As Sixers plan new Center City arena, Philly’s ‘Disney hole’ sits vacant

Thanks to the 76ers’ plan to build a new basketball arena, “76 Place,” all eyes are on Center City Philadelphia.

The managing partners of the Sixers announced Thursday that they are teaming up with the Philadelphia apartment developer David J. Adelman and others in a proposal to build an 18,500-seat arena on Market Street between 10th and 11th Streets, property that is how part of the Fashion District Philadelphia mall. Mayor Jim Kenney said no city funding was planned.

The Sixers say the arena could be completed by 2031, when the team’s lease with the Wells Fargo Center expires.

While the development would be welcomed news to Center City businesses hit hard by work and crowd disruptions caused by COVID-19, another piece of prime property just a few blocks east remains mostly vacant, apart from a few cars.

» READ MORE: The Sixers want to build a new $1.3 billion arena in Center City

At Eighth and Market Streets are 2.7 acres of underdeveloped parking lots that sit atop a transit concourse served by the Market-Frankford Line, the Broad Street Line’s Broad-Ridge Spur, and PATCO. It’s also just a couple of blocks away from Jefferson Station, a hub for all of SEPTA’s Regional Rail trains.

The site was once home to what briefly was the largest department store in the world but has mostly sat barren and underutilized since the late 1970s, apart from the surface-level parking that fills the space.

Here’s everything you need to know about the long-vacant lot in the heart of Center City:

So if the Sixers weren’t interested, what’s going to replace the street-level parking at Eighth and Market? As of now, nothing.

No plans have been announced publicly about development on the lot, and the Goldenberg Group, which owns the property, did not respond to a list of emailed questions about the property.

Parking lots have filled the space for most of the last four decades. The only move made in recent years was the Goldenberg Group’s decision to purchase the Philadelphia Parking Authority’s 30,100-square-foot lot on the northwest corner of Eighth and Chestnut Streets back in 2018. That created a flurry of rumors involving everything from hotels to apartments, but nothing ever materialized.

Seth Shapiro, Goldenberg’s chief operating officer, told The Inquirer in 2020 that the company didn’t have any discussions with the Sixers about developing an arena on the property.

“We have always viewed Eighth and Market as one of the most significant intersections in the city, and one deserving of a truly signature development,” Shapiro said at the time.

» READ MORE: In the Sixers arena plan, hopes for a revitalized Market East — and concerns about poor urban design

Back in 1998, everyone was buying mouse ears after the city announced the Walt Disney Co. was planning to build a virtual-reality theme park in Center City called DisneyQuest on the long-vacant lot at Eighth and Market. Then-Mayor Ed Rendell was so thrilled, he high-fived Goofy during a news conference at City Hall announcing the project.

“This could make East Market the number-one downtown street in America,” Rendell told the Daily News at the time.

Production issues delayed the Disney property, pushing back its proposed opening to the summer of 2001. City leaders continued to promote the Disney project, but construction never got beyond excavation work. Then-Mayor John Street officially pronounced the project “dead” in Philadelphia in April 2000, and following the lackluster performance of a separate DisneyQuest location in downtown Chicago, the company officially pulled the plug on both projects in July 2001.

All that was left in Philadelphia was a giant hole in the ground, which Philadelphians dubbed the “Disney hole.”

One final DisneyQuest location remained open, at Disney Springs in Orlando, Fla., until 2017, when the company shut the project down altogether and demolished the building to make way for the NBA Experience (which was permanently closed in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic).

In 2012, the city announced it would begin accepting applications as part of a process to award a second casino license in Philadelphia. The city ultimately chose the Live! Casino & Hotel, which opened in South Philadelphia in January 2021, but one of the potential locations would have been on the Eighth and Market property.

The proposed casino, dubbed Market8, would have featured five floors of gambling, clubs, restaurants, and live performances, all in the heart of Center City. The casino would have been topped with a 168-room hotel tower sporting a spa and fitness club, along with beautiful views of the city. The Washington Square West Civic Association hailed the proposal as a way to bring “much-needed activity” to Market Street.

But like previous projects at the site, it wasn’t meant to be. Community leaders in Chinatown protested the proposed casino, and the Gaming Control Board decided to place the casino in the city’s sports complex in South Philadelphia.

The Gimbels flagship store in Philadelphia opened at Ninth and Market in March 1894, taking over the bankrupt Haines & Co. dry-goods store. Its grand opening was so popular that the now-defunct Philadelphia Record reported that a window was broken due to the crowd size and umbrellas were “twisted into almost unrecognizable shapes,” according to Hidden City.

The store featured Philadelphia’s first escalators and hosted the first Thanksgiving Day parade in American history in 1920, predating New York’s (though the first few were modest affairs). An expansion in 1928 allowed Gimbels to take up the entire block, making it, for a brief period of time, the largest department store in the world.

The Gimbel family sold its empire to Brown & Williamson in 1973, and in 1977 moved its Center City location to the newly built Gallery mall, where it remained until its closure in 1986. Most of the old building was demolished in 1980, and the block hasn’t really changed much since.

What’s left of the former Gimbels building, a 12-story addition built in 1928 now known as 833 Chestnut St., was sold to a California-based investment trust for $161 million back in 2015.