Aldridge: “For the district?” Yes correct; Ted Leonsis will bring Wizards, Capitals Fear across the river

WASHINGTON – The Prince of Potomac Yard talked about water.

“When I first came to this place,” Ted Leonsis said Wednesday, “and I stood on the roof of the building next door and looked at it, we forget the power of two rivers flowing directly into this community. And iconic real estate is incredibly important. We have access – you can see the Washington Monument from here, Washington, D.C., the border is a mile away.”

That must be cool! So nice that the billionaire owner of the Wizards and Capitals will have sweeping views of the confluence of the Potomac and Anacostia from his soon-to-open office space in Alexandria, where he will focus his entertainment and sports empire. It would be unfair to say that literal will look down on the people who fund his JerryWorld, his BallmerVille, in Crystal City, or National Landing, or whatever name they choose for their community across the river. But it will be a great view.

It is nevertheless a vision for one, for an audience of one. Ultimately, that’s how anyone who cares and loves the District of Columbia should view this seemingly impending departure of the Wizards and Capitals to Virginia.

Some of us are old enough to remember the “done deal” between Jack Kent Cooke and Virginia state representatives a generation ago over that same site for a new football stadium that fell apart like cotton candy. So perhaps the Virginia General Assembly will raise objections to this new project, which will be too big to overcome. Maybe NIMBYs in Alexandria will make their voices loud and obnoxious enough to force reconsideration.

But I doubt it.

“Hold me accountable,” Leonsis said Wednesday. OK.

This is about one man’s greatness and willingness to leave when the city that has offered him so much over the decades needed someone with his voice and influence to say: post-COVID and post-Jan. 6, and who struggles with crime outbreaks throughout the city that make so many people uncomfortable: “You know what? Some things might be bad here right now. But I am blessed enough to be financially secure enough to venture out with you. I want to be part of the solution. So I will be a little less rich. I stay.”

Don’t tell me rich men don’t do this. That’s exactly what Abe Pollin did when he built the so-called Capital One Arena downtown in 1997 and transformed the city — largely with his own money.

Leonsis, on the other hand, went for the money. And as I’ve said and written dozens of times over the years, owners of professional sports teams are perfectly within their rights to do so. They can play wherever they want their teams to play. They can make any deals that line their pockets, and allow them to create the kind of multi-use “entertainment districts” that will bring the affluent and well-connected to their new playgrounds. No one doubts that Virginia will build Leonsis a state-of-the-art arena that will be envied and admired.

But it will be difficult to take future conversations from Leonsis about his love for the District at face value.

Knowing what the Wizards, regardless of their current fate, mean to generations of basketball fans in DC, I am acutely aware that the Wizards were once the Bullets, who once played in Baltimore – and before that, Chicago. I am well aware of the history of franchise roulette, in many cities, with many teams. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt deeply when your team leaves town. When the Senators first left for Minnesota – and then the team that replaced them left for Texas, it seriously hurt this city. Some of us then followed the Orioles because they were the closest team. We didn’t like them.

And when the then-Redskins left for Landover, Maryland, even though it was just a few miles from the DC line, it felt terrible. It still does.

Add this to the ledger.

Because Leonsis knows better than anyone that the crowds that come to Wizards games, and have done so for 25 years, are among the most diverse in the NBA – racially, economically and socially. Maybe Atlanta has a similar kind of crowd for Hawks games. Most of the league’s buildings are full again these days, post-COVID. But generally their fans are very white and very wealthy. That hasn’t been the case here since I started covering the team in the late ’80s when I played at Capital Center in Landover. The wizard crowds look like the District – at least the way it used to look. They won’t if the team crosses the river.

(I’m not mentioning the Capitals crowd because the Caps regularly sell out Capital One. Caps fans have been represented for almost two decades, so I can’t imagine they won’t continue to do so in Virginia.)

Each owner vows that his or her fan base will follow the team “just down the road” to the new place. The Warriors vowed that light rail and rapid transit would mean most of their middle-class fans would come from Oakland, across the Bay from San Francisco, and follow the team to the new Chase Center in downtown San Francisco.

They did not.

Sure, Chase is full, but not with the people who filled the Oakland Arena for three decades. You have to pay for a $2 billion arena; you don’t do that with $15 tickets. You do it with six-figure suites and five-figure courtside seats. As John Salley, who at the time won four championships playing for the Pistons, Bulls and Lakers, noted when the Pistons moved from downtown Detroit, 30 miles north, to the Palace of Auburn Hills in the late 1980s: “We used to play we in front of the autoworkers. Now we play for the executives.”

It will be impossible to forget what now feels like an appropriation of the city’s culture, nicknamed Washington’s G-League team Capital City Go-Go and centering D.C. at every opportunity – by saying ‘For the District’ and ‘The District of Columbia’. on your Twitter feeds and the jerseys of Wizards players, or this year’s alternate jerseys with a breathtaking history of the city’s Boundary Stones, or putting ‘DC’ on caps and garments – and then walking away from it, for the sweet deal across the river, yours Braves New World.

And if there is any truth to reports that Leonsis was annoyed by teenage children performing Go-Go music outside of Capital One? Well, it’s hard to know how to process that. Street musicians? That is a problem?? Good Lord.

(After this was first published, I was told that Leonsis’ problem is not about the buskers who perform in front of Capital One on event nights, but that there is concern about one person in particular who has been aggressive towards passersby, both at the front as well as from the arena and other businesses in the area.)

If you’re not from here, you might not understand why a Wizards/Capitals move to Virginia is particularly difficult for DC residents to accept. It is just four miles from Capital One, Leonsis said Wednesday.

Psychologically it feels like the Grand Canyon.

First: traffic. The dance of putting a 20,000-seat arena, practice facilities and new dining/entertainment options in an area surrounded by Reagan National Airport, Amazon II and a large, busy shopping center, with many inbound and surrounding roads currently occupying one or two roads. laners, is disheartening. Sources involved in the discussions said on Wednesday that significant road improvements around the proposed site, along with increased light and heavy rail services, are part of the deal. However, it will be a much longer journey for many – if they choose to come.

Will fans who took a 30- to 45-minute subway ride from the Maryland suburbs to downtown Gallery Place be willing to add another 20 to 30 minutes of driving time to get to and from Alexandria? 7pm start for Wizards or Caps games?

Secondly… well, put it this way. The way many Virginians think about coming to the District for a night out when closer to home they have One Loudoun or Reston Town Center available? District residents feel the same way about heading to Alexandria for a night out, when we have Penn Quarter or Columbia Heights or NoMa to visit. Don’t feel safe coming here? Many of us don’t feel safe going there. You have your reasons. We have ours.

It just feels like once again the District has been punched in the stomach – blamed as COVID has reduced the number of offices operating like a scythe in downtown, leaving restaurants and bars with fewer visitors for lunch or dinner. But make no mistake: Mayor Muriel Bowser is taking a Big L here. Her job was to prevent something like this from happening, because you can’t replace the Caps and Wizards and the energy they brought to downtown. I know it was hard to find the kind of money needed to keep Leonsis from wanderlust. However, that’s the job. They can’t leave while you wait. They leave for hers.

I have no doubt that the decision was difficult and perhaps even painful for Leonsis. So it would have helped him to make his feelings known on Wednesday to reporters who wanted to speak to him after the press conference, instead of turning them away. And he and his team have ideas to transform Capital One, now freed from the need to cross off dozens of potential days on the calendar each year for Wizards and Capitals games, to keep the building busy more often than not. Ice shows. Concerts. Activities in conjunction with the DC Convention Center and/or Events DC The return of the Mystics to Capital One after playing at the Entertainment and Sports Arena in Southeast. (Speaking of which, what exactly is Leonsis planning to do with ESA, which he talked about so grandly a few years ago?)

But nothing replaces a sports team in the soul of a city. Nothing.

You know one of the main reasons I came here The Athletics in 2018? I was in San Francisco in the spring of that year and watched the Capitals play the Penguins in the Eastern Conference semifinals in my hotel room while covering the Warriors and Rockets. If you were from DC, whether you regularly did Rocked the Red or not, you knew how annoying the Penguins were to the Caps for a decade, how desperately Alex Ovechkin and Nicklas Bäckström wanted and needed that. defeated Sidney Crosby and the Pens. It was City Affairs.

So when Evgeny Kuznetsov scored on that breakaway overtime goal to seal the series over the Penguins, and the broadcast cut to the cheering crowd outside Capital One, in Penn Quarter, deliriously happy, young and diverse, having finally defeated the beast, the did something to me. I said to myself, in that hotel room, ‘look how happy the city is. That is amazing. I would like to contribute to recording this.”

And I was, watching firsthand in 2019 as the Nationals won the World Series and the Mystics won the WNBA title behind “Playoff Emma” within weeks of each other. And the joy these franchises brought to my hometown was immeasurable. , and forever.

I love this city, my city. And my city was seriously wounded on Wednesday morning, as men and women across the river toasted their good fortune, their deal well done, and seemed unconcerned about the pain they left behind.

(Photo of Ted Leonsis and Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin: Win McNamee/Getty Images)