ALEXANDRIA, Va. — It's official. Northern Virginia will not be home to the Washington Capitals or Wizards anytime soon.
At a news conference Wednesday night, Mayor Muriel Bowser and Monumental Owner Ted Leonsis announced that Monumental Sports had reached an agreement to keep the teams at Capital One Arena in D.C. until 2050.
Their announcement, just three hours after an announcement from the City of Alexandria, that they had "ended negotiations related to the Potomac Yard Entertainment District opportunity and the proposal will not move forward."
Outside of Wednesday's news conference, members of the Coalition to Stop the Arena at Potomac Yard celebrated.
A petition they launched, had more than 3,100 signatures as of Wednesday night.
"You can't have these back room deals and think you're going to have a very positive outcome," said Andrew Macdonald, a former vice mayor who is now part of the coalition.
He and others who've been adamantly opposed to the proposal, called this announcement a monumental win.
"What has happened today, where citizens stood up and said no to a billionaire, is a model that states and cities across the country should look to," said John Breyault, who's with the National Consumers League.
WUSA9 also checked in with some of the local business owners Wednesday night in Del Ray, who would have been impacted by the move.
Bill Blackburn, the owner of Pork Barrel BBQ in Del Ray, told WUSA9 via text, that "it's disappointing news and a loss for the City of Alexandria."
In January, Governor Glenn Youngkin highlighted Blackburn, as one of the small business owners who would benefit from the proposed move of the sports and entertainment arena.
But other business owners in the area like Keith Keefer, the owner of Northside 10 in Alexandria told WUSA9 their business wouldn't see many benefits.
"I don't think it would have done much. They would have built bars by the arena. They would have been busy, the Metro would have been busy. For us we like our small community over here."
In a statement posted to YouTube, Alexandria City Mayor Justin Wilson called the announcement a disappointment.
"We are disappointed that this proposal was not able to be thoughtfully considered on it's merits by legislators, stakeholders and ultimately now by our community, and instead got caught up in partisan warfare in Richmond. As a result the City of Alexandria will no longer be considering the current proposal and will instead turn our focus to other efforts to bring quality commercial opportunities to the community in the future. To both diversify our tax base and protect our quality of life," said Wilson.
Governor Youngkin also responded to the announcement with a statement, where he wrote:
"Virginians deserve better. A one-of-a-kind project bringing world-class athletes and entertainment, creating 30,000 jobs and $12 billion in economic activity just went up in smoke. This transformational project would have driven investment to every corner of the Commonwealth," the governor said. "This should have been our deal and our opportunity, all the General Assembly had to do was say: ‘thank you, Monumental, for wanting to come to Virginia and create $12 billion of economic investment, let’s work it out.’ But no, personal and political agendas drove away a deal with no upfront general fund money and no tax increases, that created tens of thousands of new jobs and billions in revenue for Virginia. I’d like to thank Ted Leonsis and the Monumental team, the City of Alexandria, JBG Smith and countless other partners for their professionalism, belief in Virginia and fortitude. Congratulations to Monumental for striking a great deal, I’m sorry you won’t be in Virginia."
But some Virginia lawmakers disagree with the remarks made by the Governor and others, who blamed personal and political agendas for the reason the deal didn't go through.
"That wasn't the case at all. We've been open to trying to negotiate a good deal for taxpayers since the very beginning. But nobody's been willing to talk to us. The issue has always been using tax payer backed debt to fund the project as opposed to private debt," said Virginia Senate Majority Leader Scott Surrovell.
He told WUSA9 that they should have involved the legislature much earlier in the process.
"We don't typically have somebody come to us and say 'take it or leave it'. We typically say here's a project we're thinking about, what are your concerns, lets have some discussions about it. That never happened here. We were basically given a take it or leave it deal. That doesn't work in this state. We have a AAA bond rating that we have to guard very carefully and they were asking us to do some things in this project that we've never done before in history," said Senator Surrovell.
He says things could have definitely had a different outcome.
"I think if they would have come to us earlier we could have potentially figured out a way to make this done. But they came to us so late," said Surrovell.
Wednesday afternoon, Mayor Justin Wilson didn't respond to an interview request regarding the future of Potomac Yard.
However, in February, Mayor Wilson told WUSA9, "If this doesn't pass we would have to go back to the drawing board and find another proposal."
As for Keefer, he offered up one suggestion, another high school, saying there's only one high school for all of Alexandria.
"If you have land to build us an arena instead build a second high school," said Keefer.