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Originally Posted by 3rd&Brown
This is factually incorrect. It's been documented a million times. DC's Chinatown was already in decline when the stadiums were being built. Something like 80% of the remaining Chinese at the time were elderly people living in a few assisted living communities or low cost government housing. The vast majority of younger Chinese at that point had already decamped for Northern Virginia.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by VirtualWorker
As a DC resident in the 80s and 90s, then home to Rayful Edmonds and Cool "Disco" Dan, I laugh every time I read someone say the MCI Center killed DC's Chinatown. That whole area was dead as a doornail--I can't even think of a place in Philly's CBD that is currently as dead as that area was in the early 1990s. There are legitimate arguments against the stadium, but that's not one of them.
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DC had been dying since the '68 riots until, I would wager, until Obama came into office. Once Obama was elected was when DC started to see a major resurgence. Now, its almost unrecognizable in many spots thanks to the new ballpark and the multipurpose buildings DC has built along it's waterfront.
As far as who was leaving, whites did leave, mostly to VA and some to MoCo, then blacks started to join whites in fleeing to suburbia, mainly to PG County. It made a lot of sense to bring the Capitals and the Wizards from the struggling Capital Center, but it did sacrifice a small, but decent Chinatown, and killed it in the process.
DC is only 61 sq. mi. meaning that you had overflow into the MD suburbs, so it's easier to head to the suburbs in the DC area than it is in much bigger cities such as Philly, Detroit, Chicago, and NY, where the city limits are over 100 sq. mi.