In Philadelphia, Chinatown activists rally again to stop development. This time, it’s a 76ers arena

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Vivian Chang works on a narrow Philadelphia street that would have been consumed by a Phillies stadium had Chinatown activists not rallied to defeat the plan in the early 2000s. Instead of 40,000 cheering fans, the squeals of young children now fill the playground at Folk Arts-Cultural Treasures Charter School, which opened in 2007.

“We’re standing right where the baseball stadium would have been,” Chang said in late September. “And now it’s 480 students — a lot of immigrants, a lot of students of color from across the city.”

Chang, 33, leads Asian Americans United, which flexed its political muscle during the stadium fight and is now experiencing déjà vu as it tries to stop a planned $1.3 billion basketball arena for the Philadelphia 76ers at the other edge of Chinatown.

Mayor Cherelle Parker hopes a glitzy, 18,500-seat arena can be the catalyst to revive a distressed retail corridor called Market East, which runs for eight blocks, from City Hall to the Liberty Bell. The plan now moves to city council for debate this fall. Team owners say they need the council’s approval for 76 Place by year’s end so they can move into their new home by 2031.

“I wholeheartedly believe this is the right deal for the people of Philadelphia,” Parker said in announcing her support in September, while pledging to protect what she called “the best Chinatown in the United States.”

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Few would deny that Market East needs a savior. But some are less sure it should be the Sixers. Critics fear gridlock on game days and a dark arena at other times, along with gentrification, homogenization and rising rents. Chinatown sits just above Market East and the LGBTQ+ friendly “Gayborhood” a few blocks below it.

“The arena is a uniquely bad use for that land,” said local activist Jackson Morgan, who fears the Gayborhood could lose its identity. “It would make Center City virtually unlivable for hours at a time.”

Victor Matheson, an economics professor at the College of the Holy Cross who studies stadium issues, said arenas can bring an economic bounce to downtown business districts, but only a limited one.

“They don’t have much of an effect once you get beyond a couple of blocks,” he said.

Market East, a once-bustling stretch of historic Market Street, has withered over the last half-century amid a series of cultural shifts: the growth of suburban shopping malls in the 1960s and ‘70s, the financial crises that crippled U.S. cities in the 1980s, and, more recently, the twin blows of online shopping and the pandemic.

And while much of Philadelphia is thriving as more young people settle downtown, Market East has resisted renewal efforts. All but one of its fabled department stores are long gone.

Enter the 76ers, owned by Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment, who want to shed their Wells Fargo Center lease with Comcast Spectacor and move from the city’s South Philadelphia sports complex to their own facility.

The partners, who also own the NHL’s New Jersey Devils and have a controlling interest in the NFL’s Washington Commanders, say the project will be privately financed and bring thousands of jobs and more than $2 billion in economic growth to downtown. They also hope to build an adjacent $250 million apartment tower.

“I think the arena is a good thing,” said Dante Sisofo, 28, who lives nearby. “I could see a lot of families gathering and getting a nice bowl of Vietnamese pho — my favorite dish — and then heading to the game.”

Parker shares his optimism, and has tried to address concerns by noting the $50 million in local benefits the team has promised, a sum that includes a $3 million loan fund for Chinatown businesses.

But others wonder if sports fans would really patronize mom and pop stores. Arenas, they say, are designed to keep fans inside, spending their money on increasingly upscale dining and entertainment.

“The Sixers’ owners, they don’t make money by people going to the quaint little sports bar across the street. They make money by having people buy those $14 beers inside the stadium,” Matheson said.

The owners have pledged not to ask the city for any construction funding, although they are free to seek state and federal funds. Instead of property taxes, they would pay about $6 million in annual Payments in Lieu of Taxes. Over the 30-year agreement, the potential savings to the team — and loss to the city and its cash-strapped schools — could be tens of millions of dollars or more, by some economists’ measure.

“Historically, city officials have been extremely poor poker players when it comes to staring down and bluffing billionaire sports owners,” Matheson said.

“And of course, that’s the exact reason why you have them playing footsie with Camden,” he said, referring to a last-minute flirtation from New Jersey to have the Sixers move across the Delaware River, where the team already has a practice facility, for $400 million in tax breaks.

Still, Parker called the deal the best ever struck with a city sports team, given that the three venues in South Philadelphia — the Wells Fargo Center, Citizens Bank Park and Lincoln Financial Field — were all built with huge public subsidies.

Back in Center City, rising rents already are a reality for Debbie Law’s family.

It ran a variety store in the heart of Chinatown for 35 years until the landlord tripled the rent in 2022, when the arena plan surfaced. The family reluctantly moved around the block to a smaller, less visible location that faces the hulking back side of the Pennsylvania Convention Center, another economic development project that hems in Chinatown.

“I grew up in that shop. It was a community center of sorts,” said Law, 42, as her aunt tended the register at the new store one recent day. Local residents, she said, rely on them for Chinese-language magazines, newspapers and cultural items they would struggle to find if the store is displaced again.

The Chinatown community, which dates to 1871, has worked to fend off sometimes dubious development since at least the 1960s: casinos, a prison, the stadium, a highway. They have won some fights and lost others. The six-lane, sunken Vine Street Expressway opened in 1991, cutting off the top of Chinatown, where the charter school sits. Only now are pedestrian overpasses being built to try to stitch the neighborhood back together.

“Every single time that Chinatown has been targeted for a project like this, people say Chinatown will survive,” Chang said. “But is that really how we should be treated as a community?”

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