The mayor’s Sixers arena town hall drew opinions pro and con. Chinatown feared for its survival, union leaders touted jobs.

Hundreds of people in favor of and opposed to plans for a $1.55 billion downtown Sixers arena packed the Convention Center on Wednesday night, the majority of speakers condemning the project at a town-hall meeting convened by Mayor Cherelle L. Parker.

Across almost three hours, Chinatown residents described their fear that the project would ruin their beloved community, while union officers insisted it was time for Philadelphia to support a project that could boost jobs and the downtown economy.

The meeting, announced only three days earlier, saw a mobilization by people on different sides. At the start the mayor advised the crowd, seated in an auditorium and two overflow rooms, that people must be respectful when others were speaking — and for the most part they followed that advice.

“This is a listening session,” said the mayor, who came no closer to stating a yes-or-no position on the arena.

The conflict around the team’s desire to build an arena on the western third of the Fashion District mall, atop SEPTA’s Jefferson Station, has fueled the city’s biggest development fight in years.

The first person called to the microphone Wednesday night was an attorney with the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, Annie Lo, who immediately ceded her time to two Chinatown high school students.

The room erupted, as people in now-familiar red-and-white “No Arena” T-shirts clapped and cheered.

“Why should the city let a billionaires’ playground destroy Chinatown,” asked one of the young women, Faye Liu, “when our schools don’t even have playgrounds? … Please, Mayor Parker, don’t steal our future.”

The Sixers announced the project more than two years ago, in July 2022, contending the arena would bring jobs and vitality to struggling Market Street East.

The urgency around the proposal has accelerated during the last 2½ weeks, with the release of city-sponsored impact studies, the opening of City Council’s fall session, and the Sixers’ declaration that time was running short for them to achieve their planned 2031 opening.

Meanwhile, New Jersey officials are offering hundreds of millions of dollars in tax credits to try to lure the team to the Camden waterfront.

The impact studies, conducted by outside consultants and paid for by the Sixers, concluded that the arena may be appropriate for Center City but would pose substantial risk to Chinatown.

The Parker administration has been working with the Sixers to draft a package of arena-enabling legislation. If that is presented to Council soon, Council President Kenyatta Johnson said, it’s possible lawmakers could vote on the arena before the end of the year.

In recent weeks opponents in Chinatown and elsewhere have sought to pose a single, pointed question to the mayor and City Council: Who do you work for? The people who live and work in Philadelphia, or the billionaire owners of a wealthy sports team?

On Wednesday night, advocates for Chinatown complained that Parker had declined or ignored several invitations to visit the neighborhood. Supporters of the arena, however, praised her leadership and willingness to hear different points of view.

Ryan Boyer, who leads the Building and Construction Trades Council and is one of the project’s biggest backers, told those in the hall that Chinatown could be protected, and that Market Street East, the business corridor where the arena would stand at 10th Street, could not be allowed to continue to decline.

“If you go to East Market, it is desolate and it is dangerous,” said Boyer, adding that a Sixers arena would kick-start a revival because “investment attracts investment.”

Efforts to reach the Sixers for comment were unsuccessful.

City Hall observers expect Parker to endorse the project this fall. For her to oppose the development would trigger a political earthquake.

Some of the project’s highest-profile supporters rank among her most important allies: construction and service-workers unions, the Black clergy, and the African American Chamber of Commerce of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware.

The mayor previously said she will eventually take a position and fight for that view.

The arena cannot proceed without City Council approving a package of enabling legislation, which could come this fall. Only four of the 17 members have revealed their positions: Three oppose, one stands in favor, and more are expected to make their stances plain once Parker and Councilmember Mark Squilla, a key player, state their views.

“I’m trying to speak to the heart of you, mayor, and also to Councilman Squilla — people’s lives are at risk,” said one arena opponent who did not give his name.

The main room filled even before the event began, the majority of the crowd wearing “No Arena” T-shirts, while union members donned their colors, too, including the purple of the Service Employees International Union Local 32BJ. Some wore blue shirts emblazoned, “Pro-Jobs, Pro-Union, Pro-Arena.”

The front rows were taken by members of the mayor’s administration and by the consultants who wrote the impact studies.

”Before I make any decision on the arena proposal in Center City, I will do what I have done throughout my entire career that is standard operating procedure — and that is I will communicate and I will listen to any stakeholders,” Parker said as the meeting began.

She added, “The wrong way to attempt to influence me is to think that you’re going to bully me.”

The first speaker to endorse the arena was Daisy Cruz, the Mid-Atlantic district leader for the Service Employees union, which represents employees such as custodians and security guards in Center City office buildings.

The union, she said, “has fought almost every big landlord and corporation in Center City.”

But amid the decline in office occupancy that followed the COVID-19 pandemic, the union is hoping an arena can spur more downtown development.

“We have to build Center City in a way that creates as many good jobs as possible,” Cruz said.

The arena would cover the area from 10th to 11th and Market to Filbert Streets, and include a 20-floor, 395-unit apartment building. It would be adjacent to Chinatown.

“I’m here to say the African American Chamber of Commerce supports the efforts of 76 Place,” said the Rev. J. Henry Buck Jr., of Grace Baptist Church of Germantown and of the African American Chamber of Commerce. “Now is the time for Philadelphia to take a stand and become a world-class city.”

No pop-up protests took place during the town hall, as occurred during a November forum held by the Sixers. Instead, whenever a Chinatown advocate spoke at the microphone, everyone wearing a white T-shirt stood up in silent support.

The mayor closed the town hall in fiery fashion, saying she has observed “implicit bias that is present in some statements regarding this administration’s ability to make a sound decision about this deal.”

Her reference was not immediately clear. Parker noted that, despite humble beginnings in Northwest Philadelphia, she holds an Ivy League degree and is more than qualified to make a call on the arena.

She described her decision-making process as evaluating “return on investment for the entire city of Philadelphia while being ultrasensitive because of my real-life, lived experience.”

“When it is time for me as mayor of this city to stand up and affirm where I am on this issue,” she said, “you will know where I am.”

Staff writer Anna Orso contributed to this article.