When the Verizon Center, then called the MCI Center, sprung up downtown in 1997, it didn’t have much of a view.
“There were 125 surface parking lots, vacant lots and boarded up buildings downtown then. Now, there are 23,” said Gerry Widdicombe, director of economic development for the Downtown DC Business Improvement District, which launched that same year.
The 20,000-seat entertainment venue, which celebrates its 10th anniversary Saturday, has witnessed downtown’s transformation from a semislum to a thriving retail and entertainment destination. Since the center landed there, developers and investors have pumped more than $6 billion into the area and brought 57,000 new jobs downtown, according to the BID.
Many say the center itself deserves much of the credit for that.
“The investment that Abe Pollin made, combined with the investment that Douglas Jemal made, completely transformed that stretch of Seventh Street and made it clear to everyone that the neighborhood wasn’t going to continue to be a down-on-its-heels Chinatown anymore,” said Alexander Padro, a commissioner for ANC 2C, which encompasses the venue.
“After it came in, you had buildings going up on every vacant lot,” Padro said. “You had buildings going up where the Pepco building is, where the U.S. Mint building is at Ninth Street between H and I streets. The Le Droit Building, where the Spy Museum is now, was basically home to squatters.”
Pollin privately funded the $200 million project to create a new home for his Washington Capitals, Mystics and Wizards (then the Bullets), shuffling them from Landover to downtown in a move that catalyzed rapid investment from several other developers, including Jemal, who bought up an entire block of Seventh Street.
“The MCI Center was sort of an anchor,” said Steve Moore, CEO of the Washington DC Economic Partnership. “It created a magnet for what the area was going to look like.”
The Verizon Center has generated $76 million in tax money for the city and brought 24 million patrons downtown in its ten years.
“The change has been incredible,” Padro said. “Like night and day.”
