Barry Svrluga wasn’t the one who broke the news Monday of the initial vote(s) about a possible arena in Alexandria, nor did he break the news that Ted Leonsis will be at the site Wednesday.
He has, however, been all over the impact side of things, and when he joined Grant & Danny Wednesday after Michael Neibauer had broken the latter news above, Svrluga was fresh off a column that sad the Caps and Wiz have plenty of reasons to move to Virginia…and they’re all sad.
And unfortunately, even he, now more than ever, believes it’s a distinct possibility.
“I've heard rumblings about this for months obviously, so this is not something that just dropped out of the sky yesterday, and you’re going to hear I believe tomorrow there are renderings for a facility, so it’s not fabricated,” Svrluga said. “People are spending time, money, and effort to put thought into this project. I very much hoped and thought for a long time that it was leverage against the District, Ted and his people wanting to put pressure on the city to get the $600 million that they've asked for to upgrade Capital One Arena, but now I believe it’s more, and part of me thinks Ted Leonsis wants to move there. This is more than just song and dance, there’s real substance to it, and I find it distressing.”
In part because as a DC resident and employee, Svrluga knows what Chinatown looked like before Capital One Arena was built, and if you take that away, “something that’s a borderline ghost town now becomes even more so, and I just think it's a bad deal for the city.”
It’s clear Leonsis wants either money to refurbish his current arena or someone to help pay for a new one, while DC has more fish to fry than just his – so is there a bad guy here?
“In these situations, you want to point fingers and blame, but I would say I don't blame Ted Leonsis for looking for the best deal for his teams,” Svrluga said. “I also think simultaneously the best deal for his teams may not be the best deal for the residents of this area. I want the arena and the teams to remain in the district, but I also haven’t heard in the 24 hours since this broke a bunch of Alexandria residents saying, ‘yeah, bring it on, we want it, we want the traffic that would come with it.’ I don’t blame Ted for doing what he thinks is right for his team, and that includes the potential for practice facilities down there, and getting these two franchises that are kind of scattered around the region right now under one state of the art roof.”
But what about the DC government?
“I will say, and this is not just me saying this, as I’ve talked to people who believe Mayor Bowser has been at least distracted, and perhaps negligent, in terms of tending to the needs of Monumental Sports,” Svrluga said. “She really, really wants the football team in the District, like she would want part of her legacy to be the mayor that brought the NFL team back to where it belongs at the RFK site. I’m not into handouts for billionaires, and I think that some of this kind of corporate welfare that sports franchises expect is a little bit sickening, but I do think it's possible that she took her eye off the ball that got Ted a little bit out of joint, and now we have a situation where, at worst, the teams have some leverage against the District if they want to keep those franchises.”
Grant himself is not a DC taxpayer (nor is Danny anymore), but he thinks the mayor may have made a mistake flirting with the Commanders before really dealing with Monumental, because now, “it is impossible to explain, in my opinion, how big of a deal it is to all the businesses in that area that the Caps and the Wizards stay there,” and “it’s a death knell to that area of the city for a decade or so or more while they build it back up.”
“I’m with you, but I do think what you have here, and at Nationals Park, are examples of how this corporate welfare works,” Svrluga said. “I don’t think you can draw a straight line between the Navy Yard development that’s been astronomical in the last 15 years and the then-MCI Center revitalizing Chinatown, but you can't tell me that those neighborhoods develop the same way without those athletic facilities.”
The main difference, Svrluga says, between paying for buildings like that versus a football stadium?
“There’s a fundamental difference between an NFL stadium that, realistically if you're, if you're using that thing 30 times a year, you're doing a heck of a job, and a two-sport arena like Capital One which, when you throw in Georgetown and concerts and all that other stuff, you're probably getting 200 nights,” Svrluga said. “Nats Park, you're getting 100 when you throw in concerts and then the Christmas stuff, so it's just different than an NFL stadium.I agree that Chinatown post-pandemic is kind of hanging by a thread anyway, but in a visceral way, you strip those two teams out of there, and it's possible that neighborhood falls off a cliff to the pre-1997 days.”
Take a listen to Svrluga’s entire segment above, which includes thoughts on how the move isn’t THAT far for many, how much DC pride or the notion of how the money can help other District residents plays into things, renovation vs. rebuild mentality, and more!