Chinatown activists say a new impact study affirms their concerns about a planned Sixers arena

Chinatown residents and business owners have argued for two years that building a new Sixers arena on their doorstep would wreck a vulnerable and valuable immigrant neighborhood.

Now a new, city-sponsored analysis adds credence to those concerns.

It predicts that many small businesses that compose the beating heart of Chinatown would be hurt by the proposed $1.55 billion arena and warns that under some scenarios, the neighborhood’s identity and significance could be lost.

Across 136 pages, the community-impact study suggests that harm to one segment of Chinatown’s intricate network of social, commercial and cultural systems could cause the others to tip and fall like a stack of blocks.

“It’s saying things we knew,” said Vivian Chang, executive director of Asian Americans United, which has fought the arena proposal. “We’ve been gaslighted for two years, and this was saying, ‘Oh, it is true, there will be harm.’”

The study, released Monday evening, said:

The study is a pillar of the four analyses released Monday night by the administration of Mayor Cherelle L. Parker. The other studies, likewise conducted by consultants hired by the city and financed by the Sixers, examined the potential economic, design, and parking and transportation issues attached to building a 18,500-seat arena and housing tower four blocks from City Hall.

Efforts to reach Sixers officials for comment on the community-impact study were unsuccessful.

On Tuesday the team said it was reviewing the studies and would have more to say when its analysis was complete, “but it is clear already that they support what we’ve said since we first announced 76 Place: The arena is an appropriate use for Center City and will generate significant new jobs and tax revenue.”

The Sixers have said that Chinatown would not be harmed — that the developers were sensitive to the needs of the neighborhood and particularly to its painful history of intrusion and property loss.

“We want to protect the cultural gems of Chinatown and the surrounding communities,” David Gould, the chief diversity and impact officer for team owner Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment, told a crowded meeting last November.

The team has said an arena on the neighborhood’s southern edge could benefit Chinatown by regularly drawing thousands of fans who would patronize restaurants and stores.

The team has promised to create a robust security presence at its property, meaningful after pandemic attacks on Asian Americans in Philadelphia left many feeling unsafe.

The study, however, suggests that the financial gains to Chinatown merchants from sports fans and concertgoers would be limited and might be outweighed by the loss of existing patrons. Most small neighborhood businesses are defined by specific cultural or language ties, and many are not set to appeal to a more mainstream customer base, it said.

Chinatown surveys show more than 90% neighborhood opposition to the project. Many have opposed the arena almost from the moment it was announced in July 2022, seeing it as another incursion into a community that’s been battered by outside development.

As City Council prepares to reconvene on Thursday, Chinatown leaders and their allies are planning months of resistance and protest, starting with a Center City march Sept. 7. A Chinatown-led demonstration in 2023 shut down streets and traffic.

“There is no way that my small business can survive six years of demolition and construction, not to mention the traffic nightmares if the arena opens,” said Sam Sam, who owns the Little Saigon Cafe in Chinatown.

The community impact study sought to identify “tipping points,” crucial areas such as parking and traffic, where small changes can trigger dramatic, irreversible results.

“Imagine a game of Jenga,” the study said, “where a player removes a block at a time and places it on top of a tower. At some point, removing a specific block causes the rest of the tower to collapse.”

Chinatown’s labor market and small businesses have become critical to its identity, the study said, as businesses serve as key spaces for social gatherings and celebrations. New immigrants rely on business networks to find connections and opportunities. In one study survey that asked, “What would cause you to leave or stop coming to Chinatown?” fully 67% of respondents answered, “Favorite business(es) shut down.”

Geoffrey Propheter, University of Colorado-Denver public-affairs professor and author of Major League Sports and the Property Tax, praised the community impact study as containing more useful economic information than the separate, city-commissioned economic report, produced for the city by stadium consultant CSL International.

“The first businesses to go will be retail,” Propheter said. “In general, the mom-and-pop independent, those are going to be the first to go.”

As she read the study, Mary Yee, a Chinatown activist since the early 1970s, immediately noted the projected economic impact on small businesses, how half would suffer while only one in five would gain.

“That’s a stunning detail,” she said.

The study was conducted by BJH Advisors, a New-York-based planning and real estate adviser, and by Sojourner Consulting in Philadelphia, along with other analysts.

“The arena,” they wrote, “should be considered a significant potential risk to Chinatown’s core identity.”

The city sought a distinct examination of Chinatown for a couple reasons. One, Chinatown is the large, proximate residential community that’s sure to be impacted. Second, Chinatown faces unique challenges and economic pressures even as it strives to remain the hub of the region’s Asian communities.

The study deemed the arena’s impact on Market Street East to be inconclusive, saying the corridor would face significant challenges with or without the project. In a limited look at the Washington Square West neighborhood south of the site, consultants heard residents say their neighbors are being pushed out by high rents.

“It’s clear the arena would bring to us similar risks of displacement and harm,” the group No Arena Washington Square West said in a statement. “Our community’s small businesses and its supermajority of renters are particularly vulnerable to the negative effects of this pernicious project.”

Chinatown was founded in 1871, when a man named Lee Fong opened a laundry at 913 Race St. More than 150 years later, it remains a gateway for immigrants, particularly those who may not speak English. At the same time, a significant number of Asian American families have lived in Chinatown for generations, people who are rooted and invested in the community and often own properties and businesses.

In Chinatown, losses of homes and land to outside developers are fresh in the minds of many who oppose the arena, including members of the Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corp. and the Save Chinatown Coalition.

The construction of the Vine Street Expressway in the 1980s razed six blocks of single-room occupancies, rowhouses, and small industries, displacing more than 600 residents, the impact study noted. In 1993, the development of the Pennsylvania Convention Center displaced 200 homes and businesses between 11th and 13th and Arch and Race Streets.

In succeeding decades the neighborhood fought to keep out a casino and a Phillies baseball stadium.

Still, Chinatown has been essentially walled off by big projects including the former Police Administration Building, the Temple University School of Podiatric Medicine, and the Gallery mall, now the Fashion District, where the Sixers intend to build.

The Sixers insist that the project would not force the relocation of a single home or business, and that replacing part of a mall with an arena would cover roughly the same space.

In the last decade, Chinatown has strengthened its roster of services and programs, with about 101 different organizations serving the neighborhood. The percentage of Asian-owned properties has increased to 45%, up from 37% in 2013.

This year, officials announced a $158 million federal grant to build the Chinatown Stitch, a cap for part of the Vine Street Expressway that has long bisected the community. The stitch would tie Chinatown to the area known as Chinatown North, offering reconnection and room for growth.

Still, despite its bright lanterns and bustling grocery stores, Chinatown is a community under stress, facing challenges regarding safety, pedestrian movement, and a weak business environment.

Its 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, the study authors found.

Higher rents have displaced low-income immigrants and pressured businesses, and the neighborhood has lost parking spaces to development projects, even as the community seeks to welcome diners, shoppers and tourists and already struggles with traffic.

“Chinatown is like a homeland for new immigrants,” said Sam, the cafe owner. “It is precious to us and cannot be replaced once it is destroyed.”

Staff writer Sean Collins Walsh contributed to this article.