In remarks to guests at his newly opened gallery celebrating the work of legendary photojournalist Harry Benson this week, Wizards and Capitals owner Ted Leonsis mentioned that he’d just read a biography of Enzo Ferrari. “The first thing he did when he designed his car was he ripped off the rearview mirror,” Leonsis gushed. “He said, ‘I don’t care what’s behind us.’”

To be fair to the billionaire, Leonsis was in the habit of declaring his future-focused-ness long before his plan to move the Wizards and the Caps to Virginia fell apart last spring after Democrats in the General Assembly refused to back the proposal championed by private equity vulture-turned-Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin. (Youngkin promptly turned his attention to purging voter rolls.) Soon after the Virginia deal imploded, the District announced it would spend $515 million on upgrades to Capital One Arena as part of an agreement that will keep the Wizards and the Caps downtown until at least 2050. Loose Lips reporter Alex Koma points out that several of the mogul’s pettiest demands—including that he be exempted from taxes that benefit D.C.-based sports franchises he does not own—have been weeded out of the final proposal.

One of the ways Leonsis is demonstrating his renewed commitment to the District of Columbia is via the two-story, 10,000-square-foot makeshift gallery in a former hair salon adjacent to the arena that celebrates Benson’s work and its connection to the federal city. 

The Glasgow-born Benson rocketed to fame in his early 30s, when the London Daily Express assigned him to photograph the Beatles in Paris. Benson subsequently accompanied the ascendant Liverpudlians on their first U.S. tour in 1964. On Feb. 11 of that year, the Beatles played their first American concert at the Washington Coliseum—formerly the Uline Arena, and since 2016, a “flagship” REI outdoor recreation store in NoMa. (So it’s not necessarily a love of corporate naming that prompted Leonsis, at a press conference last Monday, to refer to the site as “REI Arena” while waxing on the breadth of Benson’s career.) 

“Harry is, I believe, the world’s most important living photojournalist,” Leonsis said.

Certainly, Benson’s photos of politicians, entertainers, and athletes from Muhammad Ali and Elizabeth Taylor to O.J. attorney Johnny Cochran and U.S Army General “Stormin’” Norman Schwarzkopf made him one of the key figures in how the most powerful people in the second half of the 20th century were perceived. He covered Robert F. Kennedy extensively—he was standing next to the presidential candidate when an assassin shot him dead on June 5, 1968. Unsurprisingly, Benson’s decision to publish his pictures of the tragedy—including one of a terror-stricken Ethel Kennedy attempting to push him away from her just-shot husband—was controversial. 

Leonsis, a longtime collector of Benson’s photographs, called the 94-year-old shutterbug “my best friend” in his remarks earlier this week. The occasion was the opening of the exhibit of about 180 Benson photos from the personal collections of Leonsis and his business partner, Jeffrey Skoll. Portraits of every president since Dwight D. Eisenhower are part of the show, along with photos of Ali, the Beatles, Civil Rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis, and other notable figures. 

“We developed this with an eye for Instagram,” Leonsis said. “Big pictures, small copy.” His audience laughed, but Leonsis wasn’t kidding.

At a separate press conference last Monday attended by Loose Lips, Leonsis couldn’t resist comparing his own makeshift gallery to the more permanent one on the other side of 7th St. NW. 

“I walked through the Smithsonian Portrait Gallery around the corner the other day, and this is nicer,” Leonsis said. “This tells a better story. And so, your move, Smithsonian! Let’s uplift.”

Pressed on the comment moments later, Leonsis said, “the Smithsonian was created to collect, not to tell a story.” He then pivoted to praise Benson’s dedication to his craft. “This man was very close with John Lewis and with Martin Luther King,” Leonsis said. “In Selma, Alabama; in Mississippi, he was tear-gassed, was arrested, beaten. It’s an amazing history when you sit with him and talk to him.” 

It’s clear enough from his “tells a better story” comment that Leonsis was talking about curation, not the quality of the National Portrait Gallery’s holdings. Still, the NPG might take umbrage, given that the 62-year-old institution’s published mission statement is “to tell the story of America by portraying the people who shape the nation’s history, development and culture.” Comparing an exhibition of a single photographer’s work focused on a single city to that of a gallery comprising a variety of such exhibitions is hardly an apples-to-apples scenario. It’s more like apples-to-orchard. 

In fact, the NPG hosted a show of Benson’s work—organized by the Scottish National Portrait Gallery—in 2007. Ironically, then-Washington Post reporter Joel Garreau’s mixed review of that exhibit shares a common element with Leonsis’s far more extemporaneous remarks from 17 years later. Garreau criticized Benson for having frequently staged the scenes captured in his famous photos—a shot of the Beatles having a pillow fight, for example, or another one, 28 years later, of Bill and Hillary Clinton canoodling in a hammock outside the Arkansas governor’s mansion. 

“What you see is an awww-inspiring photo of two people who seem very much in love,” Garreau wrote of that shot of the Clintons. “The viewer, however, might be happier appreciating the image and not reading the wall caption. For there it is revealed that Benson set it up.” He does not dispute Benson’s skill or artistry as a photographer; it’s simply his claim to be a photojournalist that makes Garreau cry foul. “The reason Benson is not well remembered may be that, much of the time, the territory he worked was not so much news, as he might have you believe, but what only can be described as display advertising,” Garreau concluded. 

The review got Garreau a published rebuke from Benson himself, who called it “gratuitously mean-spirited and embarrassing.”

But Garreau did advise visitors to just enjoy the photos and ignore the captions. Or as Leonsis put it 17 years later, “Big pictures, small copy.”

Loose Lips can remember rolling his eyes so hard he nearly popped a blood vessel when the preliminary terms of the District’s deal to keep the Capitals and Wizards in the city became public in early April.

Monumental Sports owner Ted Leonsis asked to not pay taxes that benefit other pro sports teams in D.C., in a very funny bit of sniping at his colleagues with the Nats and Commanders, and he had a whole host of demands about how the city would reshape the Chinatown neighborhood to his liking to keep him at Capital One Arena. No detail was too small in the billionaire sports owner’s wish list—even one specific restaurant’s streetery was targeted for removal simply because Leonsis didn’t like it. 

So LL was relieved, if largely unsurprised, that the city has refused (or convinced Leonsis to abandon) many of his most outlandish requests in the final version of the deal, which Mayor Muriel Bowser officially submitted to the Council for approval on Friday. The full details are still trickling out, but the proposal at least appears to be more advantageous to the District than the one initially advanced in the spring. The city is forking over $515 million to overhaul an arena that is hardly falling down, after all, so this is perhaps the least Leonsis could do.

“There has to be compromise,” Leonsis told reporters Monday morning. “The leagues have to compromise. The city has to compromise. We have to compromise. The only people so far who don’t compromise are the agents. And we can get through it.”

It’s not like Monumental won’t get anything out of this deal. The fact that they were able to win so much city money in the first place, even though Bowser was essentially negotiating against herself after Leonsis’ Virginia plans collapsed, is a testament to how deferentially the District still treats its sports teams and associated rich guys. And the city is doing Leonsis and his partners a solid by ensuring he gets the full $515 million that D.C. promised by agreeing to some shuffling of the arena’s ownership—the city will pay $87.5 million to buy Capital One from Monumental and lease it back to the teams, ensuring that the company avoids paying any federal or local taxes on the city’s contribution to improvements. That means the firm won’t have to hand an estimated hundreds of millions in tax payments right back to the city after getting the public money for the renovation, according to District and Monumental officials, who requested anonymity to speak frankly to reporters about the deal’s contents.

“All the money is going into the building, as opposed to paying taxes,” Leonsis said, noting that Monumental plans to invest the money from the sale of the arena into its improvements. “Isn’t that, strategically, the right thing to do?”

Leonsis has, as ever, misjudged how this part of the deal will appear to the public when readers see headlines that the city is helping a billionaire avoid a huge tax bill. “We shouldn’t have to defend it,” Leonsis said, a bit defensively, when pressed on the subject. But the die was cast when the city agreed to the $515 million in spending—it would be a bit silly for the city to commit to this investment only to take back some of the money via its own taxes (or let the feds get a piece). If anything, the city’s ownership of the arena is probably a win for the District, should Monumental change its mind about staying in the city a few decades from now and the government is once again confronted by the prospect of how to redevelop an empty arena in the heart of its downtown.

“This is the deal that was always contemplated,” said Nina Albert, Bowser’s deputy mayor for planning and economic development. “This is the best structure to effectuate that.”

Officials told reporters that they also decided not to move forward with the exemption from taxes benefitting other sports teams after further negotiations, so, as much as it may pain Leonsis, he’ll still be on the hook for money flowing to improvements at Nats Park or a theoretical RFK Stadium deal. Interestingly, the city’s initial term sheet with Monumental called for the consideration of the RFK site for a potential new Wizards practice facility if the city couldn’t find a spot elsewhere and that offer remains on the table, should D.C. ever succeed in gaining control of the land.

Monumental officials say they considered but ultimately abandoned plans to build the facility in the Gallery Place development adjacent to Capital One. (But the company will still expand some of its offices and meal prep functions into the development and lease about 200,000 square feet of space there, which is very good news for its owners: the politically connected MRP Realty, which bought the building for a song earlier this year as its old owners grappled with a bunch of retail vacancies.) 

So that means Monumental is still searching for a way to move the basketball team out of the facility housed in the Entertainment and Sports Arena in Ward 8. The city already paid to build that one, too, and now it’s anyone’s guess where and when Leonsis may ask for more public money to replace the facility that’s less than a decade old.

“We said, rather than try to cram it here, let’s catch our breath, let’s work with the city,” Leonsis said. “Let’s finally ensure there’s another place within the city that we can be able to find and build a world class practice facility, which is very important for the overall health of the franchise, because it’s where the players spend most of their time.”

Mercifully, it seems the District was able to convince Leonsis to drop his desire to move the popular bus stop near the arena at 7th Street NW and H Street NW. Monumental claimed that the stop presented a safety issue as people congregating nearby made things difficult for people arriving for the game. But critics noted that this would inconvenience anyone traveling to the arena by bus and ruin its connectivity with the nearby Metro station.

“Finding a new place to move it to is not that easy, so, right now, there’s no plans to move it,” a District official told reporters. Perhaps Leonsis also realized that the optics of a rich White guy forcing a bunch of mostly non-White bus riders to move away from his shiny, newly renovated building were less than ideal.

Similarly, he’s backed off from his request that the city move the streetery located on 6th Street NW after agreeing to a compromise with its owners, the Japanese restaurants Daikaya and Tonari. “It’s just going to be pushed down the block a little bit,” said Monica Dixon, Monumental’s chief administrative officer, noting the company’s continued concerns about how the small collection of outdoor tables interferes with the arena’s loading dock. Again, it was not exactly the best look for the city to wipe out some of a small business’ profits (without even consulting with the business first) just to appease Leonsis.

The deal is also silent on another Leonsis bugaboo: The buskers playing loud, amplified music on 7th Street outside Monumental’s offices. Company officials said they’re still having conversations about how to address the matter, however, and the Council is currently advancing a bill regarding amplified sound in public spaces that could meet some of his demands. 

That legislation, just like the broader Capital One deal, will need to pass before the year is out or else face major delays. The Council’s two-year legislative calendar resets at the end of the year, and anything still pending before lawmakers must be re-filed. 

Council Chair Phil Mendelson wrote in a statement Monday that he plans to hold a hearing on the Capital One bill and ensure “that the public gets to fully see the transaction,” but that he expects to meet the year-end deadline. After the way the Council eagerly waved through the city’s $515 million initial offer, LL is not holding his breath for any drama during that process.

Look who’s coming crawling back to D.C.: The Capitals and Wizards will stick around in Capital One Arena after all, as Ted Leonsis has abandoned plans to move the teams to Potomac Yard.

Alexandria officials announced late Wednesday that the “proposal will not move forward.” The District followed up with its own announcement that it plans to fork over $515 million to make improvements to Capital One Arena over the next three years and keep the teams in the city through 2050. The city has also agreed to a variety of new improvements around the arena, and will work with Leonsis to build a new practice facility for the Wizards somewhere in D.C.

This outcome looked increasingly inevitable for the past few weeks as top Democrats in the Virginia General Assembly threw up one roadblock after another to block the plans advanced by Leonsis and Gov. Glenn Youngkin to build a $2 billion entertainment district anchored by a new Alexandria arena.

The news amounts to an embarrassing face-plant for Leonsis, who stood on stage with Youngkin in mid-December at a celebratory press conference and treated the move as inevitable. It’s an unexpected win for Mayor Muriel Bowser and the rest of the D.C. Council, who faced difficult questions about how they could let the teams slip away from their longtime Chinatown home.

“All of a sudden I really felt like we were in this together and that D.C. — it’s where I wanted to be,” Leonsis told the Washington Post in an amusing bit of spin. Rumors circulated just days ago that he’d also pursued a deal with Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, only to be rebuffed there, too.

Leonsis framed the relocation as a necessary one for his teams, arguing that they needed more space to grow and a bigger patch of land for his Monumental Sports and Entertainment to redevelop. But the plan was largely stymied by Virginia state Sen. L. Louise Lucas, a top Democrat who harbored persistent doubts about the state-backed bonds financing the project. Alexandria leaders came to increasingly turn against the project as well, raising substantial questions about how it would impact traffic in the area. 

“The city was adamant that any favorable consideration of the proposal included substantial and thoughtful improvements to the existing transportation system; included affordable housing; protect our stellar AAA bond rating; protect existing and future residents from financial risk; provided substantial future revenue for city and school services; protected existing neighborhoods; and provided quality jobs for our community,” Alexandria Mayor Justin Wilson wrote in a statement. “We are disappointed negotiations did not result in a proposal that protected our financial interests and respected these community values.”

Bowser previously convened a task force to reimagine the Chinatown and Gallery Place neighborhood in the wake of the Caps’ and Wizards’ planned departure, but nonetheless put up some efforts to appease Leonsis and lure him back to the city. Bowser and Council Chair Phil Mendelson cobbled together a $500 million offer to Monumental as word of the Potomac Yard move began to circulate, relying on increased debt capacity to take on improvements to the arena after previously balking at Leonsis’ demands for new spending. 

Bowser’s successful push for drug-free zones was also broadly seen as a move to address Monumental’s concerns about crime around the arena. Meanwhile, Attorney General Brian Schwalb also threatened Leonsis that he risked breaching the terms of his lease at Capital One if he sought to move the teams. 

“D.C. did everything right since December,” Leonsis said Wednesday.

The city still needs to hammer out the exact contours of the deal, but it has essentially agreed to do everything it can to satisfy Leonsis’ concerns about the Chinatown area. The District plans to expand the police presence around the arena and give Monumental new leeway to close off F Street NW to cars—it will even eliminate a streatery that particularly vexed Leonsis along 6th Street NW. Bowser has also agreed to explore potential sites for a new Wizards practice facility, including elsewhere in Gallery Place, at the RFK Stadium site, or even the soon-to-be-redeveloped Reeves Center on U Street NW.

“We are going to have a state-of-the-art urban arena,” Bowser pledged Wednesday.

Now the deal heads to the Council, which could take up legislation on the subject as soon as Tuesday. 

“I am confident that will go through the Council,” Mendelson told reporters at the press conference Wednesday. “It’s easier to do business in the District of Columbia than in some other jurisdictions.”

This story has been updated.

D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb threw a wrench into billionaire sports owner Ted Leonsis’ already-shaky plans to move his two pro franchises—the Capitals and Wizards—across the river to Alexandria. 

In a letter addressed to Monumental Sports and Entertainment Executive Vice President and General Counsel Abby Blomstrom, Schwalb says that Leonsis is contractually obligated to keep the teams in D.C., playing at the Capital One Arena, through 2047. WCP contributor Tom Sherwood was first to break the news on the Politics Hour Friday afternoon.

A Monumental spokesperson says in an emailed statement that the company “fundamentally disagree[s] with the Attorney General’s opinions, which are contradicted by the DC General Counsel as recently as 2019 when the city ratified the Ground Lease.”

Leonsis and Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin agreed in a handshake deal to relocate the teams to Potomac Yard in Alexandria to a $2 billion, yet-to-be-built arena. But the agreement requires approval from the Virginia legislature, which has not included funding for the project in the state’s budget bill. It’s uncertain whether Youngkin will be able to overcome lawmakers’ opposition.

Schwalb, in his letter, adds a not-so-thinly veiled threat.

“To be clear, the District very much prefers not to pursue any potential claims against MSE. It remains committed to maintaining and growing its partnership with MSE and to keeping the Wizards and Capitals at the Arena until the end of the existing lease term in 2047, if not beyond,” he writes.

Schwalb says $50 million in public financing that was allocated for improvements to Capital One Arena extended Monumental’s ground lease through 2047. And Monumental can’t wiggle out of the agreement by simply repaying the outstanding bond debt for those funds, the AG argues.

“The July 2007 legislation did not authorize [the DC Arena LP] to extinguish or revoke the lease extensions upon prepayment of the outstanding bond debt at some unknown time in the future,” Schwalb’s letter says. “Nor did any DCALP representative or District official suggest such a possibility during the legislative process. On the contrary, they all agreed on the public record that, in exchange for the $50 million in public financing, DCALP would exercise the two 10-year lease extensions—full stop.” 

Schwalb’s letter also argues that Monumental’s negotiation with Virginia violated a 2017 with D.C. regarding the Entertainment and Sports Arena, home of the Washington Mystics. After the deal in Virginia began to tank in the state legislature, Leonsis reportedly met with Maryland Gov. Wes Moore to discuss plans for a new arena there.

Yet, Schwalb says that the $500 million in public funds that Mayor Muriel Bowser and Council Chair Phil Mendelson offered to Monumental to renovate Capital One remains on the table. The question, in light of Schwalb’s arguments, is whether or not it should be.

This story has been updated with comment from Monumental.

Mayor Muriel Bowser started her third term convinced she could become the next Tony Williams, luring a team back to the District with a grand new stadium development. Instead, she could become the next Sharon Pratt.

It would undoubtedly be an ignominious distinction should Bowser indeed become the first D.C. mayor to lose a professional sports team since Pratt saw the football team leave 30 years ago, and that means the blame game is starting in earnest among D.C. politicos about what, if anything, local leaders could have done to keep the Wizards and the Capitals in the District. A revolt in Richmond (or Alexandria itself) remains a possibility, as Virginia lawmakers must still approve the deal. But the sight of Ted Leonsis locking arms with Virginia leaders has been enough to send recriminations flying before the ink is even dry on any Potomac Yard stadium deal.

The chief villain in this saga is undoubtedly Leonsis, who seems willing to turn his back on a prime downtown D.C. location to grab some cash from the Virginia suburbs as he tries to spin his Monumental Sports & Entertainment into a public company, effects on Alexandria traffic be damned. But there is little doubt that Bowser will become a punching bag too, considering her outsize role in the negotiations to keep the teams in Chinatown.

“The city administration is at fault here: They were aware of all this,” says former Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans, one of the original architects of the effort to lure Abe Pollin’s teams downtown in the first place and one of Bowser’s biggest boosters since he was forced to resign in 2020. “If they’d acted back in August, and put the offer on the table they came out with yesterday [to renovate Capital One Arena], Ted probably would’ve taken it…The city didn’t believe he’d leave, and he called their bluff.”

Loose Lips finds it difficult to pin the blame solely on Bowser, however. As Herronor has argued forcefully in a somber press conference Wednesday, the city was never really in the game if Leonsis desired a blank slate to build a shiny new suburban arena. It might’ve taken a few extra months, but the city was ultimately able to come up with an offer for $500 million in improvements at Capital One (just a bit shy of the $600 million Leonsis has spent the past year demanding for the arena). Monumental even conceded privately that the city’s best and final offer, which also included a pitch to build a new music venue adjacent to the arena in Gallery Place, was a “generous” one. Evans and other conservative voices are eager to paint this as a decision based on crime around the arena, but the temptation of Virginia’s $2 billion offer was likely a major factor.

“In our view, there’s a difference in being committed to an urban arena and being interested in a suburban arena,” Bowser told reporters. “Clearly, they’re going to drop a lot of money on that project. And they have that vacant parcel.”

But Bowser wasn’t powerless here, either. Her very public yearning for a new football stadium at RFK, even as the Monumental matter hung unresolved, undeniably grabbed up quite a bit of her administration’s attention. And that probably didn’t make anything easier in the negotiations with Leonsis, particularly as her relationship frayed with the billionaire—several Wilson Building sources described a souring between the two over a variety of issues dating all the way back to the early days of the pandemic, as the mayor sparred with Monumental over capacity limits for sports venues. As with so many other issues, Bowser’s former chief of staff John Falcicchio was seen as a key point person on these discussions and his absence following his fall from grace did not go unnoticed. 

It may be a bit of Monday morning quarterbacking, of course, but there are also complaints that Bowser too zealously guarded her authority over these negotiations without including the Council. Chair Phil Mendelson played a role (and met repeatedly with Monumental officials over the past year, including a joint meeting with Bowser and Leonsis Tuesday), but the city didn’t present a united front until the eleventh hour.

“I find it unfortunate that a more collaborative effort never really materialized to negotiate a deal in earnest,” says At-Large Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie, the chair of the Council’s economic development committee. He says he met with Monumental officials on his own as well, but he lamented that discussions with Leonsis only intensified as Virginia’s interest became abundantly clear.

“I don’t think it had to come to this,” McDuffie says. “It shouldn’t have to come to this.”

Evans predicts that Monumental’s move, set to come as soon as 2028, will be a “death knell” for downtown D.C., and the business class agrees, given their very public worries about the state of the downtown office market and its domino effects on D.C.’s tax revenue. Note that mayor turned Federal City Council boss Williams, D.C. Chamber of Commerce CEO Angela Franco, and Downtown Business Improvement District President Gerren Price all flanked Bowser Wednesday to show their concern over the loss of the teams.

But in D.C.’s more left-leaning circles, the news doesn’t seem quite so disastrous. Local lefties are no fans of Bowser, but they aren’t going to blast her for failing to outbid Virginia for a billionaire’s affections, especially when the evidence about how valuable sports arenas really are to cities is decidedly mixed. 

“This is a reminder that a stadium is just a political fight between jurisdictions, not about serving residents and providing what the community needs,” says Ed Lazere, the former Council contender and progressive advocate who spent the past few months organizing to oppose Bowser’s RFK plans. “Ted Leonsis said in his statement that this project will ‘lift all of our neighbors towards a shared sense of prosperity.’ But this isn’t about our prosperity, it’s all about his prosperity…It may be an awful transition to go through, but maybe it’s part of a solution for more vibrant living downtown.”

That’s why Lazere finds it so objectionable that Bowser and Mendelson were able to come up with $500 million to offer Leonsis seemingly at the drop of a hat, even as the mayor cries poverty and says she simply doesn’t have the money to follow the law and expand food assistance benefits for hungry people. 

“What does that say about what they really care about?” Lazere says. “They care more about subsidizing a billionaire and having a flashy development than real economic development to invest in D.C. residents.”

Bowser claims the windfall came because Chief Financial Officer Glen Lee was able to refinance some of the District’s debts and secure more favorable terms as interest rates and inflation fell. Mendelson had claimed for months that the city was right up against its borrowing limits (a key reason he raised doubts about her pursuit of the RFK stadium), but Bowser says this “gave us room to put that kind of cash on the table.” She claims that these terms became “even more favorable” only recently, which prevented her from making such an offer earlier, though LL would note that these economic conditions have been improving steadily for months now.

Whatever the reason, the last-minute nature of the offer managed to piss off just about everyone involved. If you support a deal to keep the teams, it looks more like a desperate bid to save face than a serious offer. If you oppose it, you might wonder why deals for other huge priorities (from funding Metro to making housing more affordable) are so much harder to come by. In fact, LL hears that the Council was not nearly so unanimous in supporting the offer as Bowser and Mendelson sought to make them appear, but lawmakers barely had any time to review it before it was announced publicly to counter Virginia’s pitch. 

Mendelson, for his part, declined to discuss the behind-the-scenes machinations of how the deal came together, but would say he believes it was a “strong move” to provide an alternative for Leonsis.”

Bowser says she intends to push the $500 million offer through the Council on the off chance that the Potomac Yard deal falls through. Virginia’s General Assembly still needs to sign off on it, and newly empowered Democratic leaders might not be so keen to hand a big win to Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin (especially because Northern Virginia politicians no longer control key leadership roles in both chambers). It’ll also need to satisfy Alexandria denizens, who have repelled stadium projects in the past. 

And a move to the suburbs may prove more trouble than it’s worth if Leonsis cares at all about public opinion—a good portion of the fan base lives in Northern Virginia, but the reaction to the move has been generally negative thus far. As Ward 8 Council candidate Markus Batchelor noted, Leonsis’ plans to move the Washington Mystics from the newly built Entertainment and Sports Arena into Capital One once the Wiz and Caps move out has the knock-on effect of pulling a team out of a disinvested area in Southeast, not exactly a good look for the rich White team owner.

“Monumental is too far down the road with Virginia to simply pivot, but there are a lot of things that have to happen and we’ve seen deals fall apart before,” Mendelson says. “There are serious questions about highway access, Metro access…It’s much more complicated to pull off this deal in Virginia than it is here.”

The District could have its offer approved as soon as February, Bowser said, proving to be an appealing antidote if things get ugly.

“If they come back to us, we may be able to talk about something different, too,” Bowser said, trying to leave the door open to another deal. “If they want a campus-style [development], it may take a couple of years, but we would have RFK, and we would have the FBI [headquarters]. So there are multi-acre sites in the District.”

Indeed, this episode has not deterred Bowser from her pursuit of RFK. If anything, it might spur her to double down and work even harder to secure some sort of win there (even though Lazere argues, persuasively, that this sudden reversal from Leonsis demonstrates the dangers of relying on sports team owners to do anything but pursue their own self-interest).

“Instead of prioritizing the cultural and economic engines already in our backyard, ones that are central to our continued recovery, we’ve only seen greater focus on the shiny object—and the less fruitful deal—for D.C.’s economy,” Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen wrote in a statement, noting that he argued months ago for more of a focus on Capital One than RFK. “Today’s move wasn’t inevitable, but avoiding it required far more focus in the past year than it ever received from the administration.”

Allen added that he was hopeful that this drama forces a greater focus on how to “move aggressively to transform downtown,” and that is a rare point where he happens to agree with Evans. Bowser has called in a pair of heavyweight developers, Jodie McLean and Deborah Ratner Salzberg, to develop a future plan for Gallery Place, with or without Monumental. That’s probably a better move than hoping a billionaire’s change of heart solves the city’s problems.

“This Monumental move should not ultimately render us as a hole in the donut,” McDuffie says. “The city needs to rise to the occasion here.”

On multiple occasions during Wes Unseld Jr.’s introductory press conference on July 19, the Wizards’ new head coach and the individuals sitting to the left and right of him—team owner Ted Leonsis and general manager Tommy Sheppard—mentioned the need to improve the team’s defense. The Wizards finished the 2020-2021 regular season ranked 20th out of 30 teams in defensive rating, a stat that measures the number of points allowed per 100 possessions by a team. The Denver Nuggets, where the 45-year-old Unseld spent the last six seasons, first as an assistant coach and then as the associate head coach for one season, ranked 11th.

“The defensive side of the ball has been an issue here,” Unseld said when asked about his vision for the team. “And that’s an area where I’ve been charged with for the past five seasons [with the Nuggets]. We’ve seen markable improvement in that area. And it boils down to buy-in and commitment. And I think all parties involved, including the players, they know for us to take that next step to really get to the level which we think we can attain, it’s going to take that commitment to that side of the ball.”

Defense came up again when Sheppard spoke about how Unseld, a former assistant coach with the Wizards and the son of Washington Bullets legend and Basketball Hall of Famer Wes Unseld, fits what the team was looking for in its next head coach after parting ways with Scott Brooks. During Brooks’ five-year tenure in Washington, the team never finished better than 15th in the league in team defensive rating, while mostly languishing near the bottom of the rankings. In that same span, the Nuggets have climbed from 29th to being consistently ranked within the top half of the league.

“The one thing that always stood out with Wes is his intelligence about the game, where the game is headed, the modern NBA, and certainly his proficiency on the defensive side of the ball, which is an area that we absolutely must address immediately,” Sheppard said.

Even Leonsis pointed out Unseld’s reputation for improving a team’s defense. In talking to the players during their exit interviews, Leonsis said that players spoke about lacking “defensive intensity.” Early this past season, in January, before the Wizards went on a second half run to make the playoffs, Bradley Beal lamented how the team couldn’t “guard a parked car.”

“Wes’ focus on defense and game planning, and all of the little things, all the details that get you to win a couple of more games every year because you’re out-preparing the other team really gave great comfort to everyone in our ownership group that this was a good move,” Leonsis said.

Unseld has had conversations with Beal and Russell Westbrook and said Monday that both of them know that “offense is not the issue right now.”

“So there’s buy-in right now,” Unseld continued. “And we’ll see as we get into training camp and the preseason there has to be carry over. So I think there’s an alignment there in thought, I think we’re all on the same page is what was going to be required. But the best part about that is both of them as leaders of this team are committed to being better on that end.”

And while Unseld understands that he will tasked with improving another team’s defense with the Wizards, in the end, what matters is getting the players to buy into his system.

“You may be in charge of certain area, but we’re all basketball coaches,” he said. “So I’m not concerned about the offensive end, the defensive end. It’s basketball, obviously you want to put your players in the best light to have the most success.”

The timing of legal sports betting’s arrival in the District could hardly have been worse. It landed just as the sports world went into a months-long hibernation, and only now is it starting to approach normalcy. Perhaps nothing signifies that more than the opening of the William Hill Sportsbook at Capital One Arena this week, a first-of-its-kind structure that permanently marries sports and gambling in America in a way we’ve never seen.

Sprawled over two stories and 18,000 square feet, the venue can pack as many as 764 people into its various bars, betting spaces, and lounge areas. There are 100 televisions tuned to the various sports networks, along with betting screens behind the counters where you can place live bets. There are also kiosks, if that’s more your speed, with more set to be installed along the 300 and 400 levels of the arena.

With a lower floor centered around a sweeping, slightly rounded staircase that twirls up to the space above, the venue feels “of Vegas” in the way that so much of Vegas itself feels vaguely of Italy, or at least of the Americanized flourishes of Roman architecture. 

The space, which is being leased to William Hill on a 10-year deal, will also feature a menu from local chef Nick Stefanelli, who rose to prominence with his Italian restaurant Masseria, which earned a Michelin star in 2016. According to Stefanelli, the floor plan looks a little different than originally envisioned, as the extra time allowed them to adjust and make better use of the square footage available.

Depending on the event, ticketed fans will be able to move to and from the arena and the sportsbook, on the 200 level near the elevator bank that faces F Street NW. Monumental Sports & Entertainment has reached an agreement with the NBA for Wizards games, starting with this Saturday’s first-round home playoff game against the Philadelphia 76ers. Monumental is hoping to do the same with the NHL before the next season begins in the fall, but do not have an agreement in place yet. Other events, like college basketball games, will depend on the governing bodies of each sport.

The 5G service within Capital One Arena has also been expanded as part of this arrangement, which is crucial for in-game betting. Monumental hopes fans will largely use their phones to place those bets, rather than leaving their seats. That upgraded infrastructure will help support the increase in fans using bandwidth.

One other change from last fall’s opening—Caesars acquired William Hill last month, in an approximately $4 billion deal. That meant Caesars CEO Tom Reeg was the one following Monumental CEO Ted Leonsis at the dais Wednesday morning, though all the branding in and around the venue still carries the William Hill name and logo, aside from a No. 21 Wizards and Capitals jersey on display with “CAESARS” on the name plate.

Even amid the pandemic, as businesses across the city and country were shuttering—and even as their own, original timeline of trying to get the restaurant component open by the NFL season became clearly unrealistic—Monumental took a leap of faith by opening a spartan, pop-up sportsbook in the Capital One Arena lobby last August.

Leonsis gave credit to Monumental President of Business Operations and CCO Jim Van Stone for its success: “He’s the crazy one who came to me and said … ‘I guarantee it will work.’”

The modest setup with seven windows and 14 kiosks took in more than one million bets in seven months, from almost 350,000 people. The publicly reported sports betting numbers back up the continued popularity of William Hill’s platform against the citywide GambetDC app operated by the DC Lottery, despite the extra effort bettors have had to make to travel to Capital One Arena to place bets, rather than just using their phones anywhere in the District. The amount wagered through William Hill has remained roughly triple that wagered through GambetDC since last fall.

That number only figures to rise with the addition of the brick and mortar space. And while, in a vacuum, that’s good for the tax base (as Leonsis touted Wednesday), only 10 percent of revenues from William Hill’s operations actually go to city coffers, per D.C.’s sports betting laws. Compare that to roughly 50 percent of gross gaming revenue from GambetDC. The DC Lottery missed a deadline for an early May audit that will provide more information about how this nascent industry is shaping up, and it is yet to be seen if they will deliver information before next year’s budget is finalized this summer.

Despite the delay in opening, the in-arena sportsbook is still the first of its kind here in America, and could serve as the template for other teams across the country looking to integrate the in-person sports betting experience as fans return to venues this summer.

Leonsis has been at the forefront of the push to both legalize and monetize sports betting in America, ever since the Supreme Court agreed to hear the challenge to overturn the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act in May 2018. It’s only fitting, then, that three years later, Leonsis’ arena is the first one taking that next step into the unknown.

“Here in Washington D.C., we wanted to be innovators,” said Leonsis. “We really wanted to lead the way in taking the stigma out of gambling.”

Leonsis pointed, as he has often in the past, to the massive, existing illegal betting market in America, and the financial benefits in bringing it all above board.

“I just view this as a natural extension of what was happening, but to do it in a more modern, in-the-sunlight, transparent way,” he said.

Whatever the additional tax boon, one thing the new sportsbook will do is make even more use of a building that already sees three million fans across 230-some events a year. Open Monday to Thursday from 10 a.m. to midnight, Friday from 10 a.m. to 1 a.m., Saturday from 9 a.m. to 1 a.m., and Sunday from 9 a.m. to midnight, the sportsbook serves as another destination not just to accompany the existing calendar, but to fill the other 135 days in between.

“This building is pretty much dark during the day, but now it will come alive 10 o’clock to midnight,” Van Stone said.

For his part, Stefanelli will cater his menu more to the sports crowd, with the ability to shift and accommodate, depending on the event. But the sheer scale of this venture will be an entirely different challenge. Unlike the teams that call Capital One Arena home, the new sportsbook won’t exactly get a soft preseason to see how things will run on a gameday. Their first test comes Saturday, during a heated NBA playoff game.

“If 600 people walk in the door, that’s a lot of margaritas you have to pour,” said Stefanelli.

Leonsis, perhaps unsurprisingly, is already thinking bigger.

“At first I thought it was too big, and now I think it’s too small,” he said. “We have a lot of space in the building. We’ll see how it works.”

If the restaurant component ends up being enough of a success to warrant an expansion, it won’t come without a personal sacrifice for Van Stone.

“On the third floor, directly above, is actually my office and our sales center,” he laughed. 

But that would be a problem he’d welcome.

“We don’t ever want to have to be in a position where we have to turn people away,” he said.

To quote former Washington Nationals pitcher Sean Doolittle: “Sports are like the reward of a functioning society.” Doolittle shared those thoughts with the Washington Post last July, as the COVID-19 pandemic ravaged the United States. Back then, having fans in stadiums or even playing sports in general felt like an alternate reality reserved only for countries and places that had their coronavirus cases under control. 

Fast forward 10 months, and this past weekend saw four major local professional sports teams compete in D.C. in front of fans. Mayor Bowser’s reopening plan stipulates that large sports and entertainment venues will continue to operate off a waiver process for limited capacity before opening up to full capacity on June 11. Nationals Park and Audi Field, both outdoor venues, have welcomed fans at 36 percent capacity, while indoor sports facilities like Capital One Arena and the Entertainment & Sports Arena are currently operating at 25 percent capacity.

As of Friday, May 14, the city has a daily case rate of 7.4 COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people. That number needs to be under five for D.C. to have minimal community spread, but it has dropped substantially since peaking at 45.90 in January.

“We’ve never been able to lose sight of the personal toll that this has taken on all of our people, our players, our coaching staffs,” Monumental Sports & Entertainment chairman Ted Leonsis told reporters last week about navigating his teams through a pandemic. “All of our employees, their mental health has been very, very important to us … [You rise] to this occasion, making sure that you can balance and take care of everyone in the extended family, if you will. But we all worked on it. We all did it for this weekend.”

The Washington Wizards started off the weekend on Friday night by beating the Cleveland Cavaliers, 120-105, at Capital One Arena to clinch a spot in the play-in tournament, and two days later, they beat the Charlotte Hornets, 115-110, in front of 5,333 fans to earn the eighth seed in the tournament. The Wizards will next play the Boston Celtics in Boston tomorrow night. On Saturday, the Capitals beat the Boston Bruins, 3-2, in overtime, with help from a nearly 40-year-old backup goalie, in Game 1 of the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, and the Mystics lost, 70-56, to the Chicago Sky in their first home game in front of fans since winning the 2019 WNBA championship. The following day, Old Glory DC, the local professional rugby team, beat the Seattle Seawolves, 22-18, at Segra Field in Leesburg, Virginia, and D.C. United dropped its match against Orlando City, 1-0, at Audi Field. A limited number of fans were there to see it all, as the slow march back to normalcy, and potentially a better, more equitable future, continues.

“It was a really cool moment for us just to share that with our fans,” Mystics guard Natasha Cloud said of watching the championship banner being unveiled. “That’s the goal, is to bring another championship back to D.C.”

—Kelyn Soong (tips? ksoong@washingtoncitypaper.com)

• To see today’s coronavirus cases and more information, visit our coronavirus dashboard. [EOM]

By Amanda Michelle Gomez (tips? agomez@washingtoncitypaper.com)

• ANC 8C opposes a liquor store’s license renewal. [DCist]
• Trump-endorsed multimillionaire GOP nominee Glenn Youngkin has a good shot at the governor’s seat in Virginia. [Post]
• Never forget the time Mayor Bowser called Chairman Phil Mendelson a “fucking liar.” [Twitter]

By Mitch Ryals (tips? mryals@washingtoncitypaper.com)

Puerto Rican Restaurant Qui Qui DC Opens in Shaw on May 21

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Catherine Anchin, New Director at Arlington Arts Center, Chats About The Past and Future

This week, the Arlington Arts Center welcomes Catherine Anchin as the center’s executive director. Anchin […]

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• Lauren Hough’s memoir Leaving Isn’t the Hardest Thing details a hardscrabble life, much of it spent working in and around D.C. bars. [Washingtonian]
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By Emma Sarappo (tips? esarappo@washingtoncitypaper.com)

Capitals Backup Goalie Craig Anderson Steps Up in Overtime Win Against Bruins

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By Kelyn Soong (tips? ksoong@washingtoncitypaper.com)

Monica Dixon, the president and chief administrative officer of external affairs at Monumental Sports & Entertainment, figured the organization’s attempt to host fans at Capital One Arena this season was over. The D.C. government did not grant a waiver to allow the indoor arena to host fans like it did for Nationals Park and Audi Field, both outdoor venues, in mid-March. On April 5, Mayor Muriel Bowser did not include information on MSE’s waiver during her media briefing as Dixon had expected.

In response, Ted Leonsis, the company’s chief executive, wrote a letter expressing his disappointment.

“The issue really was that if we didn’t receive the waiver April 5, the next opportunity we would have is May 5 and our last game was two weeks later,” Dixon tells City Paper. “So we were really disappointed that we would not be able to have fans in for the end of the season. And that ignited a pretty intense amount of conversation over the next four days.”

Eventually, the city granted Capital One Arena a waiver on April 9, allowing it to host fans at 10 percent capacity (or 2,100 individuals per game) for Washington Wizards and Capitals games with strict pandemic-related guidelines in place. Fans will be allowed in the stadium starting tonight when the Wizards play the Golden State Warriors, and the Capitals will compete in front of their fans starting on Tuesday, April 27.

The last time Capital One Arena had fans in the arena was March 10, 2020 when the Wizards beat the New York Knicks, 122-115. Dixon says that MSE will apply for a waiver to raise the capacity limit to 25 percent for the NBA and NHL playoffs. The Caps lead the NHL’s East Division, while the Wizards are in contention for the NBA play-in tournament after winning five straight games.

“It was a lot of planning for multiple scenarios so that we could be ready no matter what came at us,” Dixon says. “And what we learned is that we were going to have to wait until the transmission rate got to a level that there was comfort on the part of the D.C. health department. And we’re so excited that we’ve gotten to this place right now, when both our teams are doing so well and really moving toward the playoffs. So even though it’s been a very long process, I think it couldn’t have happened at a better time for us.”

Several major policy changes have been implemented for fans who plan to attend a game at Capital One Arena this season. All individuals age 2 and older will be required to wear a face mask at all times except when actively eating or drinking. Gaiters, face masks with valves or vents, costume masks, and bandanas are not acceptable face coverings. All tickets will be electronic, and fans will enter the arena in one of four designated entrances. Wandering between the floors will not be allowed. Bags will not be permitted, except “wallet-size clutches no larger than 4.5″ x 6.5″, medical bags, and parenting bags” no larger than 14″ x 14″ x 6″. (Bag policies at sports stadiums, including Nationals Park, have proven to be extremely unpopular among fans.)

“That’s a big change,” Dixon says about the bag policy. “But you know, again, it just goes back to our No. 1 priority, to eliminate congregation coming into the building, exiting the building, and anywhere when fans are not in their seats.”

Not all of the usual food options will be available but all concessions stands that are open will offer the same pre-packaged options, regardless of the level. Limited food and beverage options will be available from roving vendors who will only be completing cashless transactions. Alcohol sales at the concession stands will be cut off at the end of the second quarter for Wizards games and midway through the second period for Capitals games, in accordance to the waiver rules, while roaming vendors will continue to sell alcohol until the start of the fourth quarter of Wizards games and at the start of the third period of Capitals games.

Dixon says MSE’s goal is to be at 100 percent capacity for next season, but for now, players like Wizards star Bradley Beal are looking forward to having more than just cardboard cutouts in their home arena.

“We go from not having fans at all to we’ll have some in the building. It’ll be an adjustment. We’ll probably be a little jittery or excited,” Beal said after the team’s 119-107 win over the Oklahoma City Thunder on April 19. “But that’s what we’ve been looking forward to … It’s good to be able to see faces besides these cardboard cutouts. I’m definitely happy and excited about it. We get our fans back. We experience that on the road with a lot of teams with their fans, so it’ll be good to be able to have some home-court advantage.”