Capital One Station Naming Amendment Dropped From Budget Bill

MCLEAN, VA — A Virginia state senator has decided to pull her amendment from the state budget bill that would have blocked the Metro system from receiving at least $165 million in state funding unless it added the name of Capital One bank to the McLean rail station.

The legislation would have renamed the Silver Line station as “McLean-Capital One Hall,” a reference to a performance venue the bank is building near the station.

Sen. Janet D. Howell (D-Fairfax), chairwoman of the Senate Finance and Appropriations Committee, said she inserted the provision in transportation funding legislation because the bank did not like being “squeezed for money,” The Washington Post reported Tuesday evening.

Metro is unfairly pressuring the bank to pay for the naming rights rather than granting the naming rights for free, Howell said. The company employs about 9,000 people in the region.

The amendment was meant to get Metro's attention, Howell said in an email Wednesday to the Post. “Obviously I was not seriously going to cut [Metro] by millions," she told the newspaper. "We have reached a compromise: improvements will be made to the station and I will drop the amendment.”

Tysons-based Capital One expressed interest in adding the name of its new theater in the area to the McLean station. The bank offered to pay the costs associated with changing signage and received support from the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors.

The county asked Metro for the name change, which makes naming decisions. But Metro refused the request.

Jeff McKay (D-At Large), chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, told the Post that the compromise includes Metro adding signs inside the McLean station that point people to Capital One Hall, the new theater. Metro also will expedite construction of an additional entrance that Capital One paid for that will give Capital One Hall customers better access to the station, McKay said.

Metro will no longer be required to put Capital One's name on the station to receive its dedicated funding from Virginia, the Fairfax County chairman said.

Former Virginia Del. Jennifer Carroll Foy, from Prince William County, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for governor, noted that Capital One bank is a $28 billion company that has contributed hundreds of thousands to the campaigns of legislators in Richmond.

“Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic that is crushing our public transportation systems, the Virginia Senate threatening to withhold millions in funding just to slap the name of a bank on a Metro station is unethical and callous to say the least,” Carroll Foy said Wednesday morning in a statement before Howell pulled the amendment. “Virginia legislators prioritizing Capital One bank's vanity project over jobs and livelihoods of every day Virginians is disgraceful.”

Carroll Foy said the Senate bill “is emblematic of pay to play — legislators who took in heaps of campaign cash from Capital One are now pushing for the bank's priorities over working Virginians. That's wrong.”

The 1,600-seat Capital One Hall performance center on the company’s campus will host symphonies, plays concerts and other major events intended to draw people from across the region. The $120 million facility is expected to open this fall, according to The Washington Post.