More than two years after the owners of the Philadelphia 76ers first proposed building a basketball arena just blocks from City Hall, it is now crunchtime for a bitterly divisive $1.3 billion project that would alter the look and flow of the city’s downtown.
Over the last few weeks, community groups, labor leaders and business owners have testified before the City Council, making impassioned arguments for or against the project.
Supporters say the arena would generate thousands of construction jobs, particularly for Black and Hispanic residents, and serve as a gleaming magnet for the Center City neighborhood. But critics, citing a litany of misguided stadium deals around the country, warn the arena would decimate the city’s storied but fragile Chinatown.
The last hearing on the project is scheduled for Tuesday, and a vote is expected by Dec. 19. If a majority of the 17-member Council says yes, as many anticipate, then the project would be in the hands of Mayor Cherelle Parker, who has been a strong supporter and who would be approving a signature accomplishment in her first year in office.
Francesca Russello Ammon, an associate professor of city planning and historic preservation at the University of Pennsylvania, said the importance of the project was magnified by the geography: a sports arena close to Chinatown and the Reading Terminal Market, just a short walk from the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall.
“It’s going to dramatically change how Philadelphia works, because it’s the site of where all these trains and commuters and communities come together, and it’s in the center of the city,” she said.
But Dr. Ammon, the author of “Bulldozer: Demolition and Clearance of the Postwar Landscape,” cautioned against investing too much faith in a “brand-new splashy project” as a “silver-bullet solution.” Case in point: The arena would require the partial demolition of the project that began as the Gallery mall, which was built in the 1970s and never delivered on the development’s promise to revitalize the surrounding neighborhood.
“It should make one pause and make sure that this expenditure of time and money and effort — particularly at the expense of the affected neighborhoods — is going to be something that really meets all the needs in the long term, lest we go through this all again,” Dr. Ammon said.
The 76ers currently play at the Wells Fargo Center, which they share with the N.H.L.’s Flyers. The Wells Fargo Center, off Interstate 95, is part of a sports and entertainment hub, where the Eagles and Phillies also play. It is about to undergo a $2.5 billion renovation.
Comcast owns both the Wells Fargo Center and the Flyers, and the Sixers’ lease expires in 2031. Comcast Spectacor, the sports and entertainment division, wants the Sixers to remain, but the team is not interested in staying. Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment, the Camden, N.J.-based company that owns the 76ers, wants the team to play in a downtown arena — like many other N.B.A. teams — and control the revenues from the arena’s events.
Team officials insist the project needs to be approved quickly so the arena could be ready for the 2031-32 season. And while that sense of urgency is a common negotiation tactic, the team says it will look to move elsewhere, including New Jersey, if the project stalls.
First proposed in July 2022, the 76 Place project, featuring an 18,500-seat arena, would create more than 9,000 jobs, and help transform the dreary Market East neighborhood between the city’s convention center and its historic district, according to the developers.
The Sixers haven’t ruled out seeking state or federal money, though they note that they are not asking for city money — “an approach that is unprecedented among our local sports facilities,” according to the mayor’s office. The team is also committing to a $50 million community benefits agreement that would be divvied up among the city, the school district, Chinatown, minority-owned businesses and others.
In the Sixers’ corner are the city’s powerful building trades unions. Those unions helped propel Ms. Parker and Kenyatta Johnson, the City Council president, to their current positions, and have long supported Councilman Mark Squilla, who represents the district where the arena would be built.
“It means an economic opportunity plan, quite frankly, the likes of which have never been seen in our city,” Ms. Parker said in September.
Still, the city’s own assessments noted that while the arena would be “appropriate” for Center City, it posed a “significant potential risk” to Chinatown by displacing residents and hurting small businesses.
The city also estimated that the project would generate about $390 million in tax revenue — less than a third of the $1.5 billion that the Sixers had claimed.
The opposition has been relentless. Thousands of people have attended numerous rallies wearing T-shirts with “No Arena in Chinatown” and criticizing the team’s billionaire owners. When Mr. Squilla introduced the arena legislation in October, Chinatown activists disrupted the proceedings. Deborah Wei, the co-founder of the community group Asian Americans United, was among those removed by sheriff’s deputies.
Since the hearings commenced on Nov. 12, council members have deemed the $50 million community benefits agreement inadequate, and listened to concerns that ambulances could be blocked on game nights from going to nearby Thomas Jefferson University Hospital.
And there are qualms related to the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, or SEPTA, the financially strapped regional rail system. Given that the project is banking on 40 percent of ticket holders taking public transit to the games, SEPTA officials testified that they would not be able to finance the extra trains and service needed.
On one recent morning, Asian American community leaders and urban planners testified, citing history and economics, that sports projects have not revitalized downtowns or added substantially to cities’ tax bases. A new arena represented another bid by developers to squeeze Chinatown over its 150-year-old history, memorialized by battles over a highway, a prison, a convention center and more.
“Our Chinatown and our economy have not recovered from the pandemic,” said John Chin, executive director of the Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corporation. “Gentrification, displacement will erase Chinatown if six years of construction does not.”
The reaction was sympathetic, if muted.
Then came the afternoon, when labor unions and building contractors hailed the project as a no-brainer choice for Philadelphia, the nation’s poorest big city, with about 1.6 million people.
“We can bring Center City back alive like it used to be,” said Elaine McGuire, a member service representative for International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 98. “We need to build 76 Place and watch the magic happen.”
The reaction was chummier.
“Can the staff photographer take a picture of this?” asked Councilman Curtis Jones Jr., prompting laughs. “Because I don’t think I ever saw this combination of folk ever agree on one thing. Ever.”
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