The Virginia State Senate killed their bill, but the House of Delegates passed theirs by a 59-40 vote to move forward an idea to create an authority that would fund the debt of the new Monumental campus in Alexandria and be in charge of bonding and financing.
Still many hurdles to go of course, but there’s opposition from the state legislature all the way down to grassroots efforts – and that’s why The Junkies brought in Andrew Macdonald, the founder of the Coalition to Stop the Arena at Potomac Yard, to get that perspective.
Macdonald grew up in Alexandria and was the Vice Mayor at one time, so he’s invested in the community, but not in this endeavor.
“Most people were quite surprised when the announcement was made in early-December – there may have been a little news about it in the past, but nobody thought that was the type of development that would occur in Potomac Yard,” Macdonald said. “It was presented as if it was a done deal, but everybody wanted to step back and have a say in all this.”
Macdonald has called Potomac Yard ‘a terrible location’ for a venue, citing the traffic and transportation issues that will arise, and how those are ‘difficult problems to solve’ – that being his biggest reason for not wanting the build, along with, of course, the financial aspect for taxpayers.
“The amount of tax dollars that will go in to build this is one of the largest public subsidies for this kind of facility in U.S. history, but by and large, sports just don’t generate a great economic benefit,” Macdonald said. “The general consensus of sports economists is that stadiums are not very good economic generators, and are a poor public investment. Once you start putting in several hundreds of millions of dollars, the economic benefits just drop off. The idea it will producer all these jobs and economic benefits, these studies are all basically PR studies; they haven’t been willing to release any of the economic reports to the public, so it’s hard to review all their claims.
So, the general feeling is show us the info, and if it’s true, we’ll let people decide on the merits of that – but so far, they just say trust us, and we don’t.”
It’s also unclear how property values near the area would go up (and how many folks that matters to), although Alexandria is expensive as is, and the Coalition would rather DC spend the money to keep status quo.
“It’s nice that it’s in DC, because you have all the development around it and the Mayor is willing to kick in $500 million, but for us, it’s the traffic and finances, and the community hasn’t really had a say,” Macdonald said. “That seems, to us, a much better use of dollars, and better for the fans, too. I think things are turning and this project will be defeated in the legislature, and Monumental will hopefully invest in DC.”