All this hate on Ted cracks me up. He is an entrepreneur. And this is America where we are a capitalist society and not communism. People are acting like Ted owes them something and should give his money away (which he does a lot). But he certainly doesn’t owe the fans anything. In fact I would argue that he IS trying to give the fans something special.
Lastly, I doubt there are few, if any, here who understand how to manage a billion dollar net worth. There are different tax parameters, ways to grow wealth not available to the masses, and significant political advantages. If you had that kind of money you would do the same things. You say you wouldn’t, but you would.
I have to admit, as an outsider reading about his current arena deal has me thinking that I can't really fault him for moving much either. Like... he's been talking about a raw deal for a while now and sounds like he wasn't getting any concessions, just milked for as long as the deal lasts, had enough and didn't want to play ball with the same people as before on principle.
They can be upset about that, and from a fan standpoint I totally get losing the convenience of metro stops directly under the arena (because that's neat and not every building has stuff like that) but a big complex with some side real estate is basically an owner's dream, and it's coming up more and more (like the Howard Terminal proposition in Oakland and the Braves' new spot with housing and entertainment spots on the property)
The only thing that I think is going to shoot him in the foot right now (I initially typed "face" for some reason) is that it sounds like the traffic concerns are very real. Now... there's a lot of development left to turn concept art into reality but all the underground parking in the world isn't going to make it easy to get to a riverside location from more than about two directions, and it seems like one of those (the DC side) gets really congested like all the time anyway.
Lane extensions and bridge projects are extremely expensive and not really covered in what we've seen so far, so like... are they just applying a pressure point and then hoping a government fixes the problem, or is there a second wave where Monumental hopes to lean on Amazon to suggest improvements to traffic and quality of life, or what? Because the traffic part does seem like it hasn't really been considered much.