We’ve heard from lawmakers in both DC and Virginia, opponents and proponents on both sides, and even a few folks within Monumental Sports & Entertainment – but now, it’s time to hear from the big man himself!
Ted Leonsis joined the Junkies Thursday to discuss MSE staying in DC, and what we learned is that the past is now in the past, and the group intends to learn from it as they look forward to a future in DC.
“I'm a businessman and then we own sports teams, and we got caught into something beyond us that had nothing to do with business or sports,” Leonsis said. “The mayor really did a great job in sticking with it and basically saying you should stay here and let's work as a partnership, and I'm only looking forward now. I really look at the four months that we were working in Virginia as a learning lesson, certainly, for us. I hope everything works out great for the people in Alexandria and Potomac Yards and Virginia, but now we're looking at what do we do in downtown DC, and we're starting to get very, very excited about the potential of how we can create an expanded entertainment center downtown, and use Capital One Arena as kind of the anchor for that community. We can expand up outside around the building, work in partnership with some of the local real estate companies and restaurants to try to restart downtown DC, which is one of the main drivers for the mayor and the city council and their agenda. We need to have a thriving downtown with people moving back into the community, and we need people dining and shopping downtown. It’s good for the whole city, because it generates revenue and tax dollars for the city which it then can use for the rest of the city's benefit. So, this is a very straightforward relationship, and we're moving forward together.”
There’s a plan being developed now for when and how to start the updates to Capital One Arena, and it’s right now similar to what they planned to do in Virginia in applying the money available to the land available and going from there.
“We have a lot of work to do immediately for the players here at Capital One Arena. If you've been downstairs, you know how tight it is – like any home that's 25-30 years old, you outgrow it, so we need better locker rooms and training facilities downstairs,” Leonsis said. “We need to accommodate the visiting teams in a much better way; it’s kind of embarrassing that just trying to get into the loading dock, you can't drive down or make U-turns, and there’s product all over the place. We just need space.”
Fortuitously for them, tenants next door went bankrupt, so after some logistical challenges, space became available when the city bought the building and decided to work with MSE.
“We can take some space there, move a lot of the stuff that's kind of back of the house and open up so that we can build more space for the players and their families downstairs, and also the media,” Leonsis said. “We were rated the worst media center in the league, and that just happens over time because the buildings get older. While we were making hundreds of millions of dollars of investments, it's hard to take that infrastructure and expand it. So we have that opportunity now, and for fans, you look at the data over the last 25 years and people want to be closer to the action and have better sightlines. So we have to find ways to reconfigure the seating and be able to open up some of the hallways and the ways for people to get in and out of the building, which will be hard, but safety and security is very important to us, and being able to do that and build new infrastructure for higher speed technology as well.”
Leonsis is hopeful Cap One can also become a more popular venue for concerts and non-sports shows, which now also require more space than ever, so ‘we'll work together for everyone to make sure that the money that we're spending, and it'll be a sizable investment, can be very much like what’s happened elsewhere’ – but it won’t be quick.
“It’s a real challenge to do it in a very small footprint, so it's gonna take probably four years,” Leonsis said. “We have to keep playing the games, so we'll be doing it during the summers.”
Take a listen above to Leonsis’ entire visit, which goes into some WNBA games moving Cap One and potential upgrades for the Entertainment Sports Arena, the Wizards’ rebuild, and more!