Mac Rating: 5.00 | Votes: 1 | Date: 03/07/2026 00:34:00

Washington put a championship arena on the grounds of a Victorian asylum, and it worked. CareFirst Arena at 1100 Oak Drive SE opened on 22 September 2018 as the Entertainment and Sports Arena, a 69-million-dollar, 4,200-seat venue on the St. Elizabeths East Campus in Congress Heights - the historic former federal psychiatric hospital grounds east of the Anacostia River - designed by Rossetti and Marshall Moya, owned by the District and operated by Events DC as the anchor of the neighbourhood's long-promised revival. The tenant sheet is unusually rich for a building this size: the WNBA's Washington Mystics moved in for 2019 and promptly won the league championship that October on their new home floor; the Capital City Go-Go of the NBA G League share the calendar; and the attached 30,000-square-foot practice facility serves as the NBA Washington Wizards' training home, putting three professional operations under one roof. The intimate two-level bowl - about 4,119 for concerts, 4,111 for basketball, 4,222 for boxing - sells out regularly for the Mystics, whose crowds have arguably outgrown the room. Beyond basketball the arena works as Events DC intended: concerts, boxing and MMA cards, esports competitions, graduations, community events and theatrical productions cycle through, drawing an estimated 380,000 new attendees a year to a neighbourhood long bypassed by the city's event economy, with a projected 90-million-dollar economic impact over two decades and hundreds of jobs attached. The Congress Heights Metro station sits within walking distance. CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield took the naming rights in February 2025 under a ten-year partnership, rebranding the building without changing its brief. In a city whose big rooms cluster downtown, the arena's significance is exactly its location: professional sports and first-run entertainment east of the river, in the community's own backyard, with sightlines no 20,000-seat barn can match.