When Nothing Else Matters by Michael Leahy

Author:Michael Leahy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2004-03-17T05:00:00+00:00

1997 was Pollin’s makeover year, facelifts for everything. He had built another new arena, this time not in a suburb but on the edge of Washington’s Chinatown, in a downtown area desperate for revitalization. No one could reasonably argue that he didn’t tap into his wealth, or put himself at financial risk. He paid for everything, with the costs of construction over two years exceeding the projected $175 million budget by at least $45 million. For financing, he had borrowed from several lenders, offering as collateral his two teams and most of his land and properties, including his arena in Landover. Susan O’Malley’s father, Peter, a Maryland attorney and longtime Pollin friend, handled the legal end of much of the project. In December 1997, Pollin moved his team out of Landover and into his new arena, the MCI Center, for which the telecommunications giant paid him $44 million for naming rights.

From the moment the arena opened for business, the area around the seedy east side neighborhood bordering Chinatown slowly, steadily changed. Pollin deserved the lion’s share of credit. A couple of nice restaurants popped up here, and a couple of attractive night spots there, in tandem with all the new foot traffic coming to see the Wizards, the Capitals, his WNBA Washington Mystics, Georgetown basketball and rock shows. The mass of bodies, in turn, generated new cultural and business activity. A theater group began contemplating expansion plans in the area, later to settle on building a new stage across from the arena. The area around MCI became a hub of activity on game nights, requiring parking lots, small shops, still more restaurants. The influx of attractions, employees and revenue served as the stimulus for the construction of apartment complexes and the refurbishing of old buildings and surrounding streets. That is, by any measuring stick, an economic and social revitalization, which Pollin’s money and risk had set in motion.

Once Jordan came to town, pundits around Washington tended to overlook or undervalue Pollin’s contributions. It was Jordan, said the Jordanphiles, who stoked economic activity in the area. But in measuring people’s relative contributions to the rebound of a dormant area, reason dictates that you begin with the man who gambled something, the one who put up considerable money from a fortune that paled against those of other NBA owners. Jordan was generally disinclined to risk his own money, outside of casinos.

Jordan looked to others to assume business gambles. Jordan did not provide the big money for deals, believing his presence alone constituted an investment, that it ought to be enough for a free stake in something.

What he did on his end was show up somewhere. The move generally made money for someone else. When he donned a Wizards uniform, it meant that about 5,500 more people a night came to MCI than the year before. By the start of the season, the Wizards had sold nearly 14,000 season ticket packages, an increase of about 4,000 from the year before. The surrounding shops,

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