Mayor Parker endorses a downtown Sixers arena as Chinatown activists rally outside City Hall

Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle L. Parker decisively stepped into the city’s biggest development fight Wednesday, announcing that her administration had reached an agreement with the Sixers to build a controversial $1.55 billion arena in Center City.

The news came via a video released on social media as the mayor met at City Hall with Chinatown leaders, many of whom virulently oppose the development, which is planned to rise on the beleaguered Market Street East business corridor.

The arena still must be approved by City Council, and Chinatown opponents pledged Wednesday to carry their fight there even as labor leaders celebrated the mayor’s endorsement of a project they say will bring jobs and vitality.

”I am imploring City Council to look past the sensationalistic headlines and support the development of 76 Place,” Ryan Boyer, head of the politically powerful Philadelphia Building & Construction Trades Council and a close ally of Parker’s, said in a statement.

He said that failure to approve the project could see the Sixers depart to a new arena in Camden, lured by New Jersey officials’ promise of hundreds of millions in tax benefits.

“This is a historic agreement,” the mayor said in the video. “It is the best financial deal ever entered into by a Philadelphia mayor for a local sports arena. I wholeheartedly believe it is the right deal for the people of Philadelphia.”

Parker said the arena would bring new tax revenues to the city and local schools and create hundreds of new jobs, describing the project as “the start of an unprecedented revival” of Market East.

The Sixers said in a statement that they were grateful for the mayor and her team’s “time and diligence in evaluating our proposal and look forward to advancing to the next steps with City Council.”

The Sixers announced the project more than two years ago, in July 2022, predicting that the arena would bring new life to the Market Street corridor, which has suffered from COVID-19-driven declines in office occupancy and transit ridership. Some storefronts are boarded and closed.

In the video, Parker directly addressed the people of Chinatown, which sits adjacent to the arena site. “I see you. I listened to you,” she said, adding that she wants the neighborhood to thrive and grow.

The Save Chinatown Coalition released a statement headlined “This fight is far from over.”

“Mayor Parker still hasn’t met with Chinatown after all this time, yet feels she can have a stance on whether our community should live or die,” activist Debbie Wei said. “We are going to fight this, and we are going to the mat.”

The deal Parker negotiated with the 76ers includes a $50 million community-benefit agreement, said John Chin, head of the Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corp., who described the meeting with the mayor to reporters on Wednesday. Community-benefit agreements typically are contracts between developers and neighborhood groups that include money or resources for neighborhoods that would be affected by major projects.

Chin said the mayor told the Chinatown leaders gathered at City Hall, “You’re not going to be happy with what I’m going to tell you” — and they weren’t.

He added, “We need to take our cause to City Council.”

Chin noted that the city’s own impact studies described harm to Chinatown. The community study said half the neighborhood’s small businesses will lose economically if the arena is built. Only one out of five small businesses is positioned to benefit from the project, the study said.

Parker’s announcement provided the long-awaited answer to a key question: Where does the mayor stand on the arena? And it left enough time for the project to be approved by City Council by the end of 2024.

For months, her administration and the Sixers have been working out the details of legislation and related agreements that are needed for the project to go forward. The mayor’s office will now send the bills to Council.

Councilmember Mark Squilla, whose district includes both Chinatown and the proposed arena site at 10th and Market, and who will be point person for legislation that would allow the arena, has promised to make drafts of the bills public for 30 days before he officially introduces them. That means they could be introduced no sooner than Council’s Oct. 24 meeting.

“It’s up to us to make sure we do as much listening and amending as possible to make sure if the legislation is going to go for a vote, it has enough of those safeguards in place to make sure this is a viable project,” Squilla said.

Parker plans to unveil the legislation at a news conference Monday, and her office can transmit the legislation to Council as soon as lawmakers’ Sept. 26 meeting.

Comcast Spectacor, the Sixers’ landlord at the Wells Fargo Center, had been working to keep the team at the South Philadelphia sports complex.

“Our door will always be open for the 76ers to join us in South Philadelphia if they ever conclude that is what is best for their team,” Comcast Spectacor chairman and CEO Daniel Hilferty said in a statement, noting that the company has joined the Phillies in a plan to turn parts of the sports complex into a gleaming fan district. “Either way, we always want what is best for Philadelphia.”

Comcast Spectacor asked the Sixers to stay and join in an arena that would eventually replace the Wells Fargo Center. The team has said that, no matter what, it wouldn’t be playing in South Philadelphia after its lease expires in 2031.

The Sixers plan to build on the western third of the Fashion District mall, atop SEPTA’s Jefferson Station.

Chinatown residents and activists gathered outside City Hall around 2 p.m. Wednesday as the meeting was to commence between the mayor and the neighborhood’s representatives.

“Mayor Parker,” people chanted to the beat of drums, “listen to the people.”

Around 2:40 p.m., as word reached the crowd that Parker was endorsing the arena, the mood turned defiant. People shouted, “Shame!” and promised to vote out elected officials who back the proposal.

Some people burst into tears. Others chanted, ”Hands off Chinatown!”

Katie Garth, a cofounder of No Arena Washington Square West, said no one from her group or from No Arena Gayborhood was invited to the meeting, even though their neighborhoods also would be affected. She called the proposal a “land grab” by billionaires.

“Their playground will disrupt the routine foot traffic that does exist in our neighborhood,” said Garth.

Annie Lo, an attorney with the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, a civil rights group, said opponents were waiting to see the formal proposal in Council and were “exploring all options.” AALDEF has sued to protect Chinatowns in other cities.

The urgency around the Sixers’ proposal has accelerated during the last three weeks, with the release of city-sponsored impact studies on Aug. 26, the opening of Council’s fall session Sept. 5, and the Sixers’ declaration that time was running short for them to achieve their planned 2031 opening.

The city 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.

On Sept. 7, hundreds of arena opponents staged a loud, rain-soaked march through Center City, the second big demonstration in 15 months to close streets, stop traffic, and assert Chinatown’s resistance to the project. A few days later on Sept. 11, the mayor held a town hall at the Convention Center that drew supporters and opponents of the project.

At that meeting, Chinatown residents and activists argued that an adjacent arena would wreck their community, eventually driving away people and businesses, while labor union leaders insisted that Philadelphia needed to support a project that could boost jobs and help the downtown economy.

Boyer, the leader of the building trades council, told those in attendance that Chinatown could be protected and that the decline of struggling Market Street East must be halted.

“If you go to East Market,” he said, “it is desolate and it is dangerous.”

Staff writer Anna Orso contributed to this article.