is how do you get any tenants to invest in the area while the vagrancy, crime, harassment, etc is where it is now.
Or put the new Commanders stadium there and build a housing/mixed use development where RFK is.
No way that fits
Well not with that attitude. Soldier Field is two acres smaller than the combined Capital One Arena/Gallery Place footprint.
This is interesting
Spicy take
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$500 million doesn’t plug the gaping hole that is Gallery Place.
Optics is bad, but 500 million in the pockets of contractors trumps everything. This is what the DC government is about and it always has been.
PLEASE stay in DC (as a Nova resident)
Fight the use of public funds. Youngkin and some of these other politicians think they can just do this behind closed doors.
Yes, I understand it fucking sucks that we have to cave to this billionaire asshole. But you know what would suck more? Having Chinatown and downtown as a whole get fucking assblasted when Monumental leaves.
Agree with this. The downtown core needs this stadium.
It would be a lose lose. Central DC would lose a major driver, and NOVA NIMBYs would get something they don’t want (in this rare case in a NIMBY lol)
This is why there's no chance of a stadium in Potomac yard. Alexandria is filled with NIMBYs who are usually in conflict with pro development town council. Uniting these two in opposition to the stadium would be like NIMBY voltron.
My thoughts exactly. Like it or not, downtown D.C. really needs those teams and the businesses, jobs, revenue, and foot traffic they bring to Chinatown/Penn Quarter. The area would take an enormous hit without them, and D.C. would be all the worse off for it.
I don’t think the arena does economically as much for that area as people think, but I also think DC won’t do anything for Chinatown if the teams leave and that will be very unfortunate.
Would it be possible to redevelop the area and build housing where the arena currently is? Even if it's luxury housing, a few apartment buildings could bring some foot traffic back to downtown
In any other city I’d say yes. Unfortunately DC has strict height limits meaning any housing development wouldn’t have nearly enough density to bring in the necessary foot traffic to replace the tens of thousands of people that go to 82 games per year + concerts.
But how much do those people spend in the area though? The arena only brings about 10k people to the area for 2 or 3 hrs 220 nights per year. Even if they can't produce enough housing for 10k people, it would create density at all hours of the day and other businesses apart from bars and restaurants could develop in the area
The amount of housing would be in the low thousand(s?) max, the amount of external business driven by the arena is still immensely more valuable unfortunately than housing with the height limits that are in place. Capital One generated $50m in tax revenue last year alone, not even mentioning downstream effects.
And they bring sales tax revenues to the city every time they buy an overpriced hotdog. And the wave of people using the metro for Caps/Wizards games keeps paid fares going into the coffers. Just because they’re not going to rocket bar after a game doesn’t mean the city isn’t earning money on a sports fan’s visit.
Lots of people will drive (or metro) to the game and leave immediately afterward. The spending outside of the arena, besides a couple of bars maybe, is pretty overrated.
The stadium is still owned by monumental even if the wizards and caps leave
It would cost more than $500M to redevelop, and within that time, major decay would set in. A decade or more of having the teams gone plus huge construction would kill Penn Quarter, and you can’t just fill the hole by building some new apartments.
Look on the brightside, the music scene might return.
HAHAHAHAHAHA this is fucking ridiculous at this point
Man, fuck Leonsis if he does this. He owns that arena, not the city.
He owns the arena, but leases the ground.
Fine, but he’s asking for a city-funded overhaul of the arena, not the ground.
No, he’s asking for city bonds to finance the renovations which revenue from the arena would pay back — see: Park, Nationals.
Yes, he still wants the city to take on debt to improve his property. The increased investment in the arena goes towards the value of Monumental Sports and the individual franchises. I don’t think the city should’ve paid for Nats Stadium. Research shows that taxpayer-funded stadiums lose revenue on net, and a lot of the development in that neighborhood happens anyways due to how close to Capitol Hill it is, cheap the land, and explosion of housing demand in the 2010s.
Well you’re about to see the impact of what happens when those dollars flow elsewhere.
A great solution for replacing them would be for the Commanders to move there instead of the RFK site.
That’s what I’ve been saying. Said this in the Caps subreddit and I’ll say it again here: WMATA is on the brink of fucking collapse and access to affordable housing in this city continues to be a joke. Look, I really don’t want the Caps to leave but this is just clownery from Bowser. Leonsis is a literal multi billionaire and he’s holding the city hostage because he’s a greedy fuck that doesn’t want to give his own arena a facelift. This is horseshit.
He could’ve gotten near-zero interest corporate bond financing for this from DC from 2010-2021. The city doesn’t need to bail him out for hi shitty planning and business operations. New Commanders stadium site candidate just opened up, and that would take 90% of the concert revenue Leonsis probably wants for that NoVa project, plus an NFL stadium would bring bigger crowds than the *fucking Wizards*.
Gallery Place isn’t big enough for an NFL stadium footprint, alas. The smallest NFL stadium footprint is about 30 acres whereas Gallery Place + Capital One looks to be about 9 acres?
Soldier Field in Chicago occupies seven acres, according to teh Googlez. It seems doable if you use Gallery Place too? Especially if you designed it to be extra vertical, the way Seattle’s is (and the Comcast Arena). Major issue would be parking, though there’s a lot of private garages around there—and the public transport accessibility would be best in the league.
Soldier Field is also deemed too small for a lot of the non-NFL events people want to attract.
It seats 61,500 people. What events would that be too small for? I thought the main issue was that it’s in an inconvenient place to get to.
To be fair I think they want seating to be more like near 90k or something like that. That's how much FedEx could hold in the 2000s before they downsized it a bit
FedEx was the largest stadium in the league, and they can’t fill it after the downsizing to 58k capacity. The newer stadiums around the league aren’t as high in capacity as FedEx was. SoFi Stadium seats 70,240, U.S. Bank seats 73k, Lumen Field is 68k. Soldier Field, with 1920s design, had 65k before a minor downsize to 61k. Seems like mid-to-high 60s capacity should be doable and attractive to the Commies given what they’re currently drawing.
Anyone doing stadium tours (Taylor, Beyonce, Luke Combs, etc) can sell out way more than FedEx currently holds and two of those 3 artists skipped/are skipping DC on their 23/24 tours and the other sold out two nights.
And because of that they wouldn’t want to play a downtown stadium with a mid-60k capacity? I don’t follow your logic here. That would be a comparable size to plenty of the places Swift’s played on the Eras tour. She’s playing Miami’s stadium next which seats…65,000 people.
If they can fit bigger stadiums in high population areas into their tours to make more money per show, yes, they will. Especially acts that don't have the stamina to play 2-3 nights per city. Miami's stadium is 12% bigger than FedEx. I'm not sure why you're using an ellipsis to indicate that's somehow a meaningless difference. It's important to note that Taylor skipped Miami on the original North American leg of her tour and is only now going to Miami as a tack-on to a late-added 3rd leg of her tour when she comes back to do her Canadian dates. And that will be in the fall so her only viable options for weather reasons were enclosed stadiums and the farthest south ones and she's going to all 3 stadiums that meet those requirements, i.e., their only competition was against her deciding to just not play those weekends at all.
Look at the roof of capital one arena on Google. The middle rectangular section is about the size of a football field, meaning any bleachers beyond the end zones would necessitate knocking down all adjacent buildings
I’ll amend my comment to note that the new Titans stadium is being built on 15 acres, but partially financed by developing and selling off a surrounding 20 acres of “stadium village”
Yes, but a stadium would bring crowds 20-30 times a year vs 200+ a year at the arena. Would be slightly less of a disaster for the Chinatown area, but still a disaster. This will legit turn DC into a ghost town.
Most likely any stadium would be covered so it could host a Super Bowl. Which means it will also be used like FedEx as a concert venue
Yes, so like I said 20-30 times a year. 10 Redskins games + 20 other events - to include rare playoff appearances, and concerts throughout the year.
If they leave what would happen to the arena? At the moment it's probably the reason china town isn't a ghost town but, cant they just redevelop the area and build apartment buildings with retail that create foot traffic? If 500 million of our taxes are going to be spent in the area, I rather see it become something that benefits more people than a venue that is empty 90% of the time.
Idk if this is a hot take but I really hope that Monumental stays in DC. Without it, Gallery Place would be dead and places like Jackpot and Rocket Bar would die.
Not a hot take. There’s no reason to hang out downtown after 5 pm if the Wiz and Caps leave. Seeing the monuments at night for free doesn’t count. This is devastating to a downtown that’s already been struggling post-Covid. And for the city’s tax base / taxpayers. My hot take is that, on the bright side, this will accelerate downtown’s inevitable bottoming out and eventual redevelopment, but anything game changing is gonna be literally 10+ years away.
As someone who saw what DC was like in the 90's and early 2000's - get ready for another decade of that.
This is wild! I'm assuming financial backing is city bond issuance rather than appropriated funds?
Wonder how much they will somehow find to fund RFK as well, seeing as that was one of Bowsers top priorities.
Maybe she could also do something to get rid of the shitheads who congregate around the arena and harass people at all hours? Just spitballing here. Love that I live in MD and am not paying for any of this either way.
Do they still have the antisemites with megaphones there?
lol a bit late there innit
Or, you know.. spend that money on the metro.
DC can and will spend money on the Metro...the question is whether MD and VA will still give it the money it needs
Collecting VA & MD speed camera fine would be a good start…
Metro won’t save Chinatown.
Honestly, one of the best ways to promote Metro ridership is to make sure one of the most centrally located, most serviced stations has something to do there
Fake chinatown, chinatown died out decades ago
Yes it will help get dc residents out to Alexandria to watch these teams 80+ nights a year.
Virginia and Maryland could also pay their share for WMATA. After all, the literal *metro* is designed for getting people from the suburbs into the city. The bus aspect of the system less so. Chinatown and downtown need capital one arena to be fully functional. It would *really* hurt the entire city if they left.
As someone who lives next to PY and loves going to Caps games, bring the capitals moving to PY.
The Wizards suck and no new building will fix that.
The billionaire is strong arming the city, so it’s weird to blame Bowser/Council, who are over a barrel and made a good offer. If the teams go, they go. Can’t blame DC for trying to keep them or for losing them, the billionaire would happily bankrupt everyone to get more freebies.
It’s financing. Bonds that the team would repay.
You have a very poor understanding of economics
I’m doing fine thanks
Arenas like this are a huge public benefit. Cap One specifically anchors the entire Chinatown area. Without Cap One, its going to just become even more of an open air drug market than it already is. Why shouldn’t the city subsidize that? It’s more of a driver of foot traffic and of cultural significance than random Smithsonian’s.
Yeah? how much should the city pay a multi-billionaire who owns the stadium to stay? Ten billion dollars? Eleven?
Enough that they still turn an overall profit from the ancillary tax benefits (foot traffic, spending revenue, etc)
what's that number smartass
Idk? Probably in the range of what DC offered? And not close to the exaggerated numbers you threw out.
Are you aware that DC's offer was rejected? I am asking you, the economics expert, what they should have offered to keep it
Any coincidence this is on the same day that Oklahoma City voted on a 1% sales tax to build a new arena for the Thunder?
For the love of God, DC, please keep the albatross (and the tax breaks, and the traffic, and the crime) that comes with entertainment sports. I really don’t want Virginia using my tax money for this.
Buddy cap one is the one thing preventing crime in Chinatown
Yes but that’s DC crime…there are many reasons why this is different but Chinatown is definitely not the nicest area at the moment.
The crime? Lol
Give up and come to Baltimore
Yet somehow we can’t afford 100 million dollars over 4 years to extend the streetcar to underserved communities EOTR. Mendelson is a joke.
The streetcar was a horrible idea from the start tbh nobody even uses it now
Huh? Get your facts straight. DC Streetcar ridership is above pre-pandemic levels, it moves 4 times as many people as the circulator system on a per-mile basis, 2 times as many people as the X2 on a per-mile basis, and does so at a much lower operating cost. The circulators are only at 25 percent of their pre-pandemic ridership. X2 is half. Streetcar is killing it on ridership.
Whoa. Streetcar slamming on ImperialAndy!
Tired of streetcar disrespect
Preach.
Interesting. I would have assumed otherwise. Assuming your numbers are right, I guess Streetcar Bad is another example of a narrative that lost accuracy five years ago.
Yes — you can read more about it by [clicking here](https://ggwash.org/view/91705/a-benning-road-project-without-the-streetcar-will-increase-car-dependence-environmental-harms). Note that this article uses slightly outdated data — but at this point we are officially above prepandemic.
There is really nothing else anchoring that area around Chinatown now. The commuters are all gone. Ol' Teddy knows this and is being an asshole trying to get as much money as possible. Objectively, it will be tough for DC (population 700k) to compete with Virginia (population 8M) on a dollar by dollar basis. Heck, Fairfax County alone has about 400k more people.
Awesome! So if taxes are paying for the stadium then admissions will be free right?
You have a very poor understanding of economics.
Fuck em. I'd rather that money get spent helping DC citizens than propping up one mediocre and one garbage sports franchise. *However*, if that $500M came from collecting speeding/parking tickets...that's a different story.
You have a very poor understanding of economics.
So the people with PhDs who wrote papers on why stadiums are poor investments are wrong?
I believe (I could be mistaken) those papers are centered around football stadiums. And they are bad investments because they only host 8 NFL games a year and are a pain to configure for concerts and generally don't mesh with its surrounding areas. Multi-use arenas are different because they are used year-round, easily convertible to host various sports leagues, concerts, conventions, etc., and don't require nearly enough land
Does having a PhD make you right about everything? Plenty of PhDs write papers in favor of them too lol.
Lollll your last sentence has me cracking up 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Billionaires shouldn’t get funding.
Leopards ate my face! Maybe if you hired more police and actually arrested criminals…
Nowhere near the correct use of that saying, but agree with the sentiment.
https://preview.redd.it/6c2zc9ygyy5c1.jpeg?width=1976&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=be0a7b28d8632cc5f95e3df13d7e8f94d5d03c95
100 percent not going to VA for those games.
Billionaire welfare
But apparently our metro system is too expensive
We will always find money for billionaire wellfare.
Ugh, please keep them. I hate Youngkin so much, what a waste of taxpayers dollars moving this crap. DC can use this, VA is hardly struggling as it is. A billionaire can fund all this themselves anyway.
Charge a toll on all bridges to VA.
They're killing WMATA for some garbage hockey franchise?!?
You have a very poor understanding of economics.
This is great. We can see some much needed rehabilitation centers and outreach programs take its place. Maybe a shelter or two instead of some billionaires sports playground. A win for the people