David Aldridge is a DC guy through and through, and he’s the one guy Grant Paulsen was waiting to hear weigh in on the Monumental move to Virginia – and after reading Aldridge’s column Thursday morning, G&D decided to have Aldridge on to further explain that indeed, this week was maybe good for Ted Leonsis and Virginia, but a bad, bad one for Washington DC.
“I think it’s clear that it's just not a good day for my hometown. It’s okay for any owner of any sports team to do what they think is best for their business, it’s their team and there’s nothing I can do about it, so I don’t begrudge any owner if they’ve tried everything to move,” Aldridge said. “But, that doesn’t mean I have to like it, and it doesn't mean I have to think it's good for the city, because it's not good for the city.”
Aldridge is a national name but is a District native and worked in DC for parts of five decades now, and he saw first-hand what Chinatown was, and then turned into, around the move into the city.
“The modern era of Washington DC was kicked off with the construction of MCI Center by Abe Pollin in the 1990s; I’m from here and worked in downtown DC in 1980s, and I know what it was like when there was no business in the downtown area late at night and there was nobody around,” Aldridge said.
“It was not good, but when Abe built that building, it changed everything about DC and about the downtown Corridor, and the types of businesses, housing, and buildings that would be built down there going forward for the next 25 years. Everything started with that, and the anchor was the MCI Center, now Capital One Arena – and the Wizards and Capitals are the cornerstones of that building, there 100 out of the 300 nights it’s open, so leaving will cause tremendous damage to the DC community."
Aldridge gets the era of “sports districts” like Atlanta and Los Angeles have built, and while again, he understands business owners wanting what they want, why can’t it go both ways?
“I don't think it's unfair to ask people who get a lot out of their relationship with the city that they live in to have some sort of understanding that their presence in the city is important,” Aldridge said. “It was remarkable what Abe Pollin did, but why can't somebody else make the same sort of move and say, ‘hey, I'm going to do something for the community and for the city that doesn't directly make me richer.’ This is the time that Washington DC needs you to step up amidst the damage of what COVID has done, and it would have been nice for Ted Leonsis to do a deal that's not the absolute best deal for him, but will be good for the city that he really cares about.”
Especially, he says, given the way the Wizards have been branded as of late.
“I think it's a little odd that you would spend the last two years in every extension of your brand as a basketball team making everything say District of Columbia, rep the District of Columbia, and you’re LEAVING the District of Columbia!” Aldridge exhorted. “To me, as a citizen and resident of the District of Columbia, that’s a bit incongruous, and it leads me to believe that you don't really mean what you say about the District of Columbia because you're leaving.”
Take a listen to Aldridge’s entire impassioned call-in above!
