Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of occasional blogs connecting contemporary issues with Greater Philadelphia’s storied history as documented in the Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia. Underlying these posts is the question whether we have learned sufficiently from the past to make the right decisions going forward.
In the effort to identify regional connections between Philadelphia and the surrounding areas, Carolyn Adams and I found that nothing brought our area’s diverse people together across multiple counties in three states so much as professional sports. “The fact that thousands of avid sports fans from the suburbs poured into South Philadelphia for every home game fostered their identification with the rest of the region as perhaps no other activity could,” Adams concludes the overview chapter to our forthcoming book, The Greater Philadelphia Region. With the decision in the past few days to construct a new combined stadium for the ‘76ers and Flyers in the existing stadium district, that element of identity is only going to deepen. Whether one agrees with that decision or not, the winding and contested path to that decision raises serious questions both about the process and its ultimate resolution.
The Inquirer’s Helen Ubinas is not the only observer who thinks city interests proved secondary to profit-making throughout the two years of negotiations that took place. From the start, the plan to make over part of Market Street East came not from planners or government officials, but from an aggressive real estate developer and part owner of the 76ers. As it had in the past—most notably in the failed effort to stop the Vine Street Expressway—the Chinatown community, with the most to lose, reacted vehemently against the proposal. Other nearby communities also opposed the move, which would have brought street traffic, congestion, and noise on game days and only questionable benefits on other days. Only belatedly, it became clear that peak attendance would overwhelm SEPTA without additional financial resources, which the team was unwilling to commit to in months of negotiations.
No doubt that part of downtown needed assistance. Hopes for the original Gallery Place at Market East project designed by the famed developer, James Rouse, never materialized, and its makeover as the “Fashion District” also faltered. There was a rationale for replacing part of that project with a stadium, but it was not one that followed from a planning process for the whole area. Ideally, city officials would have followed the approach it embraced for reconnecting the city to the waterfront, through a public planning process, greatly assisted by Penn Praxis’s executive director Harris Steinberg. Now the director of the Lindy Institute for Urban Innovation at Drexel, Steinberg weighed in on the 76s plan in a general sense by suggesting the location follow a less invasive course, citing a block across Market at Eleventh as a model. Other downtown locations were suggested but never seriously entertained during the course of debate.
One could well argue that an alternative downtown location could have helped the city, without destroying a vulnerable neighborhood nearby as the Capital Arena in Washington did in totally overwhelming its adjacent Chinatown. One might look to Detroit, for example. Instead, the 76ers, in partnership with Comcast, will now build a new arena in South Philadelphia as part of a much larger makeover of the sports complex, bringing new housing and retail to an area currently devoid of character and animation outside of the stadiums, with the single exception of the nearby casino. What these billionaire partners have in mind is something like the entertainment and sports complex Battery Atlanta.
Revitalizing the existing sports complex will undoubtedly boost city taxes over time, while removing the political costs of potentially destroying a valued neighborhood. But there are downsides as well. The South Philadelphia location remains remote from the city core, forcing primary reliance on auto traffic, without the compensating effect of spillover business from sports events for a struggling downtown. With the simultaneous loss of the downtown’s last major department store, Market Street has been further damaged. While city officials speak optimistically about refiguring the historic Wanamaker building in the wake of Macy’s closure as part of an alternate plan for Market Street East, those ideas remain vague so far. One can only hope that the next steps incorporate a participatory and professional planning process that will enhance, rather than continue to weaken the core at the heart of the region.
Howard Gillette
Contributing Editor
