The Wizards and Capitals are staying in DC, and staying in Chinatown.
DC Mayor Muriel Bowser and City Council Chair Phil Mendelson announced Wednesday evening, in a press conference with Ted Leonsis, that the District of Columbia has pledged $515 million to Monumental Sports & Entertainment to refurbish Capital One Arena, keeping the teams in their current location, and provide additional opportunities in the area.
That sum will be appropriated over three years from the capital budget as ‘a commitment to keep Monumental here and have a world class facility.’
“This is a day that has been a long time coming. The Mayor submitted today, to the Council, legislation for the Council to vote on this Tuesday, to approve $515 million in the capital budget,” Mendelson said. “I want to thank Ted Leonsis for working with us and being willing to continue to be a partner.
When the Mayor sent the bill down in December, every member of the Council co-sponsored it, and I’m really glad this day has come.”
“We’re continuing to invest in catalytic business that will bring the District all the way back. We are growing jobs in Washington DC and our tourism is rebounding, and we are working together to drive crime down in all categories,” Mayor Bowser said. “We came together several months ago and said we’re gonna fight for our teams, and we put together an offer good for both the teams and Washington DC, and we will stand up to our commitment to pledge $500 million to the total transformation of Capital One Arena. We have also identified additional opportunities to expand their footprint here in downtown, and we’re also going to invest $15 million in that – and as Ted likes to say, we’re going to be together for a long time! Our agreement allows us to be partners at least through 2050.”
Leonsis then took the podium and said he was relieved – and revealed, in a veiled shot at the press, that he and the Mayor have been meeting weekly since December to talk turkey.
“It’s a great day and I’m really relieved. The Mayor and Phil deserve all the credit – I had a difficult conversation with them and said we can still be friends, let’s take the high road, I haven’t signed anything, and you never know how things are going to end,” Leonsis said. “The Mayor reached out to me, and then we started having our dates – we have the worst investigative reporting structure anywhere, because we would go pretty much every week to the main couch in the lobby at the Waldorf, and we would talk about the vision for the city and how we would reimagine being in this together – and the amount of work that has been done since December is extraordinary.”
Leonsis mentioned the city's $400 million pledge to downtown and the new crime law, which he looked at as ‘putting a flag in the ground about quality of life and business,' and that Chinatown is important to the city - and that's where he also took a veiled shot at Virginia.
"We convene lots of people - this month of March, we'll bring 400,000 people to downtown, the most we've ever brought in," Leonsis said. "I worry about people and how they get here, and I really got the sense that everyone wants to band together to make this the greatest downtown. I felt we were really in a good partnership - as opposed to where I THOUGHT we would have a good partnership."
The news was expected after both Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin and Alexandria Mayor Justin Wilson put out statements earlier Wednesday about the situation, with Youngkin’s putting heat on the Virginia lawmakers who killed the Potomac Yard deal.
"Virginians deserve better. A one-of-a-kind project bringing world-class athletes and entertainment, creating 30,000 jobs and $12 billion in economic activity just went up in smoke," the Governor said in a statement. "I’d like to thank Ted Leonsis and the Monumental team, the City of Alexandria, JBG Smith and countless other partners for their professionalism, belief in Virginia and fortitude. Congratulations to Monumental for striking a great deal, I’m sorry you won’t be in Virginia."
That dream of a Potomac Yard arena unofficially ended earlier this year when the Virginia State Senate refused to put language for a bill to manage funding for the entity into the state budget, and officially died Wednesday afternoon when Youngkin released that statement, along with Mayor Wilson’s.
“The City of Alexandria has ended negotiations related to the Potomac Yard Entertainment District opportunity and the proposal will not move forward.” Wilson said in a statement posted on the city government website. “As stewards of the City’s economic health and development, City leaders believed the Potomac Yard Entertainment District opportunity was worthy of community discussion and Council consideration. We negotiated a framework for this opportunity in good faith and participated in the process in Richmond in a way that preserved our integrity. We trusted this process and are disappointed in what occurred between the Governor and General Assembly.”
Ted Leonsis had also said that MSE had been talking to Maryland about a new arena area, and there were rumors some Virginia lawmakers would try to get an arena/casino combo in Fairfax County, but neither of those reports were ever corroborated by more than one official source.