When Monumental Sports & Entertainment CEO Ted Leonsis announced in December he would be moving D.C.’s NBA and NHL teams across the river to Virginia, it seemed like a death knell for an area of downtown that was already gasping for air.

Reading the tea leaves, Mayor Muriel Bower quickly mobilized a plan. Hours after Leonsis’ surprise press conference, she announced that two real estate veterans with a history of developing vibrant mixed-use communities in the city would spearhead a new task force to reimagine the area. The group would formulate two plans — one if the teams ended up leaving and another if they stayed.

“People were sad about a potential change,” Bowser said at Bisnow’s Washington, D.C., State of the Market on Wednesday. “They turned a little bit mad as well, a little bit scared. And we decided that this was the time to act.

Leonsis reversed course in March and agreed to stay in the District until 2050. But the task force is still working on big plans for a sector of downtown that has been especially impacted by crime, retail and office vacancy, and declining foot traffic.

Last month, the task force, led by Edens CEO Jodie McLean and Uplands Real Estate principal and former Forest City Washington President Deborah Ratner Salzberg, unveiled its first big-picture ideas for the 130 acres that make up the downtown district.

The co-chairs spoke about the strategy that guided their first ideations while sitting next to Bowser at Bisnow‘s event, held at BGO’s office building at 777 Sixth St. NW, just steps from Capital One Arena.

McLean and Ratner Salzberg have developed some of the largest neighborhood repositioning efforts in the city, Union Market in northeast and The Yards in southeast, and this undertaking was informed by those feats.

“Jodie suggested we use a process that they used at Union Market,” Ratner Salzberg said.

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