With time running out for the Virginia Legislature to resurrect the Potomac Yard sports and entertainment district, Alexandria shared emails and text messages with the News4 I-Team revealing new information about discussions for the proposal.
The I-Team sought the documents for weeks in a Freedom of Information Act request and only received them late Thursday night with little more than a day in the legislative session. The News4 team found new details and some striking texts.
The documents show Alexandria’s economic development team was talking about the deal to move the Washington Capitals and Wizards to Virginia with state officials in April or May of last year — a month or two earlier than previously known.
Some of the documents were a list of prepared answers to questions the I-Team asked in early February. The team at Monumental Sports and Entertainment, which own the franchises, had answers for those questions and circulated them among themselves and Alexandria officials via email, but never sent them to News4.
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They were only provided in response to the FOIA the I-Team sent to Alexandria.
One of those answers reveals Monumental expected to pay $29.6 million in lease payments on the new arena. It’s a lot of money, but only a little more than the company spends now in mortgage and rent payments for Capital One Arena, according to information the I-Team gathered and The Washington Post reported.
The really eye-catching message was a text discussing the funding of the arena plan from Alexandria Mayor Justin Wilson. It reads, “The only difference between this arena deal and outdoor dining on King Street was scale.”
It’s not exactly clear who he was texting to, but he continued, “We finance and build the street, let a private restaurant use it in exchange for rent, and then tax the crap out of their operation to pay for the street and then some.”
Wilson stood by the message Thursday — even the part about “taxing the crap” out of people who dine or attend arena events. In a phone call with the I-Team, Mayor Wilson called it “informal language” but told the I-Team the funding mechanism for outdoor dining in Old Town and a $2 billion arena is the same aside from the scale of the plan. He even pointed to his posts on X where he explained that.
He sent the I-Team the post he was referring to. It didn’t say anything about taxing the crap out of anyone.
Monumental officials didn’t reply to the I-Team’s emails, texts or calls Thursday. A spokesperson issued a wide reaching no comment to News4 about developments in the deal.
The I-Team also asked for internal emails from D.C. about the deal in December. The District hasn’t sent anything, yet, and just Thursday asked for another extension on deadlines that passed long ago.
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