The District’s quasi-public sports, entertainment, and conventions authority will provide $18 million in aid for hospitality workers assailed by the coronavirus crisis, the board of Events DC affirmed Thursday. The decision, which wasn’t previously advertised, came during a teleconference dominated by discussion of COVID-19’s extraordinary damage to local restaurants, bars, hotels, athletic venues, and other meeting places.
These businesses are seeing their revenues dry up because of stay-at-home directives intended to mitigate the virus’ harms and, as a result, have laid off employees in huge numbers. The package, which is meant to be shared by both owners and their staff, includes $5 million for restaurants, $5 million for hotels, $5 million for undocumented workers, and $3 million for marketing efforts to help get D.C. back to normal levels of economic activity and visitation as the pandemic subsides.
Events DC is largely funded by dedicated tax revenue from restaurant, hotel, and car-rental receipts; it also generates revenue from hosting conventions and competitions and leasing out some of its properties. In March, the authority suspended operations at all of its venues, including the Washington Convention Center, the D.C. Armory, and the Entertainment and Sports Arena at the St. Elizabeth’s campus in Southeast.
With the industries that make up Events DC’s base in an economic free fall, it wasn’t immediately clear where the authority would pull the $18 million from. Still, its reserves are known to be deep.
“The goal of this $18 million relief fund is not only to help our local hospitality and tourism industry now, but [to] help fuel Washington, DC’s recovery,” the authority’s president and CEO, Greg O’Dell, said in a statement. The board—composed of representatives from some of the District’s biggest players in hospitality, government, and public utilities, with members appointed by the mayor—unanimously green-lighted the package, asking no questions during the teleconference.
The logistics of distributing the money still must be worked out. Events DC says it’s developing programs and contracts to inject the money into the city’s hospitality and tourism sector, which employs over 80,000 people. For context, the relief would come out to roughly $225 per worker on a per-employee basis.
After news of the financial relief broke, labor and immigration advocates praised the $5 million in funding for undocumented workers in particular. They had sought similar support from District lawmakers in recent days, but the D.C. Council ultimately removed cash assistance for undocumented people from the coronavirus relief legislation it passed last Tuesday.
