WASHINGTON — The owner of Monumental Sports & Entertainment, Ted Leonsis, sent shockwaves through Penn Quarter when he announced plans to try and move the Capitals and Wizards to Northern Virginia.
The operator of the team’s next-door neighbor, Clyde’s Restaurant, was particularly surprised.
“Oh, it was heartbreaking,” said Clyde’s Restaurant Group President John McDonnell. “It was a gut shot for a lot of reasons.”
McDonnell said losing all that game day foot traffic would be a devastating blow for a neighborhood already struggling with a decline in foot traffic from empty office space, a dip in downtown tourism and an increase in crime.
McDonnell said Clyde’s spent $200,000 on private security at its Gallery Place location last year. They’re on pace to spend $300,000 this year. He said none of his other locations require that.
The crime his employees were dealing with got so bad, in September he wrote a scathing email to DC Council and the mayor, blasting the city for its response to the crime problems in the area. The email warned that unless the District could provide a “reasonable level of safety in the neighborhood ... we do not have faith that we can remain in Penn Quarter.”
McDonnell said city leaders immediately reached out to lay out plans to combat crime in Penn Quarter, and there has been major progress since.
“I think the city deserves a tremendous amount of credit,” McDonnell said. "Because we would not have guessed making as much improvement in a short amount of time was possible.”
Clyde’s restaurant opened its spot next to Capitol One Arena back when it was called the MCI Center in 2005. It’s been a staple of the Gallery Place/Penn Quarter business district ever since, especially on game days.
McDonnell said he was as shocked as anyone when Leonsis announced an agreement in principle to move two of the District's remaining professional sports teams, the Capitals and Wizards, to a new state of the art arena in Potomac Yard.
The plan isn’t a done deal. But for Clyde’s, the announcement immediately cast doubt on its future in the neighborhood.
“You know, it's four years from now,” McDonnell answered when asked if the restaurant would remain open in its Gallery Place location if the Wizards and Capitals moved. “If it happened now, let's say the teams left next week, there's no question that we would be closing this restaurant, like a lot of other businesses in this neighborhood.
And unless the plan to move the teams to Alexandria falls through, McDonnell said it will be up to city to redefine Penn Quarter.
Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development Nina Albert said plans to reimagine the nightlife district are already underway.
“If we were to change that use completely, either to be a new music venue, or a combination of museums or mixed-use development, just like City Center right now is, what would that be?” Albert said in an interview with WUSA9. “And what does that do for the neighborhood? And that's what we're trying to build on.”
McDonnell said business owners need to be convinced the city’s vision will work – and fast. Leonsis' plans calls for the Caps and Wizards to leave Capitol One in 2028, and businesses are already asking the question, what then?
“It's got to get going for sure,” McDonnell said. “I mean, that's just the simple truth that the teams are really important to this neighborhood.”
Albert said she knows the clock is ticking.
“I think the most important thing for businesses to understand is that the District's being very aggressive of what I will term stabilization strategies,” Albert said. “What are the things that we can do right now, in the very near term, to make sure that their businesses are as successful as possible?”
McDonnell and some people within DC Government are still holding out some hope the Capitals and Wizards don’t end up leaving Penn Quarter.
The same day news of Leonsis' plans to move the teams to Northern Virginia broke, Mayor Muriel Bowser announced a plan for the city to spend $500,000,000 in tax dollars to upgrade Capitol One Arena, as an effort to convince Leonsis to stay. Sources in the DC Government say the administration plans to continue pushing some version of that package through DC Council, just in case the deal in Alexandria falls through.