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Originally Posted by BroadandMarket
I can't believe how many times this has to be explained. Comcast Spectacor owns the Wells Fargo Center and the 76ers are tenants there. The 76ers want to own an arena and generate their own revenue instead of renting. They want to host concerts, events, NCAA tournament games, Villanova games etc. A brand new stadium at 11th and Market would instantly be more desirable for all of these events and Philly is a big enough city that can support 2 arenas.
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I'm well aware that Comcast Spectacor are the owners of the Flyers and Josh Harris is the owner of the 76ers. IMHO, the Sixers and the Flyers should've been owned by Comcast Spectacor, but Ed Snider sold the 76ers to Harris, which is why we're now at this mess of trying to shoehorn a new arena. The reason why the 76ers were sold in 2011? We'll never know! All I know is that if ever there was a mistake during the Snider era, it was selling the Sixers.
Especially considering that the NBA is a much more lucrative sports league than the NHL, regardless of how the 76ers person season to season,
the 76ers should've never been sold but Snider made his decision (
https://www.essentiallysports.com/nb...team-and-more/), and now Philadelphia is grappling with practically displacing an ethnic enclave in Chinatown, all to host NBA, NCAA, and special events because "we" want a downtown arena at the expense of the Asian community.
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Originally Posted by BroadandMarket
Downtown arenas are more vibrant and create a better atmosphere before and after a game. Most of the 76ers season is in the middle of winter, there isn't really a tailgate culture like there is for football or baseball. The WFC was built in 1996, it will be 35 years old when the 76ers lease runs out in 2031. The Spectrum was 19 years old when the Flyers/Sixers moved on to the Wells Fargo Center. NYC, Brooklyn, Boston, San Francisco, Milwaukee, Miami, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Sacramento, Detroit, Atlanta, Toronto, Montreal and Washington DC all have downtown arenas. So are they all wrong?
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Madison Square Garden is the oldest arena in the NBA and the NHL. It's never going to be demolished because it has the same stature as Fenway Park and Wrigley Field in MLB and Lambeau Field in the NFL. The original MSG was on 23rd and Broadway until the new MSG was placed on the site of the recently demolished Penn Station in 1968.
Boston replaced it's Garden with the adjacent TD Garden (the the Fleetcenter), Montreal replaced the Forum with the Bell Centre, Toronto replaced Maple Leaf Gardens with the Air Canada Centre, Atlanta replaced the Omni with the State Farm Arena, Miami replaced the old Miami Arena with the Kaseya Arena, and Brooklyn, Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, San Francisco all managed to build new arenas because the land associated with those arenas were either once light industrial or sparsely populated in the case with Detroit, so there was little pushback to build an arena at those locations.
The only resistance towards building a downtown Rena was in DC, and with many East Coast cities, there was Chinatowns from Boston to DC. The Chinatowns in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia are currently intact as we speak. The other Chinatown that used to be in Newark, Baltimore, and DC are either a distant memory or in the case of DC, gentrified and Disneyfied.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinat...shington,_D.C.
https://wamu.org/story/17/12/01/20-y...ion-chinatown/
https://asamnews.com/2023/02/01/less...redevelopment/
https://www.phillyvoice.com/76er-sta...tol-one-arena/
https://www.phillyvoice.com/76er-sta...tol-one-arena/
JFK stadium was built in 1926. We're coming up on 100 years of the sports complex and still Xfinity Live and a shitty casino are the only things to be built in an abyss of parking lots. I could see an apartment building or some bars being built in the next 10 years but it'll always be a car centric spot.
Then you have the fashion district. A dying mall with a bankrupt owner. The 76ers can save them by buying them out of 1/2 of their space which is a more realistic amount of commercial space. Market East was hit harder than any other area of Center City during the pandemic. Marshalls, Rite Aid, Century 21, Target, Starbucks, Subway, Burger King, DSW and many more stores have all closed in that vicinity. Commercial/retail is doing terribly, especially in Market East. The entire south side of Market Street from 11th to 8th is run down or boarded up besides the Federal building. Massive empty lots at 13th and Market and 8th and Market. It is quite possibly the most well connected public transit intersection in the United States outside of NYC and Chicago. 13 regional rail lines, Patco, MFL, Broad-Ridge Spur and Broad Street line is only a 5 minute walk.
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Originally Posted by BroadandMarket
They're also adding a 400 foot residential tower...which eliminates a lot of the supposed "deadzone" people thought the stadium would make. I'd encourage you to hang out at 10th and Market on a Tuesday night in February right now and see how vibrant it currently is...now imagine 20,000 people going to a 76ers game or concert. Getting dinner before and drinks after.
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Market St from 6th to 10th St has been a dead zone at night, and the only reason is because Market East was the traditional center for the area's department stores such as Strawbridge's, Lit Bros, and Gimbels.
An arena can generate up to 20K people, depending on if the games sell out or it much of the arena sells seats, but if it concerns the streetscape, then having a lot of shops plus developing the remaining lots into mixed commercial and residential is a much better offer than having a building which is only going to be used 41 times in a year excluding if the arena hosts concerts and/or special events.
I'm not sold that the arena will revitalize Market East. And even though the PA Convention Center extension to Broad St did take what seemed to be a pretty stable neighborhood, it was a much better risk to take since the PCC operates year round and almost everyday as opposed to building an arena that's only going to host only 41 home games in a year.
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Originally Posted by BroadandMarket
If you're on this forum and care about urbanism there is no logical way you can tell me this isn't a good project for the city. 1.3 billion investment! The 76ers will not spend that much and not clean up the area. They will also dramatically help MFL ridership while I'm sure pressuring Septa and the city to clean up the El. In San Francisco, your ticket to a Warriors game includes a Muni train ticket with it. Hopefully the 76ers do the same.
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We all participate because we want better cities, that's no secret, but this is the wrong way of approaching urbanism by shoehorning an arena w/o the regards of what the local communities in CC wants. People do matter and there doesn't seem to be any consideration for the history of not just Chinatown, but the city of Philadelphia and the communities.
And there is a transit line that's nearby the Sports Complex (BSL). If people are that lazy to take a 10-15 minute walk from Pattison to WFC, then this generation is the laziest I've ever heard of. I do want better, and like I said, Philadelphia hosts the best sports complex in the world because we host all four major sports teams at the same corner, which used to be Broad and Pattison, and even today, we still do, only at 10th and Pattison.