How the South Philly sports complex could be reset if the Sixers depart to Center City

Notlef Felton has been going to the South Philadelphia sports complex since he was a kid, cheering the home teams at Veterans Stadium and the Spectrum.

As he grew up and older, he saw those stadiums demolished and replaced. But what was true of the complex then is true today: four teams, three venues, one place.

“This is part of Philadelphia. This is part of who we are,” said Felton, 55, who today lives near Pittsburgh and was tailgating with friends earlier this month outside Lincoln Financial Field before the Eagles’ game against the Jacksonville Jaguars.

Now the stadium-district roster could be reset for the first time in 50 years, if the Sixers depart to a new, $1.55 billion arena they propose to build four miles north in Center City.

Mayor Cherelle L. Parker and the team say the project will help revive sagging Market Street East, and City Council is poised to open hearings on Tuesday. A vote on construction of the 18,500-seat arena could come before the end of the year.

The Sixers have said that, no matter what, they won’t be playing in South Philadelphia after 2031, when their lease expires at the Wells Fargo Center.

Their exit would take Philadelphia to an earlier era, before the coming of the district that is now so familiar. What Philadelphians see as normal was once radical — the grouping of the major teams in a single place where large numbers of cars and people could easily fit.

Until 1971 — when Richard M. Nixon ruled the White House, Jim Morrison died in Paris, and a coffee company borrowed the name of a Moby-Dick character to open its first Starbucks store — the teams were scattered.

The Eagles played at U-shaped Franklin Field, on the eastern edge of the University of Pennsylvania campus. They had moved there from Connie Mack Stadium, the North Philadelphia home of the Phillies. The Sixers played at Convention Hall, also known as the Civic Center, and sometimes in West Philadelphia at the Philadelphia Arena, which hosted everything from wrestling to rodeos.

JFK Stadium, now gone, was the only stadium in South Philadelphia when the Spectrum opened in 1967. Veterans Stadium followed four years later.

“Everything was in one spot,” said Dave Coskey, a former Sixers vice president. “If you were going to a game, you were going to South Philadelphia.”

Today, the utility of the stadium district depends on who is talking:

To some, it’s a model of convenience, easily reached by subway and highway and home to one of the largest parking areas in North America. Traffic is a hassle, but 22,000 spaces means there’s always a spot.

To others, the complex is an asphalt wasteland, devoid of people and activity except on game days and concert nights, a prime example of how sports arenas don’t generate much economic impact.

It hosts but a single sports bar, Xfinity Live!

“I wish Xfinity would somehow expand, whether the building got bigger or there was another location,” said Daniel Klapa, 55, of Marlton, who as a boy played in soccer games at the Spectrum and the Vet, and now attends almost every Eagles game.

The Spectrum gave way to the Wells Fargo Center in 1996 as the home of the Sixers and Flyers. The Phillies moved to Citizens Bank Park in 2004, the Eagles to Lincoln Financial Field in 2003. JFK Stadium was demolished in 1992.

“Philadelphia is among the top sports markets in the nation, yet we have the most unplanned sports district,” said Janice Woodcock, a city planning director under Mayor John Street who now runs the architecture firm Woodcock Design. “No one has been able to take that whole problem and make it an asset.”

A Sixers departure, she and other experts say, would mostly impact the Wells Fargo Center and owner Comcast Spectacor, which also owns the Flyers.

“It’s not going to be the end of the sports district if they leave,” Woodcock said. “But we do have to think how we’ll program that building that’s left behind.”

Comcast Spectacor would lose rent from the Sixers, along with the income from game-day sales, including parking, food, beer, and merchandise. A city-sponsored impact study predicted that the center, if hosting only the Flyers, would suffer up to a 25% loss in luxury-suite revenue and that money from a naming-rights deal — banking giant Wells Fargo isn’t renewing its contract in 2025 — could drop by 30%.

For the complex itself, the departure of one team probably won’t make much difference, said Rick Eckstein, a professor of sociology at Villanova University and the coauthor of Public Dollars, Private Stadiums: The Battle over Building Sports Stadiums.

The buildings aren’t going anywhere. The district itself holds no inherent attraction. It’s the games, shows, and concerts that draw people, and without an event taking place “there’s no reason for people to go there, unless you want to stroll around acres of parking lots.”

In the mid-1960s, Lou Scheinfeld recalled, he was helping Ed Snider find a place to build an arena for an NHL expansion team, soon to be named the Flyers. He went to City Hall to meet with Council President Paul D’Ortona.

“We don’t know where we’re going to build this thing,” Scheinfeld recalled telling him.

“I have the perfect spot,” D’Ortona answered. “In South Philadelphia. There’s a ton of land down there.”

He saw little around Broad and Pattison except a few warehouses and a drive-in movie theater.

At Broad and Hartranft Streets stood Aquarama Aquarium, “The Theater of the Sea,” a fading tourist attraction that charged patrons $1 to see exotic fish and performing dolphins. The show announcer was Gene Hart, later the legendary broadcast voice of the Flyers.

The one big, imposing structure was John F. Kennedy Stadium, recently renamed for the fallen president. It had opened in the spring of 1926 as Sesquicentennial Stadium, part of Philadelphia’s money-losing celebration of the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. It hosted everything from world heavyweight boxing to the annual Army-Navy game to the 1985 Live Aid concert.

Scheinfeld, then vice president of the hockey team and later president of the Spectrum and the Sixers, recalls wondering if fans would drive to South Philadelphia, as the Broad Street subway line had not yet been extended. Still, he thought, the site was a reasonable 25-minute drive from Center City and easily reached from New Jersey and Delaware.

In their first game at the new Spectrum on Oct. 18, 1967, the Sixers defeated the Los Angeles Lakers, 103-87. The Flyers debuted at home the next night with a 1-0 victory over the Pittsburgh Penguins.

The city’s two other teams also were on the move. In 1964, city voters had approved a bond issue worth $25 million — the equivalent of more than a quarter of a billion today — to build a new stadium that would house both the Eagles and the Phillies.

Famed sportswriter Red Smith hailed its coming: “This southern extremity of the city, a no man’s land when Sesqui Stadium [JFK] was built but now swiftly accessible by expressways and bridges will then have a modern entertainment complex as imposing as any in the country.”

In succeeding years more than a half-dozen additional pro teams would call the complex home: the soccer Atoms and Fury, the lacrosse Wings, the tennis Freedoms, the indoor football Soul, and the soccer Fever. The Philadelphia Stars of the short-lived United States Football League played at the Vet, and the Philadelphia Bell of the World Football League lasted just over a season at JFK Stadium.

“It started out by accident,” Scheinfeld said, “and then it became, ‘What a great idea!’”

Few cities have grouped all four teams together, though it’s common to put a couple of stadiums in the same place.

The Baltimore Ravens’ M&T Bank Stadium sits adjacent to Oriole Park at Camden Yards. In Seattle, it’s a five-minute walk from the Mariners’ T-Mobile Park to the Seahawks’ Lumen Field. And in Detroit, the Lions’ Ford Field stands beside the Tigers’ Comerica Park, with Little Caesars Arena, home of the Red Wings and Pistons, a half mile away.

“If you’re a city or a state or a county, if you’re going to invest in these stadiums and arenas, putting them in one area is pretty smart,” said Eckstein, the Villanova professor. “You get redundancies.”

For instance, he said, the same road can serve multiple arenas located at a sports complex. On the other hand, Eckstein noted, the Philadelphia district “is kind of a poster child for how investments in stadiums and arenas don’t generate ancillary investment.”

The four-team Philadelphia alignment has come close to ending before.

The Eagles almost left for Phoenix in 1984, and the Sixers explored a move to Camden in 1989. The Phillies examined locations in Center City before deciding to stay in South Philadelphia, opening Citizens Bank Park in 2004.

The departure of a single team “probably doesn’t make a ton of difference” to the district itself, said professor Victor Matheson, who studies the economics of sports at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass.

“The big thing about having a sports complex is it’s good for transit and infrastructure, and it’s good for parking,” he said. “But the fact that it’s not a thriving, mixed-use residential area shows you some of the disadvantages.”

Earlier this year, the Phillies and Comcast Spectacor proposed transforming some of the boundless parking lots into a $2.5 billion entertainment zone filled with eateries, hotels, apartments, and stores.

“Our commitment to this exciting project remains unwavering,” said Michael Harris, the Phillies’ vice president of marketing and new media, citing an opportunity “to create the preeminent stadium-related mixed-use development in the country, if not the world.”

Comcast Spectacor chief operating officer Phil Laws described the proposed development as “a world-class, live, work, play sports-and-entertainment destination” that would be a “a key contributor for Philadelphia’s growth.”

“Our plan remains on track, and we look forward to sharing more details in the coming months.”

Some Philadelphia sports fans are eager for that. Others, not so much.

Edward Callahan, 78, of Northeast Philadelphia, worries about a loss of tailgating space. He attended his first Eagles game in 1954 at Connie Mack Stadium and now is known for his big, Eagles-themed RV that travels to home games.

Still, he said, it’s early to get too excited about a big change that would happen only “if the plan is ever finalized — and that’s an ‘if.’”