Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser on Sunday authored an opinion column offering reasons why Monumental Sports and Entertainment should abandon its plans to move to Alexandria, Virginia, where Governor Glenn Youngkin is working with the General Assembly to build a new entertainment complex for the Washington Wizards and Capitals.
Bowser revealed the offer made to keep the sports teams in the district, stressed the city’s ownership position over the Capital One Arena property and outlined a series of concerns about the possible move.
The mayor confirmed, “We intend to keep our end of the bargain and enforce our leases with Monumental that require the Wizards and Capitals to play at the arena through 2047 and the Mystics to play in Congress Heights through 2037” in her letter.
She conceded the company could break the lease, and acknowledged “the short-term impact will be tough,” but stressed the city’s ownership of the property.
The mayor acknowledged “post-covid work changes have meant fewer workers occupying downtown and suburban offices alike” but claimed the decline “has not hindered” the success of the Wizards or Capitals.
She also referred to the planned 18-minute move from the Capital One Arena in Washington, D.C. to the Potomac Yards in Virginia as the type of “broken promise” citizens of the have become “familiar” with from major companies, and claimed it would “interrupt Reagan national Airport traffic on game days” and suggested it is “not the moment to ask the airport to adjust flight patterns and schedules” to accommodate games in Alexandria.
Bowser posted an excerpt of her column to X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, where she stressed the loss of the teams “will be tough, not only on the neighborhood, but on our entire city.”
If Monumental goes ahead and breaks its leases, the short-term impact will be tough, not only on the neighborhood, but on our entire city. But let me be clear: The city owns the land under the Capital One Arena and will own the building, should Monumental Sports break its lease.
— Mayor Muriel Bowser (@MayorBowser) February 11, 2024
Though Bowser acknowledged issues in the Chinatown neighborhood where the arena was built, she did not specifically mention the increase in crime the area experienced in 2023.
In December, it was revealed public safety deteriorated to the point where a local business threatened to leave unless the “very challenging operating environment” improved. After the complaint surfaced, the business claimed the safety situation was improving, but expressed concerns about the departure of the Wizards and Capitals.
Meanwhile in Virginia, the governor has received tentative bipartisan support for the arena project in Alexandria.
Virginia Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell (D-Richmond) filed SB 718 in January to form an authority to oversee how the arena is financed and managed, and a collection of Democratic and Republican lawmakers have expressed optimism about seeing the project through.
Just days later, however, State Senator L. Louise Lucas (D-Portsmouth) predicted in a post on X that Democrats will stop cooperating with Youngkin unless he approves their legislation dictating a $15 per hour minimum wage by 2026.
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Tom Pappert is the lead reporter for The Tennessee Star, and also reports for The Georgia Star News, The Virginia Star, and The Arizona Sun Times. Follow Tom on X/Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Mayor Muriel Bowser” by Mayor Muriel Bowser.
