Virginia Tech’s Potomac Yard campus has hit a snag and won’t open until spring 2025.
Project delays have become a local tradition around Potomac Yard. The school said the new Virginia Tech Innovation Campus will open in 2025 rather than later this year, as was planned when the project broke ground in 2021.
Among all the hubbub about the Potomac Yard arena, there’s been one looming question: how would people travel to and from the new facility?
Transportation has been the key item of concern for both public critics of the project and many civic leaders. While Mayor Justin Wilson said the development will minimize parking to reduce the amount of people taking cars to the site, Metro General Manager Randy Clarke said the newly built Metro cannot handle the levels of arena traffic proposed in this development.
I have bad news for anyone else tired of reading about the Potomac Yard arena: the city announced a three-month schedule of public engagement for the project.
The schedule includes community engagement events, listening sessions, project briefings, site tours and more.
The impact that the proposed Washington Wizards/Capitals arena at Potomac Yard will have on local businesses will be discussed in a virtual town hall meeting this week.
Stephanie Landrum, CEO of the Alexandria Economic Development Partnership (AEDP), will speak about the ramifications in a Zoom meeting at noon on Thursday (Jan. 21).
A group of Alexandrians and activists from the neighboring suburb — Washington D.C. — rallied outside of the Potomac Yard Metro station this afternoon, protesting the proposal to bring the Washington Capitals and Wizards to a new arena on the site.
The Coalition to Stop the Arena at Potomac Yard held the rally with around 20 protestors and half as many local reporters.
(Updated 2:30 p.m.) A group called the Coalition to Stop the Arena at Potomac Yard is holding a rally tomorrow near the site of the proposed arena.
For those just now waking up from a month-long coma: Washington Capitals and Wizards owner Ted Leonsis announced, along with city leaders and Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, that the teams would be moving to a new arena in Potomac Yard — pending a series of approvals from various levels of government.
The Alexandria Economic Development Partnership (AEDP) released a summary of an economic impact report for the new Potomac Yard arena, but so far, much of the online reception has been skeptical.
AEDP hired HR&A Advisors to write an economic impact report in June. The full report has not been released, but AEDP released a summary of the report last week.
(Updated 12/27) An economic impact report released last Friday said the new Potomac Yard arena would create 30,000 jobs and more than double the economic output of previous development plans.
The report came from HR&A Advisors, a consultant hired by the Alexandria Economic Development Partnership AEDP in June as a technical advisor.
If Metrobus service is cut back, as WMATA has threatened, several Alexandria lines could be on the chopping block.
General Manager Randy Clarke warned that bus service cuts and job cuts are imminent if the transit agency doesn’t close its $750 million budget gap, adding that he said it’s time for a regional tax to permanently fund WMATA.
A new Change.org petition opposing the new Washington Wizards/Capitals arena at Potomac Yard is slowly gaining steam.
Last week, Ted Leonsis, the CEO of Monumental Sports & Entertainment and owner of both teams, announced the move alongside Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin and Alexandria Mayor Justin Wilson. The $2 billion proposal would mean a new entertainment district for the area, which critics say will worsen traffic and decrease property values.
While people around the region have been discussing the proposal to move the Washington Capitals and Washington Wizards to a new Potomac Yard arena, Alexandria Economic Development Partnership President and CEO Stephanie Landrum said one of the most popular questions she’s been getting from Alexandrians is “What will happen to the Target?”
The Target (3101 Richmond Highway) at Potomac Yard was controversial back when it opened, according to a Washington Post article from 1997.
