Chinatown advocates and powerful Philly unions make their pitches as City Council considers the 76ers’ arena proposal

Chinatown residents and business owners asked City Council members at a hearing Tuesday morning why they would consider approving a new 76ers arena that researchers and residents have testified would threaten the survival of the 150-year-old Asian American neighborhood.

They got their answer after lunch when Council’s Committee of the Whole reconvened, and leaders of the most politically powerful unions in Philadelphia lined up to testify in support of the $1.3 billion project.

“I’m going to speak from the heart because I need to look at the souls of the City Council members who have a very solemn duty to vote for what’s best for the city of Philadelphia,” said Ryan Boyer, who leads the Building & Construction Trades Council. “Is disruption gonna happen? Yes. But we cannot allow us not to grow.”

» READ MORE: Philly Council grills 76ers execs over taxpayer support and community benefits for Center City arena

It has been 2½ years since the 76ers first unveiled the team’s plan to open a new arena in time for the 2031-32 NBA season, and the arguments for and against it are now familiar. But Tuesday’s hearing provided the most high-profile setting to debate yet, and the witness lineup included the stakeholders who have the most to gain and lose from the project.

John Chin, executive director of the Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corp., said the neighborhood, which would border the facility and is already facing development pressure, is on the “precipice.”

“The arena doesn’t bring any organic benefits to the neighborhood,” Chin said. “Gentrification, displacement will erase Chinatown if six years of construction doesn’t.”

Business owners testified that disruptions during construction, heavy traffic on game nights, and accelerated gentrification in the long run would jeopardize the Chinatown economy’s delicate balance of relatively low costs and a strong consumer base.

“I don’t think we could survive the arena,” said Xu Lin, who owns the restaurant Bubblefish on Arch Street. “The Sixers construction alone would kill my business.”

Board members of the Washington Square West Civic Association also testified against the arena, meaning the project is opposed by all major neighborhood groups that border the proposed site, which would have a footprint from Market to Filbert Streets and from 10th to 11th Streets.

Boyer, meanwhile, oversees a coalition of 30 unions that stand to gain thousands of good-paying jobs for their members during the arena’s construction, which would begin with demolition of part of the Fashion District shopping mall in 2026 if approved. He was joined in imploring lawmakers to approve the project by representatives of Local 98 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the Eastern Atlantic States Regional Council of Carpenters, and Service Employees International Union Local 32BJ.

Philadelphia is a labor town, and those unions played critical roles last year in electing Mayor Cherelle L. Parker and Council President Kenyatta Johnson to their current positions. The arena vote will be a defining moment for Philadelphia’s new leaders, both of whom took office in January. It will also be a matter of legacy for Boyer, who in 2021 became the first Black leader of Philly’s building trades following the downfall of John J. Dougherty, the longtime Local 98 and trades council leader who was convicted on federal corruption and embezzlement charges.

» READ MORE: Ryan Boyer becomes first Black leader of Building Trades Council after John Dougherty’s conviction

Parker formally endorsed the arena this fall. Johnson has said he’s still deciding. But many assume he supports the project because he has paved the way for it to be approved by the end of the year, as the 76ers have demanded. And during Council hearings over the last two weeks, he has repeatedly interrupted proceedings to raise points of information that have almost all been helpful for the pro-arena argument.

The author of the package of legislation needed to approve the arena is Councilmember Mark Squilla, an ally of the building trades whose brother is an official with the carpenters union.

Lawmakers were largely deferential to the labor leaders at Tuesday’s hearing, but some asked questions that raised one of the more uncomfortable dynamics in Philly politics: that the building trades unions, which are primarily made up of white men who live in the suburbs, have come to dominate politics in a plurality-Black city.

Responding to a question from Councilmember Nicolas O’Rourke, who opposes the arena, Boyer on Tuesday said 28% of building trades unions members are Black. (About 40% of Philadelphia residents are Black, according to the Census Bureau, while 37% are white, 16% Latino, and 8% Asian.)

The trades unions rarely disclose the demographics of their members, but Boyer’s comments could indicate there has been a slight improvement in diversity since the rare instances in the past in which data have been made public. A 2013 report by the now-defunct news organization Axis Philadelphia estimated that more that 76% of trades union members were white and 67% lived outside Philadelphia.

» READ MORE: Past deals to add minority trade union members didn't succeed

Boyer is the leader of the Laborers District Council, the only majority-Black group of unions in the trades. He has long said that the trades don’t get enough credit for their diversification efforts, and he said the 76ers arena would be a transformative opportunity to do more.

The team is a founding partner of the Everybody Builds construction workforce diversification effort, and labor leaders testified that the arena could provide opportunities for apprentices to get experience, a critical step in ensuring that aspiring trades workers actually get assigned to jobs.

O’Rourke, however, noted that developers often break promises around diversity, and he asked Boyer what he would add to the project’s economy opportunity plan “to ensure that it cannot be violated.”

“What would I add to the EOP? I would add me,” Boyer said. “If the 76ers don’t do what they say they’re going to do, then my reputation is ruined, and I’m not going to let nobody ruin my reputation or that of the Philadelphia building trades.”