PHILADELPHIA — Vivian Chang works on a narrow street in Philadelphia that would have been occupied by a Phillies stadium had Chinatown activists not rallied in the early 2000s to thwart the plan. Instead of 40,000 cheering fans, the screams of young children now fill the playground at the 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 all over 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 move. $1.3 billion basketball arena for the Philadelphia 76ers on the other edge of Chinatown.
Mayor Cherelle Parker hopes a glitzy 18,500-seat arena can be the catalyst for revitalizing an ailing retail corridor called Market East, which spans eight blocks from City Hall to the Liberty Bell. The plan now goes to the city council for debate this fall. Team owners say they need council approval for this 76 Place by the end of the year, so they can move into their new home in 2031.
“I believe with all my heart that this is the right deal for the people of Philadelphia,” Parker said announce her support in September, pledging to protect what she called “the best Chinatown in the United States.”
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 is just above Market East and the LGBTQ+-friendly ‘Gayborhood’ a few blocks below.
“The arena is a uniquely bad destination for that country,” said local activist Jackson Morgan, who fears the Gayborhood could lose its identity. “It would make Center City virtually unlivable for hours.”
Victor Matheson, an economics professor at the College of the Holy Cross who studies stadium issues, said arenas could bring an economic revival to downtown business districts, but only to a limited extent.
“They don’t have much effect if you get further than a few blocks,” he said.
Market East, a once bustling stretch of historic Market Street, has withered over the past half century due to a series of cultural shifts: the growth of suburban shopping centers in the 1960s and 1970s, the financial crises that plagued American cities in the 1960s and 1970s. paralyzed. 1980s, and, more recently, the double whammy of online shopping and the pandemic.
And while much of Philadelphia is thriving as more young people move downtown, Market East has resisted renewal efforts. All but one of the legendary department stores are long gone.
Enter the 76ers, owned by Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment, who want to terminate their Wells Fargo Center lease with Comcast Spectacor and move from the 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 the downtown will bring. 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 saw a lot of families coming together and having a nice plate of Vietnamese pho – my favorite dish – and then going to the game.”
Parker shares his optimism and has tried to allay concerns by pointing to the $50 million in local benefits the team has promised, an amount that includes a $3 million loan fund for Chinatown businesses.
But others wonder whether sports fans would really patronize mom-and-pop stores. Arenas, they say, are designed to keep fans inside and spending their money on increasingly luxurious dining and entertainment.
“The owners of the Sixers don’t make money from people going to the quaint sports bar across the street. They make money by letting people buy $14 beers at the stadium,” Matheson said.
The owners have pledged not to ask the city for construction financing, though they are free to seek state and federal funds. In lieu of property taxes, they would pay about $6 million in annual payments in lieu of taxes. Over the 30-year deal, the potential savings to the team — and the loss to the city and its cash-strapped schools — could amount to tens of millions of dollars or more, according to some economists.
“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 exactly 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 made with a city sports team, as the three South Philadelphia venues — the Wells Fargo Center, Citizens Bank Park and Lincoln Financial Field — were all built with massive government subsidies.
Back in Center City, rising rents are already 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. Reluctantly, the family moved around the block to a smaller, less visible location, across from the hulking rear of the Pennsylvania Convention Center, another economic development project adjacent to Chinatown.
“I grew up in that store. It was kind of like a community center,” said Law, 42, as her aunt recently worked the cash register at the new store. Local residents, she said, rely on them for Chinese-language magazines, newspapers and cultural items that they would struggle to find if the store were moved again.
The Chinatown community, which dates to 1871, has worked since at least the 1960s to fend off sometimes questionable developments: casinos, a prison, the stadium, a highway. They have won some battles and lost others. The sunken six-lane Vine Street Expressway opened in 1991, cutting off the top of Chinatown, where the charter school is located. Only now are pedestrian overpasses being built to attempt this stitch the neighborhood back together.
“Every time Chinatown is targeted by 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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