It’s been a minute since we checked in on Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s attempts to win over the state legislature to his proposed Alexandria arena for the Washington Capitals and Wizards, how’s that going?
“The House did all the work,” Youngkin told a crowd at a recent event at a Richmond-area restaurant. “They hired outside advisers. They brought in experts that had seen these kinds of projects before. They got not only a clean bill of health but they actually were told, ‘This may be the best thing we’ve ever seen.’”…
But both House Speaker Don Scott and House budget committee chairman Luke Torian said Youngkin’s remarks — similar to those given in other speeches — were inaccurate and far overstated the scope of the firm’s work.
The firm had seen potential for a “great” opportunity in the structure of the deal, if the underlying assumptions were borne out by a financial review, something that never fully got underway because talks collapsed, according to Scott, who said the governor was “embellishing.”
Whether Youngkin’s economic projections for the arena make any damn sense has become a key point in the debates over the project, ever since it was revealed that fans would have to pay $731 a night for hotel rooms and $75 for parking to make the math work. A Cardinal News columnist advised Youngkin yesterday to stop talking about how “unprecedented” his arena deal would be and instead talk about other arenas that worked out for the public, like the Milwaukee Bucks and Dallas Mavericks projects, and immediately got pounced on by economist J.C. Bradbury:
Oof, this is totally incorrect. The author doesn't appear to be familiar with how these public finance schemes work, as the examples provided don't pay for themselves. https://t.co/c90lCdzwZp pic.twitter.com/ZAWNIseVMp
— J.C. Bradbury (@jc_bradbury) March 20, 2024
In any event, nothing is moving on the Alexandria arena plan unless state Sen. Louise Lucas changes her mind about it, and she made this week that she has no plans to, telling WTOP:
The fact still remains that I’m not interested in seeing the arena in Northern Virginia. For one thing, the voters don’t want it. The residents of Alexandria, they don’t want it. And it’s not just people in Alexandria, in Northern Virginia, who are not in favor of this arena. It’s kind of like a statewide thing now. And with all of the information that I’ve had coming into me from other localities and other states, I can’t find anybody who can show me that having taxpayer dollars help construct, finance, any kind of sports arena has ever been a good deal for that locality.
That’s pretty definitive, and given that even leadership in the House, which was willing to vote for the arena plan, is clapping back at Youngkin now, it doesn’t seem like the governor is doing great with his project of winning enough friends to push this deal through in the final budget talks.
So if the Alexandria deal is dead for now, what’s team owner Ted Leonsis to do? He’s got that $500 million in renovation money offered by D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, but if he wants to maximize his take, he really needs to get some semblance of a bidding war going—
A source with direct knowledge of the situation told The Baltimore Banner that Maryland Gov. Wes Moore and Leonsis discussed the idea of bringing the NBA and NHL teams to Maryland after Virginia lawmakers left out plans for a new Wizards and Capitals arena from the state budget this month.
Ahh, leak word to the scoop-hungry media that you’ve had “talks” with another state, that should do nicely. The heads of both the Maryland senate and house, who would be needed to squeeze an arena plan into the state budget in the waning days of the session, both said they’ve heard nothing about this, but an anonymous tip to the local paper is cheaper than flying to Nashville.
If the people don’t want it, why force something o. Them that’s not Acceptable