Philadelphia is in the midst of conducting a bunch of impact studies of the proposed 76ers arena next to the city’s Chinatown, and while none of them are out just yet, one of the consultants compiling one did provide a sneak peek last week:
The neighborhood that abuts the site where the team wants to put its next home has nearly doubled in residents since 2011, to 6,919 from 3,841.
Its median income has increased, businesses have opened, and more services and programs that serve the community have settled there, explained Sarah Yeung, co-founder and principal of Sojourner Consulting of Philadelphia, one of the firms hired to conduct city-sponsored impact studies.
None of that actually has anything to do with impact from an as-yet-constructed arena, you’ll notice. But it does provide a glimpse into one of the underlying conflicts around development of any kind: A booming neighborhood is one person’s success, and another person’s being priced out of the neighborhood. As one Chinatown community activist put it:
“I didn’t hear the word gentrification mentioned,” veteran Chinatown activist Mary Yee told the experts, “but for some of these things, gentrification is going to be the result.”
Well, yes — sort of, maybe, depending.
How new development impacts existing neighborhood residents is a complex, contentious subject; I wrote a whole other book about it. New housing, for example, provides, well, new housing, which can be good if there isn’t enough quality housing to go around; and median income going up is good if it’s the income of the same individuals. But shiny new housing can also make a neighborhood seem more appealing to people from outside the area, at which point they flood it and drive up rents so much that current residents are forced to move out anyway, in which case median income going up isn’t a sign of people having more money, it’s a sign of people who already have the money moving in. And thus the eternal battle between the anti-displacement activists and the YIMBYs, who will fight eternally.
Sports venues, meanwhile, can have even weirder, more contradictory impacts. They are relatively mammoth in size, and bring in tens of thousands of people to a neighborhood; however, they only do that for a few hours at a time, and typically on less than half the days out of the year. So while an arena development can certainly be one element in encouraging a neighborhood’s gentrification, it can also lead to what one might call a “nobody goes there anymore, it’s too crowded” effect wherein businesses and residents prefer not to locate too close because of all the traffic and noise that accompanies big events. (Even seemingly arena-friendly businesses like restaurants aren’t as natural bedfellows as one might assume: As Brooklyn Patsy’s pizzeria co-owner Joe Juliano told me for The Brooklyn Wars, capturing the flood of people attending Nets games at the team’s new arena isn’t easy for restaurateurs: “You have 100 seats, they all want to be fed in one hour. Our pizza only takes a minute and a half to cook — that helps.”)
In fact, neighbors of potential sports venues are as often worried about them driving property values down (through increased game-night mayhem) as driving them up (though gentrification). I’ve been looking around for any recent studies of the impact of stadiums and arenas on property values, and haven’t found anything definitive yet, but most of what’s online implies it could go either way. So while residents of any neighborhood facing potential gentrification (or worse) may be right to be worried about what new construction will bring — especially if the sports venue is the leading edge of a bigger redevelopment wave — the impact is hardly universal.
Meanwhile, Philly’s freshly elected Mayor-elect Cherelle Parker says she is very concerned about what community residents think about the potential impact of a basketball arena, so long as you don’t mean, you know, that community:
“The community matters there,” Parker said. “But that is the community citywide. You can’t have a project with that potential as it relates to an economic impact and not hear the voices from people in our city, across our city.”
The Associated Press Stylebook cautions in its entry on the word “community”: “Limit use of this term in reference to groups of people. It implies homogeneity and the idea that all members of a particular ‘community’ think and act alike.” That’s extra-true when you’re talking about “the community citywide,” whatever that even means, and raises the question of whether maybe the next Stylebook update should just retire “community” as a term altogether.
What Parker is attempting to do, obviously, is to reframe the Chinatown residents opposed to the arena as NIMBYs who are threatening to block a project that would benefit the whole city — except that there are no studies out yet showing whether a 76ers arena would actually benefit the city as a whole. (The city’s current spate of studies are expected to land in January sometime.) It’s a lot of gamesmanship, in other words, and mostly just means that Philadelphia’s new mayor doesn’t want the desires of Chinatown residents to be the priority for deciding whether a basketball arena gets built next to Chinatown. There’s lots to be said about that from a policy best-practices perspective — if I had time, I could probably write a whole other book about it — but as power politics, the message comes through loud and clear.
Most logical solution is a new arena jointly owned by the Sixers and Flyers (with the Flyers being sold to the Sixers owner and that owner selling the NJ Devils) and building a new one on the corner of Broad Street and Pattison Avenue closer to the Entrance to the Subway and connect to the Xfinity Live entertainment facility.
She’s starting off on the wrong foot, shame on her. No doubt the arena will remake Chinatown and force residents and businesses out. On top of that the arena brings no new revenue to the city but will cost the city after loans and grants are provided by tax payers money, furthermore it will probably receive a tax abatement. In the end only developers will benefit from high home prices to be built soon after ground is broken for the arena.
As a Philadelphian for 30 years, what is getting lost in these stories to outsiders is that the location of the arena is in Center City Philadelphia — which is the place where almost all the skyscrapers are, through which all the subways, trolleys and regional train lines run, and where there is a huge and booming resident population. Center City, I believe, is the place where by in sheer numbers more people walk to work than any other spot in America. A majority of the tax revenue in Philadelphia is generated in Center City. The proposed Sixers arena would sit on top of rail station. Whatever decision is made on the Sixers arena, the needs of the City as a whole should be paramount, not some side neighborhood where the loudest voices represent a minority of that neighborhood’s population.
John — I disagree that what you propose is the most logical solution, but I would allow it is the easiest solution and one that would make the Comcast owners of the Philadelphia Flyers most happy.
An arena occupied by the 76ers only would be used 61 nights a year (41 home dates + 16 max playoff games + 4 preseason). Throw in 20 college bball games, 20 concerts (would need to compete with Flyers arena), and 20 misc events, and the arena will be empty 244 nights a year. Is that a good use of land in a booming neighborhood, or should the land be used for housing, office, and retail? I haven’t been to Philadelphia, but it seems like a basketball arena is a waste of valuable real estate.
Right now the area is an underutilized urban shopping mall. Philadelphia is awesome. You should visit it sometime. Btw: the Chinatown neighborhood acitvists would oppose what you are suggesting also.