WASHINGTON — The Prince of Potomac Yard spoke of water.
“Once I first got here to this web site,” Ted Leonsis stated Wednesday, “and stood on prime of the roof of the constructing subsequent door, and regarded over, we overlook the ability of getting two rivers move proper into this neighborhood. And, iconic actual property is extremely essential. We’ve got entry — you’ll be able to see the Washington Monument from right here, Washington, D.C., the border’s one-and-a-half miles from right here.”
That have to be cool! So good that the billionaire proprietor of the Wizards and Capitals may have a swank view of the Potomac and Anacostia confluence from his soon-to-be floor-wide places of work in Alexandria, the place he’ll heart his leisure and sports activities empire. It will be unfair to say he actually can be trying down upon the people who find themselves financing his JerryWorld, his BallmerVille, in Crystal Metropolis, or Nationwide Touchdown, or no matter identify they like for his or her neighborhood throughout the river. However it will likely be a swell view.
It’s, nonetheless, a view for one, for an viewers of 1. Which, ultimately, is how anybody who cares about and loves the District of Columbia ought to view this seemingly imminent departure of the Wizards and Capitals for Virginia.
A few of us are sufficiently old to recollect the “carried out deal” between Jack Kent Cooke and Virginia state representatives from a era in the past on that exact same property for a brand new soccer stadium that got here aside like cotton sweet. So, perhaps, the Virginia Basic Meeting will elevate objections to this new undertaking that can be too nice to beat. Perhaps NIMBYs in Alexandria will make their voices loud and annoying sufficient to power reconsideration.
However, I doubt it.
“Maintain me accountable,” Leonsis stated Wednesday. OK.
That is about one man’s grandiosity, and readiness to depart when town that has offered him a lot during the last a long time wanted somebody together with his voice and affect to say, post-COVID, and post-Jan. 6, and which is grappling with crime outbursts all through town which have so many unwell comfy, “ what? Some issues could also be dangerous right here proper now. However I’m blessed sufficient to be financially safe sufficient to journey it out with you. I need to be a part of the answer. So, I’ll be barely much less wealthy. I’m staying.”
Don’t inform me wealthy males don’t do that. That’s exactly what Abe Pollin did, when he constructed what’s now known as Capital One Enviornment downtown, reworking town, in 1997 — largely together with his personal cash.
Against this, Leonsis went for the bucks. Which, as I’ve stated and written dozens of occasions through the years, house owners of professional sports activities groups are completely inside their rights to do. They will play wherever they need their groups to play. They will make no matter offers line their pockets, and permit them to create the form of multi-use “leisure districts” that may convey the well-heeled and well-connected to their new playgrounds. Nobody doubts that Virginia will construct Leonsis a state-ahead-of-the-art enviornment to be envied and admired.
However, it will likely be arduous to take at face worth any future discuss from Leonsis about his love of the District.
As a result of he is aware of how the Wizards, regardless of their present lot, imply to generations of basketball followers in D.C. I’m nicely conscious that the Wizards had been as soon as the Bullets, who as soon as performed in Baltimore — and, earlier than that, Chicago. I’m nicely conscious of the historical past of franchise roulette, in lots of cities, with many groups. That doesn’t imply it doesn’t harm, deeply, when your staff leaves city. When the Senators left, first, for Minnesota — after which, when the staff that changed them left for Texas, it harm this metropolis, badly. A few of us then adopted the Orioles, as a result of they had been the closest staff. We didn’t love them.
And when the then-Redskins left for Landover, Md. despite the fact that it was just some miles from the D.C. line, it felt terrible. It nonetheless does.
Add this to the ledger.
As a result of Leonsis is aware of, greater than anybody, that the crowds who come to Wizards video games, and have come to them for the final 25 years, are among the many most various within the NBA – racially, economically, socially. Perhaps Atlanta has comparable sorts of crowds for Hawks video games. A lot of the league’s buildings, nowadays, are once more full, post-COVID. However, in the primary, their fan bases are very White and really wealthy. That hasn’t been the case right here since I began protecting the staff, then taking part in at Capital Centre in Landover, within the late ’80s. Wizards crowds appear like the District — at the least the way it used to look. They won’t achieve this when the staff strikes throughout the river.
(I’m not mentioning the Capitals’ crowds as a result of the Caps repeatedly offered out Capital One. Caps followers have represented for almost twenty years. I can’t then think about they gained’t proceed to take action in Virginia.)
Each proprietor swears that his or her fanbase will comply with the staff “simply down the street” to the brand new place. The Warriors swore that gentle rail and specific transportation would imply most of their middle-class followers would come from Oakland, throughout San Francisco Bay, and comply with the staff to the brand new Chase Middle in downtown San Francisco.
They didn’t.
To make certain, Chase is full — however not with the individuals who crammed what’s now known as Oakland Enviornment for 3 a long time. You need to pay for a $2 billion enviornment; you don’t achieve this with $15 tickets. You do it with six-figure suites and five-figure courtside seats. As John Salley, who gained 4 championships again within the day taking part in for the Pistons, Bulls and Lakers, famous when the Pistons moved from downtown Detroit 31 miles north to the Palace of Auburn Hills within the late ’80s: “We used to play in entrance of the auto staff. Now we play in entrance of the executives.”
Will probably be unimaginable to overlook what now appears like appropriation of town’s tradition, by nicknaming Washington’s G-League staff the Capital Metropolis Go-Go, and centering D.C. at each alternative – plastering “For the District” and “The District of Columbia” in your Twitter feeds and the jerseys of Wizards gamers, or hawking this yr’s alternate jerseys with breathless historical past concerning the metropolis’s Boundary Stones, or slapping “D.C.” on caps and clothes — solely to stroll away from all of that, for the lover deal throughout the river, your Braves New World.
And if there’s any fact to the reporting that Leonsis was irritated by teenage children performing … Go-Go music, outdoors of Capital One? Nicely, it’s arduous to know methods to course of that. Buskers? That’s a difficulty?? Good Lord.
(After this was initially revealed, I used to be knowledgeable that Leonsis’ subject isn’t with the road musicians who carry out in entrance of Capital One on occasion nights, however there’s a priority about one individual specifically who has been aggressive with passersby, each in entrance of the sector and different companies close by.)
When you’re not from right here, you might not perceive why a Wizards/Capitals transfer to Virginia is particularly troublesome for D.C. residents to just accept. It’s simply 4 miles away from Capital One, Leonsis stated Wednesday.
It feels just like the Grand Canyon, psychically.
First, site visitors. The dance of placing a 20,000-seat enviornment, observe facility, and new eating places/leisure venues into an space surrounded by Reagan Nationwide Airport, Amazon II and a big, busy mall, with many incoming and surrounding roads which can be presently one- or two-laners, is daunting. Sources concerned with the discussions stated Wednesday that vital enhancements to the roads surrounding the proposed web site, together with elevated light- and heavy-rail companies, are a part of the deal. Will probably be, nonetheless, a for much longer commute for a lot of — in the event that they choose to come back.
Will followers who’ve taken a 30-45-minute Metro journey from the Maryland suburbs to Gallery Place downtown be keen so as to add one other 20-Half-hour of driving time spherical journey to get to and from Alexandria? For 7 p.m. begins for Wizards or Caps video games?
Second … nicely, put it like this. The way in which that many Virginia residents really feel about coming into the District for an evening out, once they have One Loudoun or Reston City Middle accessible, closer-in? District residents really feel the identical means about going out to Alexandria for an evening out, when we’ve Penn Quarter or Columbia Heights or NoMa to patronize. You don’t really feel secure arising right here? Many people don’t really feel secure going on the market. You could have your causes. We’ve got ours.
It simply appears like, once more, the District’s been kicked within the abdomen – blamed, as a result of COVID minimize the variety of places of work working downtown down like a scythe, leaving eating places and bars with fewer patrons for lunch or dinner. Make no mistake, although: Mayor Muriel Bowser takes a Massive L right here. Her job was to forestall one thing like this from occurring, as a result of you’ll be able to’t change the Caps and Wizards, and the power they’ve delivered to downtown. I do know it was troublesome to search out the form of cash wanted to maintain Leonsis from wanderlust. That, nevertheless, is the job. They can not go away in your watch. They’re leaving on hers.
I don’t doubt that the choice was troublesome, perhaps even painful, for Leonsis. It will have been thus useful to him to precise what he was feeling Wednesday to reporters who requested to talk with him after the press convention, moderately than rebuff them. And he and his staff have concepts for methods to rework Capital One, now free of having to cross off dozens of potential days on the calendar yearly for Wizards and Capitals video games, to maintain the constructing busy most of the time. Ice exhibits. Live shows. Actions in tandem with the D.C. Conference Middle, and/or Occasions D.C. The return of the Mystics to Capital One, after taking part in on the Leisure and Sports activities Enviornment in Southeast. (Talking of which: what precisely does Leonsis plan to do, now, with ESA, about which he spoke so grandly, just some years in the past?)
However, nothing replaces a sports activities staff in a metropolis’s soul. Nothing.
one of many massive causes I got here to The Athletic in 2018? I used to be in San Francisco within the spring of that yr, watching the Capitals play the Penguins within the Japanese Convention semifinals, in my lodge room, whereas protecting the Warriors and Rockets. When you’re from D.C., you knew, whether or not you Rocked the Pink on the common or not, how massive a ache within the butt the Penguins had been to the Caps for a decade, how desperately Alex Ovechkin and Nicklas Bäckström needed, wanted, to beat Sidney Crosby and the Pens. It was City Enterprise.
So when Evgeny Kuznetsov scored on that breakaway time beyond regulation aim to seal the collection over the Penguins, and the published minimize to the cheering crowds outdoors of Capital One, in Penn Quarter, deliriously glad, and younger, and various, having lastly slain the beast, it did one thing to me. I stated to myself, in that lodge room, “have a look at how glad town is. That’s superior. I’d wish to be part of chronicling that.”
And I used to be, as I witnessed first-hand the Nationals profitable the World Collection, and the Mystics profitable the WNBA title behind “Playoff Emma,” inside weeks of each other in 2019. And the enjoyment that these franchises delivered to my hometown was immeasurable, and eternally.
I really like this metropolis, my metropolis. And my metropolis was wounded, grievously so, Wednesday morning, when women and men on the opposite facet of the river toasted their success, their deal nicely carried out, and didn’t appear to provide a rattling concerning the ache left behind.
(Picture of Ted Leonsis and Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin: Win McNamee / Getty Photos)
