PHILADELPHIA (AP) – Vivian Chang works on a narrow Philadelphia street that would have been consumed by a Phillies stadium had Chinatown activists not rallied to defeat the plan in the early 2000s. Instead of 40,000 cheering fans, the squeals of young children now fill the playground at 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 across 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 $1.3 billion basketball arena for the Philadelphia 76ers at the other edge of Chinatown.
Mayor Cherelle Parker hopes a glitzy, 18,500-seat arena can be the catalyst to revive a distressed retail corridor called Market East, which runs for eight blocks, from City Hall to the Liberty Bell. The plan now moves to city council for debate this fall. Team owners say they need the council´s approval for 76 Place by year´s end so they can move into their new home by 2031.
“I wholeheartedly believe this is the right deal for the people of Philadelphia,” Parker said in announcing her support in September, while 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 sits just above Market East and the LGBTQ+ friendly “Gayborhood” a few blocks below it.
“The arena is a uniquely bad use for that land,” said local activist Jackson Morgan, who fears the Gayborhood could lose its identity. “It would make Center City virtually unlivable for hours at a time.”
Victor Matheson, an economics professor at the College of the Holy Cross who studies stadium issues, said arenas can bring an economic bounce to downtown business districts, but only a limited one.
“They don´t have much of an effect once you get beyond a couple of blocks,” he said.
Market East, a once-bustling stretch of historic Market Street, has withered over the last half-century amid a series of cultural shifts: the growth of suburban shopping malls in the 1960s and ’70s, the financial crises that crippled U.S. cities in the 1980s, and, more recently, the twin blows of online shopping and the pandemic.
And while much of Philadelphia is thriving as more young people settle downtown, Market East has resisted renewal efforts. All but one of its fabled department stores are long gone.
