Alexandria’s City Council is hosting a town hall tomorrow (Saturday) to discuss the new Potomac Yard arena, but some locals are planning to rally outside the event and protest.
The town hall is scheduled for tomorrow (Saturday) from 9:30-11:30 a.m. at the Charles Houston Recreation Center (901 Wythe Street).
Officials planning the $2 billion arena at Potomac Yard say that there will be multiple ways to park around and access the site, from accessing parking garages in nearby Crystal City and at Metro stations, with fans getting carted around in shuttles running up and down Potomac Avenue.
Transportation issues were the most frequently mentioned in a roundtable discussion on Monday with local business owners and representatives at Pork Barrel BBQ in Del Ray. The dozen or so business leaders otherwise expressed support for the project.
Alexandria doesn’t have the resources to adequately cover the public safety aspect of the proposed Potomac Yard arena and entertainment district, sources in the Alexandria Police Department and Sheriff’s Office told ALXnow.
The city currently does not have the resources to cover the addition of the arena and entertainment district at Potomac Yard. The Alexandria Police Department has just over 300 officers, the Sheriff’s Office has around 165 deputies and the Fire Department has about 300 fire and rescue personnel.
The proposed Potomac Yard arena, a collaboration between various government leaders and Monumental Sports & Entertainment, has gotten more than a little community pushback.
Now, Monumental Sports is counterattacking with a new website, called Monumental Opportunity, which claims to “provide project facts and information” and “correct misconceptions.”
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.
