LOVERRO: Capitals vital to keeping downtown D.C. area around arena alive

The streets around Capital One Arena will be filled Friday night with fans dressed in red to celebrate the home opener of the Washington Capitals. Many of them will be wearing No. 8 Alexander Ovechkin jerseys, the Capitals star who is on a mission to break Wayne Gretzky’s all-time scoring record.

It’s a scene that will be repeated 40 more times for Capitals fans in the coming months — and maybe more in postseason play, under new coach Spencer Carberry — the third coach hired since owner Transparent Ted Leonsis let the franchise’s Stanley Cup winning coach, Barry Trotz, leave.

It’s a scene that shouldn’t be taken for granted. The times that thousands of visitors are downtown in the District are rarer and rarer in the aftermath of COVID-19 and the changes that have affected commuting into the city.

And the future of that downtown scene seemed to be in question after The Washington Post reported in June that Monumental Sports, the Leonsis company that oversees his sports franchises, had been involved in talks with the city about funding improvements needed for the building, while at the same time talking with Virginia officials about the possibility of moving the Capitals and his NBA team, the Wizards, to a new arena in Northern Virginia. 

Not in Woodbridge or Loudoun County — those ridiculously far-flung locations that have been mentioned as potential sites for a new Washington Commanders stadium. The proposed new rival to Capital One Arena, which is owned by Leonsis, and downtown Washington would be in glitzy National Landing — the Amazon HQ2 neighborhood just across the Potomaca in Arlington.

That’s a location that represents genuine competition for the District — and floating it likely got the attention of Mayor Muriel Bowser, who has made luring the NFL back to the city a priority while seemingly ignoring Transparent Ted’s pleas that the city pitch in on renovations to the aging Capital One Arena, which opened in December 1997.

Since then, it appears tensions have eased, and talks are ongoing on plans to fund — according to sources I’ve spoken with — up to $400 million in improvements at Capital One Arena.

Monumental Sports, asked to comment for this column on Thursday, acknowledged to The Washington Times that negotiations with the District continue but called the $400 million figure inaccurate. The mayor’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Wherever the final number ends up — higher or lower — Bowser needs to make sure she and the rest of the council do what needs to be done to take care of the teams that are already in the District, bringing money into the city. The future of downtown may be at stake.

Why? One of the reasons is a crisis facing major American cities called the “urban doom loop,” a cycle of mass migration, empty offices and declining tax revenues in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, CNBC reported.

“Because cities have to balance their budget, they now need to cut spending,” said Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh, professor of real estate at Columbia Business School, who studies the long-term effects of COVID-19 policies. “That means less money — for public safety, for sanitation, for transportation, for education — makes the city a less attractive place to live.”

That would seem to make attractions like the Capitals, whose fans will fill the bars and restaurants around Capital One Arena before and after Friday night’s home opener, vital to keeping the city alive and not the ghost town downtown had been before the opening of the arena.

Bowser sounded the alarm about empty offices and the lack of people coming into the city at her January inauguration when she called out the federal government. “We need decisive action by the White House to either get most federal workers back to the office most of the time or to realign their vast property holdings for use by the local government, by nonprofits, by businesses and by any user willing to revitalize it,” she said.

According to a July Government Accountability Office report, building occupancy at 17 agencies was at 25% or less as recently as March of this year.

The football stadium may be a worthy goal. But the overall impact of Capital One Arena is far greater for the city — 82 home games between the Capitals and the Wizards, plus concerts and other events. The arena built by Abe Pollin and then purchased by Transparent Ted transformed downtown, though the area of late has slumped with some business vacancies and reports of rising crime. No arena, and you can just plow over the rest of the area.

Ironically, the Capital One Arena, built in the city’s Chinatown neighborhood, is being used as an example by opponents of what’s wrong with such development against Josh Harris in Philadelphia, where he and his partners want to build a new downtown arena for their Philadelphia 76ers in that city’s Chinatown area.

Here in Washington, it’s been celebrated. That celebration continues Friday night with the Capitals home opener.

⦁ You can hear Thom Loverro on The Kevin Sheehan Show podcast.