Philadelphia Has A Lot To Lose On The New 76ers Arena
Let’s get this out of the way: The video was weird. When Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker announced in late September she was setting aside her months-long equivocation and going all in on a proposed new 76ers arena on the edge of her city’s Chinatown, she did so via a post that commenters immediately compared to an Saturday Night Live sketch: strangely framed shots and wooden line readings, with the mayor solemnly declaring that this was “the best financial deal ever entered into” for a Philly sports arena, with “hundreds of millions of dollars in new tax revenues” and “hundreds and hundreds of jobs.” Responding to months of vocal protests against the arena plan from those who say it threatens to wipe out adjacent neighborhoods, Parker declared, “To the people of Chinatown, please know that I hear you”—a sentiment only slightly undercut by the fact that at the moment the video went live, the mayor and her staff were only then meeting with handpicked community leaders to inform them of her decision.
Then again, everything about the 76ers arena saga has been weird. The perpetual Eastern Conference semifinalists play in a highly regarded building that is easily accessible by both highway and public transit, is one of the busiest in the nation, and just got a $400 million facelift that included new locker rooms and weight rooms. But they do so as a tenant of the Flyers, something that has peeved private equity goon Josh Harris ever since he picked up the franchise in 2011 for $280 million. (Forbes now estimates the Sixers’ value at $4.3 billion.) After engaging in such passive-aggressive tactics as printing the arena’s corporate-branded name on the court in the smallest possible typeface because he wasn’t getting a cut of the naming-rights money, in 2020 Harris dreamed up a project of his own for a waterfront arena district, only to see it immediately rejected by the city.
