D.C.’s poorest ward aims anger at Leonsis as Mystics eye move downtown

Now White fears he could lose the revenue generated by the concession stand — enough to help him open a second deli in another struggling area — if Ted Leonsis relocates the Washington Wizards and Capitals to Virginia and moves Mystics home games downtown to the Capital One Arena.

“I’d have to cut back on jobs and opportunity for the community,” White said the other day at his deli on Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue SE, where his menu includes “Marion Barry Salmon Cakes,” a toast to the neighborhood’s favorite former mayor. “It would be devastating.”

As Leonsis and Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) touted the deal for the $65 million arena nearly a decade ago, the Mystics’ billionaire owner talked with passion about creating a new horizon for the neighborhood of Congress Heights in Ward 8, a corner of the city long defined by poverty and violent crime.

But with his announcement that he would shift Mystics games downtown to the Capital One Arena if the Wizards and Capitals relocate to Alexandria, Leonsis is seeking to remove a key attraction that D.C. officials are counting on to help fuel investment and propel the neighborhood’s renaissance.

When it agreed to the deal with the city, Leonsis’s company, Monumental Sports & Entertainment, signed a 19-year lease at the Ward 8 arena, a commitment that included not only Mystics home games but also Wizards practices.

“Our expectation was what it still is — the presence of the Mystics and Monumental was going to be the excitement we were going to build around,” said Monica Ray, president of the Congress Heights Community Training and Development Corp., a nonprofit that has advocated for the redevelopment of St. Elizabeths.

“I’m angry that they think they can get up and leave the promise and potential there,” Ray said. “It feels like Ted has forgotten his commitment to Ward 8. We should not be an afterthought.”

Her disappointment is not isolated. After Leonsis’s announcement, a Ward 8 council candidate, Markus Batchelor, described the Mystics potential move as “a blow” to spurring economic growth “where it’s needed most.” Ron Moten, a veteran Anacostia-based activist, threatened to organize a boycott of Monumental sports franchises and brands unless Leonsis reversed course.

Even if Virginia officials approve Monumental’s plan, the Capitals, Wizards and Mystics would remain where they are until 2028. In addition, the Mystics would maintain their offices and still practice at the Congress Heights arena. The Capital City Go-Go, Monumental’s team in the NBA-affiliated G League, also would continue to play home games in Ward 8.

John Thompson III, senior vice president of Monumental Basketball, said the Mystics need to move downtown because Entertainment and Sports Arena’s 4,200-seat capacity is too small to accommodate the team’s growing popularity. The Mystics won the 2019 WNBA championship on their home court.

Thompson also said that Monumental would remain a pronounced presence in Ward 8, helping community organizations through financial contributions. As part of its agreement with the city, Monumental is required to make $10 million in contributions, an obligation it says it has already exceeded.

“I can’t stress enough that we’re not leaving, there’s still a commitment to the neighborhood,” Thompson said in a phone interview. He added that Monumental would work with the city to “bring other events” to Congress Heights “to help fill the void” if Mystics’ home games move. “Our commitment to the community is not going to change,” he said.

Bowser’s administration, in a statement, said that the city’s contract with Monumental “requires” that the “Mystics play their home games and the Wizards hold their practices at the Entertainment and Sports arena until 2037.

“The District honors its contracts, and we trust and expect our partners to do the same.”

Leonsis’s plan to move the Capitals and Wizards to Alexandria has prompted a wave of concern about the future of downtown Washington, where the 1997 opening of what was then known as the MCI Center spawned a thicket of new office and condominium towers and spurred the opening of bars and restaurants.

As he promoted the new Ward 8 arena in 2018, Leonsis spoke of the development that occurred around Chinatown and Penn Quarter, saying, “Let’s do in Ward 8 what we ended up doing in downtown D.C.”

But the loss of Mystic home games — about 20 in a season — is likely to shrink opportunities in Southeast, including for those who have served prison sentences and who pick up work. When the team plays in the neighborhood, for example, 37 “ambassadors,” most of whom are Ward 8 residents, earn as much as $17.50 an hour greeting fans, cleaning up and driving shuttle buses between the Congress Heights Metro station and the arena, Ray said.

Robin McKinney, 50, a D.C. government clerical worker who lives in Anacostia, makes $25 an hour plus tips driving a shuttle bus on game days — extra income she says she needs to keep up with mortgage payments and support her seven children.

“When the season comes around, you know you have a job,” said McKinney, an elected Ward 8 advisory neighborhood commissioner. “You cannot survive in the District unless you have a full-time and a part-time job. If the Mystics don’t play over here, I’d be out of income.”

In a pavilion next door to the arena known as Sycamore & Oak, 20 Black-owned start-up businesses occupy small shops and sell art, pottery, jewelry, cosmetics and food. On game days, thousands of potential patrons pass through.

“When people are coming and going to the game, they stop here or even just look in,” said Tahneezia Hammond, the owner of Glam Station, a boutique at Sycamore & Oak. “Any exposure is good exposure. It’s good for spreading the word. We want the team to make this more of a destination.”

At the same time, there are also business owners in Congress Heights who say they have not benefited from the Mystics’ presence, nor from development at St. Elizabeths, a sprawling campus that is behind a fence and set back from the neighborhood.

Players Lounge, a bar located on Martin Luther King Jr. SE, has been a Congress Heights fixture for more than 50 years, its luncheon and dinner patrons having included Barry when he was mayor and later when he represented Ward 8 on the D.C. Council.

Steve Thompson, owner of Players, said Mystics fans rarely visit the lounge, a dimly lit joint where the menu includes half smokes, fried chicken and pig’s feet. The walls are decorated with banners celebrating Washington’s football team (before they became the Commanders), and a framed photo of Barry and funeral programs of regulars who have died.

“They drive into the Mystics games and then drive on out, they have no reason to come over here,” Thompson said. “If they left, I don’t think it would affect me. By them being inside the gate, they’re almost segregated from us.”

A ’20-year narrative’

On a September morning in 2015, as they announced plans for the new arena, Bowser and Leonsis stood on a podium on Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue SE, showering each other with praise and talking of a new horizon for Ward 8.

The neighborhood’s “welcoming embrace,” Leonsis told a crowd that included Wizards stars John Wall and Bradley Beal, “made the decision very, very easy on where we would commit and grow and really commit to a 20-year narrative in helping you and working together to make this a fantastically well-developed neighborhood.”

“You’re now a national news story,” Leonsis said as he has boasted of choosing Ward 8 to build the NBA’s “best” practice facility for the Wizards. “We’re all going to work on and we’re all in this together, creating jobs, being able now to attract other businesses to come here and they will create jobs.”

The construction of Entertainment and Sports Arena was a centerpiece of the redevelopment of St. Elizabeths East, an 180-acre campus that also is to be home to a new hospital, retail and restaurants, and nearly 1,000 units of housing, about a third of which have been completed.

Moten, who has helped arrange musical events at Sycamore & Oak, including a Go-Go Santa at Christmastime, said the arena and pavilion made it possible for Ward 8 residents and Washingtonians across the city to think of the neighborhood in new ways.

“It helps to get rid of the stigma that Southeast has been trying to get rid of for years,” he said. “When you’re a new business and you say you’re over by the arena, it gives you credibility. And when the people come, it’s icing on the cake. They see the arena and they see Sycamore & Oak — I like to call it ‘Black Wall Street.’”

Referring to Leonsis, Moten said, “You gave people hope and now you took away hope.”

White, the owner of the MLK Deli, where the walls are lined with framed photos of King, is not ready to give up. He hopes the Mystics stay where they are, and that patrons buying his steak and cheese sandwiches at the arena know his business is owned by someone who grew up in the area and “looks like them.”

“It’s super cool and it motivates other people to see they can do whatever they want,” he said. “It’s bigger than the arena. And it’s deeper than food. It’s the feeling of, ‘We can do anything.’”