A weary Chinatown faces the future as Sixers arena plan fails: Every few years a new fight for survival

Chinatown stands poised for a particularly joyous Lunar New Year, celebrating not only the Year of the Snake but the demise of a Sixers arena project it saw as a viper set to strike the community.

It turned out to be the mayor and City Council that got bit, when the team stunningly dropped its plan to build a $1.3 billion basketball showplace on struggling East Market Street.

But amid the red-and-gold roll of “No Arena” victory parties — 300 people pressed into the Folk Arts–Cultural Treasures Charter School to cheer and dance on Tuesday — lurks uncertainty over the future of a historic Asian neighborhood that has been bent by economic pressure, pressed by the lingering impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, and wearied by what can seem like an unending series of life-and-death struggles.

Every seven years or so, by rough count, neighborhood leaders say, Chinatown confronts the prospect of a huge, imposing development — a prison, a casino, a Phillies baseball stadium — that demands the community expend time, energy, and money to maintain its identity. The fight against the Sixers arena lasted two and a half years, ending suddenly on Jan. 12 with news that the team would stay in South Philadelphia.

“It’s exhausting,” said John Chin, executive director of the Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corp. “Our parents worked their way up to become small-business owners, and to have this fear that our roots will be uprooted, and the Chinatown they gave us eventually could disappear, is a huge toll on your emotions.”

If the drain of the arena fight carries a silver lining, he said, it’s that the community and the city gained insight into Chinatown’s needs. “It’s reaffirmed our understanding of Chinatown’s challenges and opened our eyes to opportunities,” Chin said.

Chinatown needs housing. It needs room for commercial growth. It needs green space and gathering space — beyond the benches at the 10th Street Plaza and outside the House of Dragons fire station. It needs parking, as 20% of spaces disappeared between 2015 and 2020, erased by new development, according to a city survey.

Today Chinatown faces the imminent arrival of a Trump administration that’s hostile not only to big, Democratic-run cities like Philadelphia but also to immigrants, for whom the neighborhood has been a gateway for 150 years.

“This is a time to celebrate, but we also have to have a cautious eye to look ahead,” said Philadelphia Suns youth group president Harry Leong, who was born and raised in Chinatown.

Some important works already are underway, especially the “Chinatown Stitch,” which proposes to reconnect a severed neighborhood by capping part of the below-ground-level Vine Street Expressway. The 1970s construction of the highway split the neighborhood and created a physical and mental barrier that has hindered growth for 50 years.

Now a $158 million federal grant aims to tie Chinatown proper to the area known as Chinatown North, rejoining the neighborhood and at least partially righting a historic wrong.

Chin thinks the Stitch could potentially become the center of an expanded Chinatown, the natural, knitted heart of communities north and south.

Planning will be crucial. And the arena deal that City Council approved only last month was to have dedicated $500,000 to create a master plan for Market East, where business closures have marred what was once the city’s grand shopping corridor.

But that money was tied to the construction of an arena on the southern edge of Chinatown, not to the team building a South Philadelphia venue with its landlord, Comcast Spectacor, which owns the Wells Fargo Center and the Flyers.

Mayor Cherelle L. Parker said she trusts the newly aligned Sixers and Comcast Spectacor, who warred over competing futures, to keep their promise to help improve the Market East area. The city likewise remains committed to the business corridor, she said, pledging that a master-planning process would begin “immediately.”

Some Chinatown leaders said last week that “the sky is the limit” in reimagining the corridor and the ways it could support Chinatown.

A community center, a health clinic, a school, and a small-business incubator are but some examples envisioned by the Save Chinatown Coalition, according to Mohan Seshadri, executive director of the Asian Pacific Islander Political Alliance, and Wei Chen, engagement director of Asian Americans United, an advocacy group.

Also on their list: a “Welcoming District” for immigrants that would centralize employment, housing, and language resources for newcomers. The idea was raised last spring by the Welcoming Center, an immigrant-support agency, but panned by arena backers as unrealistic.

“We know that ultimately the [planning] results are not going to line up a hundred percent with anyone’s individual vision,” Seshadri said. “We’ve learned so much about the importance of reaching out to all communities all across the city, rather than just focusing on the folks in the impact zone alone.”

Chinatown helped build and lead what became the No Arena in the Heart of Our City Coalition, a multiracial group that encompassed community organizations, medical professionals, small businesses, union members, workers, churches, and city wards that united to try to stop construction of the arena at 10th and Market Streets.

Coalition members saw that, despite differences of locale, age, and income, they all faced “the same core problem of neighborhoods and ordinary Philadelphians not being considered by the people who are supposed to represent us, and development being directed by billionaires — and city officials who think they work for [the wealthy],” said Ellen Somekawa, executive director of FACTS, the charter school in Chinatown North.

Chinatowns across the United States have been stressed to survive and thrive, challenged by their proximity to glitzy downtowns with higher housing prices, and attractive to outside developers for their land and location. The pandemic punished these neighborhoods as legions of workers lagged in returning to offices or never came back at all.

In 2023, the National Trust for Historic Preservation named Philadelphia’s Chinatown as one of the 11 most endangered historic places in the United States, citing the arena as a primary threat.

The neighborhood, its core reaching roughly from Vine to Filbert Streets and 11th to Eighth Streets, faced serious challenges even before the project was announced in July 2022.

The population has nearly doubled since 2011, up to 6,919 from 3,841, but so has the cost of living there. Median real estate taxes have risen 64% for commercial properties and 66% for mixed-use properties since 2014, according to a city-sponsored neighborhood impact study.

Chinatown confronts issues of safety, pedestrian movement, and a weak business environment, the study found. Higher rents have displaced low-income immigrants, and the loss of parking pinches a neighborhood that seeks to welcome suburban diners, shoppers, and tourists as it struggles with slow traffic.

The Sixers maintained that Chinatown businesses would only benefit from an arena, and the team, the mayor, and some City Council members hailed the project as central to reviving East Market Street. Just three days before news of the Sixers’ about-face leaked, the Parker administration touted the arena as a Market Street “anchor” that would incentivize new development even before it was built.

Last Monday, the mayor did not explain how new planning would be funded. And her pledge to “involve significant community-based input” rang hollow to Chinatown advocates.

“Nothing they say gives us any confidence they’re thinking about it any differently than when they thought the arena was a good idea,” Somekawa said.

Chinatown, she and others noted, serves multiple peoples, constituencies, and functions, an ecosystem in which each part depends on the others for its health.

It’s a first stop for immigrants trying to find their footing, a familiar home to second- and third-generation Asian Americans, a cultural hub for all the region’s Asian communities and for non-Asians who simply enjoy the food, clubs, and shopping.

Some people spend their lives in Chinatown because it offers what they need: doctors, dentists, insurers, and hairdressers who share the same background and speak and write the same language.

“We’re in a new phase all of a sudden,” said API PA’s Seshadri. “This is a time to have those conversations that should have been had a long time ago. Who does Philadelphia work for? Who does City Council work for? … We’re hoping from here on out it will be community voices that are at the table.”