Bob Ford: Soccer not real story

The face of Philadelphia sports will be altered a little this week when Major League Soccer lets go of a badly kept secret and awards an expansion franchise to a group of deep-pocketed investors who dream of transforming the rotting waterfront of Chester into a place where people will jog along a jaunty promenade, live in luxury townhouses and shop at fine retail outlets.

There will occasionally be a soccer game as well.

For those aching to have a local team in the MLS, a league that has become consistent and entertaining, if not yet comparable to the top foreign leagues, the new team will be a welcome addition, even if the franchise is primarily a beard for the other development planned near the acreage donated by the Chester City Council.

Whatever works, from that standpoint, and serious outdoor soccer will find the back of the net in the Philadelphia area for the first time since the Atoms and Fury stayed afloat for a few years in the heaving waters of the old North American Soccer League.

A total of $87 million in public funding has been promised to the development project, which now totals more than $500 million, including the price of constructing the $115 million stadium that will seat 18,500 fans for soccer and other events.

Philadelphia would have had an MLS franchise years ago, despite stadium issues, but a financial backer willing to become the owner-operator for the team - the guy with the checkbook, in other words - never stepped forward. For the current deal, the primary investors are Jay Sugarman, a New Yorker with iStar Financial, and Wilmington developers Christopher and Robert Buccini. The front man is James Nevels, the former chairman of the Philadelphia School Reform Commission.

It has been suggested that Gov. Rendell's support for the project was related to Nevels' resignation from the reform commission, where he and the governor had their disagreements. Everyone denies this, quite naturally.

In any case, Chester donated the land - even in today's market, that's a very good price for waterfront property - Delaware County ponied up $30 million, Rendell raided several back pockets in the state's budget for a $47 million gift that won't have to be approved by the legislature, and the Delaware River Port Authority coughed up $10 million just weeks after its commission said it had no intention of doing any such thing.

Of course, Rendell is the chairman of that agency's commission, and before you knew it the $10 million, previously earmarked for Penn's Landing development, had floated downriver and snagged itself on concrete pilings of the Commodore Barry Bridge.

All in the name of providing some hope and tax revenue for the Chester area, a very good thing in theory.

And don't forget the soccer.

The franchise, supposedly the point of all this, has been somewhat obscured by the artist's renderings of sun-dappled life in the proposed complex. In the initial phase of development, there will be 25 apartments and 186 townhouses, a 200,000-square-foot convention center, three office buildings with 22,000 square feet of retail space, and a parking garage. There will be a marina with docking slips and a paved riverwalk for strolling.

It is ironic but somehow fitting that the DRPA's money had been intended for Penn's Landing, that walled-off orphan which has seen the rising and falling of a hundred plans to transform it into Philadelphia's Harborplace. Instead, the proposed Chester development will create a new one whole, without the need to integrate it organically into an existing neighborhood or community.

There will be sports bars and restaurants and easy-in, easy-out access that will allow consumers to visit Chester without really visiting Chester, in the same way that patrons of the Tweeter Center and New Jersey State Aquarium aren't really getting the whole Camden experience.

If the Chester residents get better services because of the anticipated tax revenue, and there are some jobs available to lessen a terrible unemployment problem - even if it just gets a supermarket that has been promised for the complex, a small request for a city of 36,000 that doesn't have one - then there will be some good mixed in with the microbrews and cheese poppers.

Otherwise, they are merely being used for their plight - free land! - and the soccer team is the little but noisy train that circles around the Christmas tree.

But if you like soccer, which I do, the sports part of it is all good.

The MLS has settled into a fairly stable rut in which its franchises - all on a strict salary budget - draw around 15,000 per game, and are beginning, with help from recent television contracts and team-owned stadiums, to break even or make a little money.

There is little reason to think the Philadelphia franchise would be much different after the initial honeymoon period. Yes, there are a lot of youth soccer associations and other natural markets here, but kids play soccer in Kansas City, too, and the Wizards drew an average of 11,500 last season. It comes down to how well the team is run and how well it plays. All of that, for the expansion team here, is just speculation now.

The team will find fans, though, and in the pecking order of Philadelphia sports, it will be slotted somewhere south of the Flyers and somewhere north of the Soul. That sounds about right. If it wins a championship before any of the local Big Four teams, that will not break the streak, however. On that score, unfortunately, Wings rules are firmly in effect.

Still, it should be fun, and a lot of people will enjoy it, a few people with money will make more of it, and there will be shoppers and baby strollers along the shimmering Chester waterfront. It's all right there in the drawings.