Comcast Spectacor one-ups the Sixers with a smart, urban plan for the sports complex

It doesn’t matter whether you hate the Sixers’ proposal for a Center City arena or can’t wait for the games to begin, you have to agree that the team has done Philadelphia a great service. By declaring its intention to abandon the deadening sprawl of the sports complex for the bright lights of downtown, the Sixers provided the push that their landlord, Comcast Spectacor, needed to start imagining those barren wastes as a real urban place.

For far too long, Comcast Spectacor, which owns the Wells Fargo Center, and the other team owners have been content to operate their arenas as self-contained islands surrounded by a lifeless sea of parking. As a business model, this approach was extremely lucrative, since it kept the fans’ spending bottled up inside their arenas.

But the absence of mixed-use activity didn’t just make the stadium district a place you wanted to flee after the game; it also stymied housing and job growth in South Philadelphia, leaving a huge void between nearby neighborhoods and the rapidly expanding Navy Yard. Over the years, the sports complex, which was built on the eastern half of FDR Park, metastasized into a 200-acre expanse of asphalt, an area twice as large as the Fitler Square neighborhood.

The plan that Comcast Spectacor released to The Inquirer last week won’t turn those parking lots into a living neighborhood overnight — or even over the next decade — but it does demonstrate a dawning recognition that the status quo is unacceptable. The real value of the plan, which was overseen by Nelson, the firm that helped the Atlanta Braves create the mixed-use Battery complex, is that it starts a discussion about how to use that wasted real estate for the kinds of activities that make cities, well, cities.

While some elements in the $2.5 billion proposal are clearly aspirational, Comcast Spectacor deserves credit for putting out a vision that could turn the auto-centric sports complex into a walkable, 24/7 neighborhood. In the drawings that Comcast Spectacor officials showed me, almost everything south of Pattison Avenue would be filled in with mixed-use buildings, including a 5,500-seat concert venue.

Those new buildings, which include apartments, hotels and offices, would be connected to the sports arenas by a network of walkways and plazas lined with two-story buildings, restaurants and shops.

In case you’re worried about where to park, fear not: Comcast Spectacor would construct three enormous garages, with a total of 10,000 spaces, on the perimeter of the stadiums. Comcast Spectacor officials also took pains to emphasize that the existing tailgating zone would remain a sacred space, untouched, apart from a few infrastructure upgrades.

The best idea in the plan — and the one that will be the most difficult to realize — addresses conditions on Broad Street. Comcast Spectacor wants to change the character of that wide road by lining the edge with apartments and hotels and introducing traffic-calming measures.

A row of 12- to 15-story high-rises would overlook FDR Park in much the same way that Pennsylvania Avenue’s apartments enjoy views of Kelly Drive’s greenery. In remaking this part of Broad Street as an elegant residential boulevard, Comcast Spectacor could help strengthen connections to the Navy Yard, which plans to add 4,000 apartments over the next two decades.

It’s hard to look at this smart proposal and not contrast it with the Sixers’ plan for Market Street. While Comcast Spectacor wants to make a bunch of surface lots look and function like a miniature version of Center City, the Sixers would import the insular dullness of a typical American sports arena onto Philadelphia’s traditional retail corridor.

Without a doubt, Market Street faces daunting challenges right now, as do retail streets in every American downtown. But the Sixers’ $1.55 billion arena is unlikely to fix what ails Market Street. Instead, it would replace part of a shopping mall that is open almost every day with a building that would be active, at best, 150 days a year.

Although the Sixers promise to open the ground floor to the public daily, their arena would offer just a half-dozen shops, far fewer than now exist in that block of the Fashion District, which is said to be 79% occupied. The retail spaces shown in the Sixers’ plans are too small to accommodate the national chains that currently anchor the block, including Primark, Ulta and Kate Spade.

While the Sixers argue that moving the team to Market Street would be a boost for SEPTA because more suburban fans are likely to take transit, those extra riders would come at a steep price. By building over Jefferson Station, the city’s second-busiest regional rail hub, the arena would severely compromise that light-filled station.

The arena could also damage Chinatown, one of Philadelphia’s liveliest neighborhoods. Already walled-off on the west by the three-block-long Pennsylvania Convention Center, which goes unused for weeks, Chinatown would get another immense barrier on its southern flank.

The question, of course, is whether Comcast Spectacor is serious about following through with its plan — or just using the glowing renderings to bolster its public relations fight with the Sixers. We know that Comcast Spectacor, which owns the Philadelphia Flyers, stands to lose a bundle if the Sixers arena poaches events from the Wells Fargo Center. Its facility currently hosts 220 events a year spread over 200 days.

The company has made no secret about its desire to woo the Sixers back to Wells Fargo and has offered them an ownership stake in the arena, which has just undergone a $400 million renovation. Comcast Spectacor packed the building with a dazzling assortment of restaurants, concession stands and digital technology.

Yet, despite the high-stakes charm offensive, Comcast Spectacor did not consult the Sixers during the process of reimagining the sports complex. That prompted harsh social media posts from team owner David Adelman and a miffed email to journalists from Mark Nicastre, one of the team’s public relations representatives. Perhaps Comcast Spectacor’s desire to keep its plan under wraps is no surprise, given the enmity that has developed since the breakup was announced.

But Comcast Spectacor also failed to loop in the city planning department while it was working on the development proposal. (It did recently present the finished plan to Mayor Cherelle L. Parker, however.)

During an interview, Daniel Hilferty, head of Comcast Spectacor, insisted that the new plan is not simply a response to the Sixers’ proposed move. He says the company is fully committed to urbanizing the stadium district regardless of whether the city gives the Sixers a green light for their arena.

At the same time, he believes the urbanization plan could make South Philadelphia more attractive to the Sixers. “When people come to their senses,” Hilferty told me, “we hope the Sixers will join us” at the sports complex.

Comcast Spectacor has certainly not spared any expense in preparing this plan. Besides Nelson, it enlisted several blue-chip design firms to work on the details: Foster & Partners — architects of the Comcast Technology Center — for the residential buildings; Populous for the music venue; Field Operations for the landscaping. John Gattuso, who oversaw the initial transformation of the Navy Yard, served as the “creative consultant.”

Still, there is good reason to worry that Comcast Spectacor might not take this project all the way to the finish line. The company says it would kick off the project with the concert hall, which would be midway between the Wells Fargo Center and Citizens Bank Park. The walkways and the retail would be built simultaneously. New parking garages would follow.

But the real meat of the plan — the apartments, hotels and offices — might not happen for years. Comcast Spectacor officials note that they need City Council’s approval to add residential buildings to the sports complex and that they must work with the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corp., which owns the land.

This isn’t the first time Comcast Spectacor has talked about developing the sports complex into a mixed-use destination. In 2007, Comcast Spectacor partnered with Cordish Co. to build hotels, offices and restaurants along Pattison Avenue under the Philly Live! brand. That project was put on hold after the 2008 financial crash.

By the time the economy recovered, Comcast Spectacor had lost interest. Although there was later talk of an office building, the only new development to come out of that partnership was a very large sports bar.

Although Comcast Spectacor talks a good urbanist game about making Broad Street and Pattison Avenue more walkable, some aspects of the plan suggest that the company and Nelson are more focused on accommodating cars. The plan would produce a net increase of 2,000 parking spaces at the stadium district even before the housing and offices are built. Is the extra capacity really necessary for a concert hall and a few new bars and shops?

The most telling aspect of the company’s mindset is the proposal for a ramp that would span Broad Street and land in FDR Park. Comcast Spectacor says the dramatically curving structure, which was designed by Foster’s firm, “would bring the park into the complex” and make it easier for fans to cross Broad Street.

But any time you need to install an expensive bridge to enable pedestrians to safely reach a public park, it means you haven’t calmed traffic or made the street crossable. It’s a sign of failure.

Meanwhile, Comcast Spectacor is working with PennDot to create a new ramp from the sports complex to I-95 at Seventh Street. In theory, shrinking the existing Broad Street entrance has the potential to improve conditions for pedestrians and cyclists traveling between the sports complex and the Navy Yard, now a dangerous vortex of speeding cars.

People don’t often think of the sports complex as a major jobs center, but it is. Philadelphia is the only American city with four teams in one place that is accessible (to varying degrees) by transit, highways, bike and foot.

The complex is becoming even more important now as a string of employment nodes are emerging nearby. While we obsess about the future of Center City’s office towers, the real job growth is occurring around the rim of South Philadelphia: the Navy Yard, port, Bellwether District, airport, Pennovation, and 30th Street life sciences district. They need to be better connected to one another and to Center City by transit so Philadelphia workers can access those new jobs.

Comcast Spectacor’s proposal for the sports complex may have originated out of self-interest. But what happens in those parking lots is vital to the future of the whole city.

What a huge disappointment it would be if all we got out of the latest plan is yet another arena in an ocean of parking.