WASHINGTON BUSINESS JOURNAL: A long-unfilled retail space at Nationals Park is finally being primed for development and the first occupant will be golf-simulator company X-Golf America.
The Los Angeles-based X-Golf announced Thursday that it will open a nearly 9,000-square foot indoor golf venue at First Street and Potomac Avenue SE, in a retail storefront that had long been slated forbuildout but struggled to find users. Events D.C., which owns and manages the ballpark, and the Washington Nationals agreed earlier this year to share the costs of improving the space.
Slated to open next summer, the X-Golf venue will feature eight golf simulators on which customers can — virtually — play top-rated golf courses like Pebble Beach and Bethpage National. It will alsooffer lessons and leagues, be available for corporate events, and feature a full-service restaurant and bar with multiple large screen TVs.
X-Golf locations are typically franchised, but the Nationals Park location will be just the second owned and managed by X-Golf itself. The company, founded in 2016, has nearly 100 locationsnationwide and aims to double in size in 2024. In this region, it has three locations in Virginia, in Ashburn, Fredericksburg and Midlothian, one in Pasadena, Maryland, and has several more on tap for Maryland.
It would also be the second X-Golf outpost affiliated with a Major League Baseball franchise. The first opened inside American Family Field, the home of the Milwaukee Brewers, in August 2022 in the stadium’s club level. That 18,000-square-foot venue is open to the public on nongame days but can only be used by ticket holders during Brewers’ home games.
“With the established success at X-Golf AmFam, this second baseball location will solidify the brand’s unique alignment for a golf experience in a stadium environment,” Ryan D’Arcy, X-Golf America president and CEO, said in a statement.
The Nationals Park location will be outside the stadium so visitors will not need game tickets to enter on game days. It will be about half the size of the Milwaukee venue.
Experiential retail venues like X-Golf are popping up all over Greater Washington as property owners seek new ways to attract patrons interested in more than just shopping or dining.
These include indoor pickleball courts, virtual-reality themed arcades and interactive museums — though not all are catching on. Swingers, an upscaleminiature golf bar for adults near Nationals Park closed in October just seven months after it opened. D.C.’s other Swingers venue in Dupont Circle is still open.
Filling out this last retail space at Nats Park wasn’t an option for the team or Events D.C. It was a condition of the stadium’s zoning approvals in 2006 and prevented the 41,000-seat ballpark from obtaining a permanent certificate of occupancy. Last year, the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs — predecessor to the Department of Buildings — indicated it would no longer issuetemporary certificates, which forced Events D.C. to come up with a solution.
