Capital One Arena is an indoor arena in Washington, D.C. Located in the Chinatown section of the larger Penn Quarter neighborhood, the arena sits atop the Gallery Place rapid transit station of the Washington Metro. The arena was opened on December 2, 1997, as MCI Center but renamed to Verizon Center in 2006 when MCI was acquired by Verizon Communications and changed again to its current name in 2017.
Owned and operated by Monumental Sports & Entertainment, it is the home arena of the Washington Capitals of the National Hockey League (NHL), the Washington Wizards of the National Basketball Association (NBA), and the Georgetown University men’s basketball team. It was also home to the Washington Mystics of the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) from 1998 to 2018, after which they moved to the Entertainment and Sports Arena in southeast Washington for the 2019 season.
Though the arena project was a commercial success for its backers, it has contributed to the gentrification of the surrounding area, the displacement of most of its Asian-American residents (the local Chinese-American population, which numbered over 3,000 before the arena’s construction, was a mere 300 in 2023), and the replacement of most of the small businesses and restaurants that served the Asian-American community by large national corporations.[8][9][10][11]
History
The block where the arena was built, between 6th and 7th and F and G Streets, historically held a mix of residences and small businesses.[12] By the 1960s, it was suffering from urban decay, like much of the eastern end of Downtown Washington.[12] In 1973, while the Gallery Place Metro station was being developed below it, the District government bought the land in hopes of redeveloping it.[13] Capital Landmark Associates was selected in 1979 to develop the site with a planned mixed-use complex including retail, offices, apartments, and a hotel.[13] Most of the remaining buildings on the site were demolished in 1985.[12] The project languished for many years but never materialized, and was finally canceled in 1992.[12]
Before the arena’s opening, the Capitals and the Wizards (then known as the Washington Bullets) played at USAir Arena in the Washington suburb of Landover, Maryland. The teams experienced subpar attendance because the location was inconvenient for both Washington and Baltimore residents, and their arena, though only 20 years old, was not up to the standards of other NBA and NHL venues.[14][15][16] In December 1993, Abe Pollin, the owner of both teams, began studying options to move the teams to a new arena to be built with public financing, with possible locations including Baltimore, downtown Washington, and Laurel, Maryland.
The arena in January 2006, then known as MCI Center.
A group of Washington business leaders brokered a deal between Pollin and the District government to build an arena at the Gallery Place site, with the District paying for the $150 million project, which was envisioned to have shopping, food, and exhibitors for daily use even when there was no arena event.[19][20][21] The D.C. Council approved a special tax on businesses to finance the deal.[21] However, a competing proposal soon emerged, when Robert Johnson, head of Black Entertainment Television, offered to build the arena with mostly private financing.[22] With the arena deal facing criticism amid the District’s budget crisis, Pollin eventually agreed to privately fund the construction of the building, which ultimately came to $200 million[23][24] (US$365 million in 2023 dollars[3]). The District would pay for other costs, including purchasing the portion of the land it did not already own, preparing the site, and expanding the Metro station; these eventually amounted to $79 million (US$138 million in 2023 dollars[3]). The District leased the land to Pollin at a below-market rate of $300,000 per year
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