Business booming despite lockout

Developers, restaurateurs and retailers near MCI Center say they have felt no significant impact from the NHL labor dispute that has forced the cancellation of 24 Washington Capitals games at that arena this season.

“There’s no stopping this train now,” said Douglas Jemal, chairman of Douglas Development Corp. and owner of several commercial properties along Seventh Street NW. “It’s a mature area now. It’s not precluded just on games like before. It’s a neighborhood where people want to be.”

A lengthy work stoppage by the NBA six years ago nearly dealt a fatal blow to what was then an emerging neighborhood in Chinatown.

The NBA locked out its players for 202 days, sending businesses surrounding new MCI Center in a frantic search to replace revenue lost because of the cancellation of Washington Wizards games.

The NHL is embroiled in an even more bitter labor dispute with its players. The lockout is in its 125th day, and the cancellation of the remainder of the season is expected soon.

Business managers said they are feeling none of the dire effects that accompanied the NBA lockout.

“Sure, it would be wonderful if the Caps were here, but we really haven’t taken that much of a hit,” said Christina Reaves, general manager of the Austin Grill. “There’s so much more going on around here.”

Much has changed in Chinatown since the unsteady days of late 1998 and early 1999, when the NBA lockout was in full swing and layoffs at neighborhood restaurants were common.

The area at that time depended heavily on MCI Center events — Wizards, Capitals and Georgetown Hoyas games and the occasional concert — for financial stability.

However, the neighborhood since has added attractions like the popular International Spy Museum, the new Washington Convention Center and most recently the Gallery Place complex, which by itself includes 14 movie theatres, nearly 200 condominiums and a mix of retail shops and eateries.

In addition, the National Portrait Gallery is in the midst of a dramatic renovation and will reopen in July 2006. Residential and office development in the area also has mushroomed, with several prominent law firms eschewing the K Street power corridor for a Chinatown address.

“What’s gone on with hockey is unfortunate and has maybe hurt some of the sports bars a bit, but any full-service restaurant in that area has hung in just fine. Business is bustling,” said Lynne Breaux, executive director of the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington. “The city and certainly that area has so much more to offer now.”

Metro lost between 4,000 and 6,000 riders from each canceled Capitals game. However, that hockey-related loss amounts to less than 1 percent of the rail system’s ridership, which hovers between 600,000 and 650,000 a day.

NHL players and owners are fiercely at odds over the league’s economic system. Player salaries tripled in the past decade, growth the owners want to stem. The owners want a system that ties player salaries to overall revenue, ideally through a salary cap.

The players’ union wants to continue the marketplace-based system currently in place. The union proposed a luxury tax system similar to the one used by Major League Baseball. That system allows teams to spend an unlimited amount on player payroll but charges a tax on payroll above a certain amount.

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