Gabrielle Gurley
Protesters rally in downtown Philadelphia against a proposed NBA arena in the city’s Chinatown neighborhood, September 7, 2024.
PHILADELPHIA – The darkening skies had been threatening rain, and by midafternoon a torrential deluge cut short the rally to save Philadelphia’s Chinatown. Some of the protesters had umbrellas. Others had turned trash bags into rain gear. More than a few just decided to get wet. Most of them—several thousand people—marched from City Hall to the neighborhood blocks where the 76ers, the city’s NBA team, wants to build a new arena. “Hey, hey, ho, ho,” they chanted, “the billionaires have got to go.”
The early-September march and rally was the first major public signal that Chinatown had no intention of caving in to the Sixers arena plan, which would hem in the 154-year-old enclave.
Though Philadelphia’s major political players are desperate to build the arena and thereby replace an underperforming shopping mall, they hadn’t had much to say about Chinatown’s future—until a study commissioned by the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation and paid for by the Sixers appeared.
Originally slated for release at the end of 2023, the four-part study on the community, economic, transportation, and design impacts wasn’t released until the end of August. Last week, Mayor Cherelle Parker announced that the city and the team had reached an agreement to move forward with the arena. She took “full responsibility” for the deal.
Reached by phone this week, Debbie Wei of the Save Chinatown Coalition calls the pact “governmental malpractice.” “Never mind the traffic,” says Wei. “We won’t survive the construction, let alone the arena.” City leaders had miscalculated Chinatown’s fury and the fight that residents would put up to save their homes and preserve the touchstones of their culture.
Impact reports paid for by arena and stadium project proponents often inflate the economic benefits and gloss over the possible threats to surrounding communities. This study didn’t deviate from that template, with economic projections that were mostly optimistic. The authors of the community impact analysis also included one sobering message, however: Chinatown’s “core identity could be significantly diminished or lost.”
The project’s specific “negative dynamics” included increasing property values, congestion, gentrification, and displacement of low-income residents and of health care facilities, groceries, professional and financial services, and other small businesses. The report deemed “inconclusive” the much-touted vibrancy that an arena might bring, with safer streets and more foot traffic for the business district. Despite the city establishment’s promotion of the arena as a win-win for the city, these caveats diminish the ringing endorsements elsewhere in the study.
The project has a number of carve-outs that would greatly reduce the Sixers’ tax burden.
76DevCo, the project’s development arm, has gone to great lengths to declare that the Sixers aren’t asking for a cent from Philadelphia taxpayers. The team’s owners—Josh Harris, David Blitzer, and David Adelman—have put $1.5 billion toward the arena’s construction. But by granting a range of what are effectively tax abatements to the development, the government of the country’s poorest major city has walked away from the potential for millions of dollars in property tax revenues for a prime slice of downtown real estate.
The project has a number of carve-outs that would greatly reduce the Sixers’ tax burden. The team would make an estimated $5 million in payments in lieu of taxes. It has crafted a community benefits agreement worth $50 million over the 30 years, or about $1.6 million each year—a negligible amount for organizations serving a city of nearly 1.6 million people. New tax revenues would also come in far below the team’s estimates.
But the most stunning figure is in the proposed arena transaction ordinance. The city would maintain ownership of the land, so the team would not pay city property taxes and would instead rent the facility from the city. The legislation specifies that the team, valued at $4.3 billion, would pay “Ten dollars representing rent paid in advance for the entire Term of the Lease.” In short, city taxpayers really do pay up on a “deal” like this.
“Whether it’s massive subsidies to build their stadiums or ludicrous low rent prices for stadiums that are built on city land, that is essentially the market power of the teams and leagues to be able to do that,” says sports economist Joel Maxcy of Drexel University’s LeBow College of Business. “The flip side of that, though, is that it does give the city more control over where you put the stadium or arena.”
Gabrielle Gurley
The transportation assessment found that gridlock could be avoided if 40 percent of the people attending games and events use public transit. Making parking more difficult (no discounted parking perks for ticket holders!) and using only the existing parking garages as well might also persuade people to take transit. Or not. The Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority’s (SEPTA) capacity to upgrade its rail station that would have the arena built on top of it, to revise its schedules and distribute free transit passes to ticketholders—for starters—requires an influx of state dollars.
The team that says it won’t take money from city taxpayers seems eager to have state taxpayers step in. SEPTA is already in a constant tug-of-war with state lawmakers over long-term financing. The pandemic aid that kept the system running is drying up, which creates an annual $240 million budget hole. To overhaul Jefferson Station (the regional rail hub) and handle the crowds at Sixers events would require Philly-skeptic state lawmakers to appropriate funds they’ve been disinclined to grant. Though Democrats now control one chamber of the legislature in Harrisburg, as well as the governor’s office, the legislature has a history of saying no to the city. Gov. Josh Shapiro, however, who also supports the Sixers plan, is in “direct communication” with Parker’s office.
And if fans don’t take SEPTA in large numbers, gridlock in the city’s core is guaranteed.
The arena project has a strong whiff of New York-ification trends, though Philly is a very different, smaller city. The project is sometimes compared to Barclays Center in Brooklyn, also built over one of the busiest transit hubs in the city. It could also end up like the Madison Square Garden/Penn Station area in Manhattan, notoriously a complex that locals seek to avoid unless they have an event or a train to catch. Gridlock makes both arenas all but impossible to navigate on foot or by car after games or concerts.
The alternative, short of relocating to New Jersey or Delaware, is finding a parcel in the existing Sports Complex miles from downtown that currently houses Philadelphia’s four major professional sports teams. But there’s bad blood between the Sixers owners and Comcast, which owns the Wells Fargo Center, the place the Sixers, as tenants, are desperate to escape. Those seeking to keep Chinatown intact believe the Sixers should just stay put.
A survey commissioned by the Save Chinatown Coalition found that nearly 70 percent of Philadelphians opposed the arena. Jason Kelce, the retired Philadelphia Eagles center, has said that he “hates” the plan, but expects to see it built.
The rift between new Mayor Cherelle Parker, who dropped hints that she liked the project during her campaign last year, and Chinatown leaders continues to widen. According to Wei, neighborhood leaders have offered her five invitations to visit. She declined one and didn’t respond to the others.
Gabrielle Gurley
At the same time, the mayor’s attempts to rally the city behind the arena have only crystalized divisions on the project along lines of race and class. Several days after the rally, Parker called a town hall meeting that attracted hundreds of people who formed a line around the block to get in. Prominent African American business and faith groups as well as the Philadelphia NAACP backed the arena. But Chinatown has also gained the support of Black groups like the Stadium Stompers, a North Philadelphia community group that successfully fought off a Temple University stadium proposal.
For their part, the Sixers also unleashed a classic threat: moving across the river to Camden, New Jersey, unless they could build their arena in Chinatown. Wilmington, Delaware, also jumped into contention with an even less well-received offer. The threat is a ploy designed to strike fear into the hearts of sports fans, who in turn would pressure local leaders to forge ahead.
“I don’t usually bring Kanye West into these conversations, but Cherelle Parker, you can’t care about Black people and love this project,” says Brittany Alston, director of the Philly Black Worker Project, recalling the rapper’s (now known as Ye) comment about President George W. Bush after Hurricane Katrina.
Alston, who helms the coalition’s Black Philadelphians for Chinatown committee, continues, “To be very clear, this is where that authenticity politics that Cherelle Parker walks around with is just completely void of any moral compass for Black folks in the community. Because there is evidence at this point that she is willing to put a community on the chopping block for the interests of corporations.
“If the interest of capital is who she’s aligned with—and that is who she’s aligned with,” she adds, “everybody else, including poor Black people, can also be put on the exact same chopping block.”
The final decision now moves to Philadelphia City Council. According to a spokesperson for Councilmember Mark Squilla, an arena supporter who represents Chinatown and will sponsor the ordinance, the earliest the legislation can be introduced is October 24th. Once the legislation is formally under consideration, the council president would assign the bills to a committee and the committee chair would schedule a public hearing.
Right now, the Chinatown coalition of neighborhood groups and social justice leaders has an uphill battle against the powerful politicians who want to get the deal done. The archaic tradition of councilmanic prerogative has long meant that councilmembers usually vote to approve a project in the sponsoring councilmember’s district lest that person block projects in their own districts. In the recent past, Chinatown has been able to reject a baseball stadium, two casinos, and a federal prison to preserve their neighborhood. But can the community outflank billionaire owners and city politicians who are quite content to take the city in a different direction this time around?
