The Sixers arena deal clears a major hurdle, and a failure of leadership in City Hall comes into sharper focus | Editorial

The Philadelphia 76ers want to build a billion-dollar arena in the city's downtown. Residents and business owners in nearby Chinatown say the project will destroy the thriving neighborhood.

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The Philadelphia 76ers want to build a billion-dollar arena in the city's downtown. The decision is steeped in controversy. The privately funded project is good news for organized labor, but the proposed site is steps from Chinatown, a 150-year-old neighborhood still recovering from the pandemic. From member station WHYY, Aaron Moselle reports.

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AARON MOSELLE, BYLINE: Debbie Wei is showing me around Chinatown, a neighborhood she's been coming to for decades. It's a weekday morning, but the streets are buzzing.

DEBBIE WEI: It's hard to do an interview in Chinatown (laughter)...

MOSELLE: Yeah. I'm just (laughter)...

WEI: ...Walking on the street. It's way too much traffic.

MOSELLE: Yeah.

The block we're on is dotted with restaurants selling Chinese pastries and hand-drawn noodles. There's also a travel agency and a hair salon, a busy supermarket, too, all framed by an ornate gateway covered in gold dragons. Wei's parents came to the U.S. in the late '40s, not long after the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act, which prohibited immigration from China. As a kid, she often joined them on trips to Chinatown, mostly to go shopping.

WEI: It was the one place they could go where they could put their shoulders down. Like, they could speak Chinese to each other in public, and no one was going to say anything to them. They could find the things that they needed to make foods that reminded them of home. You know, it was always, like, sort of a special place.

MOSELLE: Wei feels the same way, and it's a big reason why she and other opponents want to stop the Sixers from building a new arena at the neighborhood's edge. Wei says the development will be a death knell for Chinatown.

WEI: This is our home. It's not Disney World. It's not just a bunch of restaurants. It's people.

MOSELLE: The Sixers want a new arena because they want a home of their own. For decades, the team has played at the same facility as the city's pro hockey team. They also argue a downtown arena would be an economic engine for Market East, an area that has struggled to thrive despite millions in investment. The Sixers declined an interview request, but team official David Gould recently testified at a public hearing.

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DAVID GOULD: We believe this site is also not just good for us and our fans and our players and the team, but also good for the city because we know that Market East is in need of investment. We know that that used to be the most vibrant commercial corridor in the entire city.

MOSELLE: But opponents say the arena will create the kind of traffic congestion that will deter people from coming to the area, hurting hundreds of small businesses in the process - businesses like Bubblefish, the Japanese restaurant Xu Lin helped launch nearly a decade ago.

XU LIN: You know, if the arena is built, there will be thousands of cars in addition to the traffic we have now. I can just imagine people sitting in traffic, frustrated, honking at each other. It's going to be a nightmare.

MOSELLE: He says Chinatown businesses will also lose business to arena vendors if the facility is built. Philadelphia City Council is considering a package of bills that, if passed, would give the Sixers the approvals the team needs to begin construction. The Sixers hope to have that authorization before the end of the year, and it's unclear if there's enough opposition on council to derail the project. And yet, Lin and others haven't given up hope. Chinatown has a history of defeating large developments proposed for the neighborhood, including a baseball stadium and a casino. They see no reason why the arena would be any different.

For NPR News, I'm Aaron Moselle in Philadelphia.

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