On Frozen Blog

Could suburban Washington, D.C., become home to a minor pro hockey team in the not-too-distant future? Such a team would first need a home here, and in Montgomery County, Maryland, intrigue is swirling around a new arena feasibility study and county officials’ publicly stated support for construction of an 8,000-10,000-seat arena, likely located in Germantown.

Last July, the Maryland Stadium Authority commissioned the feasibility study at the behest of Montgomery County and determined that a new arena in Germantown could bring “an estimated $7.5 million in net revenue a year” to the county. The reporting on this has been carried by the Gazette Community Newspaper chain. You can find the paper’s most recent coverage of this story here and here.

Addressing the rosy economic forecast for a new arena, the feasibility study noted:

“Based on our analysis of the economic underpinnings of the proposed arena, its likely operating revenues and costs, its competitive environment, and the performance of similarly situated arenas throughout the U.S., there is little doubt that the forces required for financially successful arena operations have been in place for quite some time.”

The study further noted that the arena, which would need anchor tenants such as minor pro basketball (the Maryland Nighthawks currently play in county high school gyms) and hockey, could become “a treasured community asset.”

The pricetag for such a building could go as high as $60 million.

Here’s where things get even more interesting. HOK Sports of Kansas City, the builders of Camden Yards, were hired by the county last year to conduct preliminary site evaluations. Among the sites under consideration: Montgomery College’s Germantown campus and the current Montgomery County Fairgrounds.

Montgomery County is home to more than 1,000,000 residents, and among the driving forces for a new multipurpose arena there is high school graduations. The county’s swollen high school student enrollments force commencement ceremonies out of the county, where no suitably large host facilities exist, often inconveniently and in a costly manner downtown.

A study, community need, and community interest in such a project still needs also a political champion, and this idea appears to have that as well, in the person of County Councilman Michael Knapp.

“I’m going to push for the county to pursue this,” he told the Gazette last summer.

East Coast League teams have had stints on the outer periphery of Washington — the Chesapeake Ice Breakers played in the modest Show Place Arena in Upper Marlboro, Md., in 1997 and ‘98, while the Richmond Renegades had a healthy stint in the E of 1990-2003. Neither made much an impression on the region’s hockey fans. Richmond’s Renegades today compete in the Southern Professional Hockey League — an even lower rung in hockey’s pro hierarchy. What’s being talked about and seriously studied today in Montgomery County represents, potentially, the most significant inroad to minor pro hockey taking root as a supplement to the Capitals in the region really for the first time.

And these are different times. If hockey is experiencing an Ovechkin-led renaissance-revolution in the region, it’s hard to imagine a county as affluent and heavily populated as Montgomery not supporting its first-ever minor pro team. And likely, with the Nighthawks, two of them.

Or put another way: if not now, when?

Interestingly, the feasibility study claimed that the new arena wouldn’t cannibalize business from other venues. Still, it’s not certain where the Capitals stand on the matter. It’s early in the process, and any new arena is still years away from its opening night puck drop, but the next generation of Hanson brothers could be coming to a new rink near you at the height of Washington’s embrace of hockey.