Point man for Sixers’ arena plan: ‘The city’s not going to fix itself’

Sometimes, David Adelman, who wants to build a downtown arena for the 76ers, walks west on Market Street from Front Street. “You get to Fifth Street, even Sixth, it’s great,” he said. “Day or night, this is great. You get to Seventh and Eighth, and you’re like, ‘I’m someplace else.’”

Sometimes, he walks east on Market from City Hall. “You’re like, ‘This is so cool.’ Cool neon signage. You feel like you’re in a modern city: high rises, supermarkets. Bingo, next block, you’re like, ‘Oh, [expletive], where am I?’”

For two months now, since they announced their intention to construct a $1.3 billion arena at 10th and Market, the site that was the Gallery, the Sixers have pushed their plan as an imperative for the team to keep pace in the NBA’s arms race and as an economic boon for the region. But days before a 14-year-old boy was fatally shot near Roxborough High School, the latest deadly episode in what seems an unstoppable succession of them in the city, Adelman — the developer partnering with Sixers managing partners Josh Harris and David Blitzer on the project; a close friend of Fanatics CEO Michael Rubin, who recently sold his minority shares in the franchise — framed the campaign in even starker and graver terms.

In his view, Philadelphia and its institutions need a renaissance, one that the city’s political leaders cannot and will not deliver, and building the arena, reshaping the Fashion District, and filling what he called the “doughnut hole,” those decaying and benumbed Center City blocks, are essential to that urban rebirth.

“The city’s not going to fix itself because it doesn’t have the money to fix itself, OK?” Adelman, who is 50, said last week during an interview at the Sixers’ headquarters in Camden. “People can talk about leadership, whether it’s the mayor or City Council or them working together. Successful administrations knew how to do business together. We don’t have that cooperation between Council and the mayor that we used to. So I don’t think the city is going to magically lead us out to solve these issues.

“We’re the poorest big city in the country. Our education system is not great. Our schools have a billion dollars of deferred maintenance. And we have a public-safety issue. That’s a problem.

“That leads me to the private sector. … I’ve learned that if I want to do something, I’m not going to rely on anyone.”

It’s a marvelous narrative and image: the man who makes a difference, who changes everything, through the sheer power of his will and want-to. Adelman, a Penn Valley native, described visiting the Fashion District in 2020 with city power broker Ronald Rubin, who years earlier had purchased and developed the Gallery.

“I felt like I had to pay him the respect,” Adelman said. “I told him, ‘Here’s what I’m thinking.’ He said, ‘This is right.’ I get the chills because Ronnie died six months later.”

The Sixers’ lease at the Wells Fargo Center with Comcast expires in 2031, and an arena under their control would open a fresh revenue stream for them, and they and Adelman have pledged that they don’t need and won’t use local funds for construction.

Dig a level deeper, of course, and the complications and challenges start to surface. The Sixers say they aren’t soliciting public financing, for instance, but if someone is extending a hand with an offer to help, they’re happy to accept it.

“If there are public dollars that we’re eligible for that would help us enhance it,” said David Gould, the Sixers’ chief diversity and impact officer, “of course we’re going to be open to it — from the state and federal level, not from the city level. But it’s not like we need that in order for this project to move forward.”

Already, though, there has been hedging, moving of the goalposts. The Sixers have acknowledged that they would inherit a 20-year property tax break on the land upon which they would build the arena and that the site would spill over into the Greyhound bus terminal across Filbert Street.

More, repurposing the mall into an arena and a new shopping/entertainment district would necessitate pouring public funds into an expansion and refurbishing of SEPTA’s subway and regional-rail lines and stations. You can argue that such a project would be worthwhile or that the money, technically, wouldn’t go directly toward the arena’s construction, but there’s no dispute about who would have to open their wallets and turn out their pockets to pay for it.

Such details and obstacles seem at times incidental to Adelman. “SEPTA has billions of dollars they received from COVID” relief, he said. “They know they have an image problem right now. People aren’t riding the regional rail because they’re not coming to work. How do they bring people back? This project is the impetus for them to bring back SEPTA.”

The suggestion that South Philadelphia’s sports complex is more accessible to fans and customers from Philadelphia’s suburbs and surrounding towns by being closer to I-95 and the Schuylkill Expressway — that the region’s commuter culture is car-based and, unlike New York and northern New Jersey, not train-based — is no object to him. The Sixers, he said, will utilize geofencing to route their season-ticket holders to available parking through their smartphones.

In fact, he said, the spots and garages around the proposed site can accommodate the 3,500 cars at the Wells Fargo Center for a Sixers game … except that 6,500 cars usually park there for the Sixers, the Flyers, or a concert, according to data provided by the center. A team spokesperson contacted me Friday to correct Adelman, acknowledging that more than 3,500 cars park at the center for an average Sixers game. But, the spokesperson said, based on the franchise’s research and modeling, the new arena site would need just 3,500 parking spaces.

» READ MORE: How the Sixers' proposed new arena vaults them into the NBA arms race

Even the residents and business owners of Chinatown and other nearby neighborhoods should be reassured, Adelman and Gould said. No one will be displaced. The Sixers are merely taking “one big box,” as Gould put it, and replacing it with a better one.

“I don’t see a place where we don’t wind up with this,” Adelman said, “only because we are so thoughtful in our engagement with the community right now. We are not bulldozing this. We are coming in with a serious community-benefits agreement: safety, security, affordable housing. All the things that we are going to provide that are going to make a difference will help people realize this is a real opportunity. Again, the city is not going to solve those problems.

“What we are up against,” he added, “is a small, vocal minority with a really loud voice.”

And what if that voice grows louder? What if the next mayor or mayors don’t support the plan? What if City Council doesn’t share this vision? What if the community doesn’t trust them? What if the city says no?

“Well, what we’re not going to do is be in the Wells Fargo Center past 2031,” he said. “We’ve been very transparent with Comcast about it. This is not shocking news. Did I look at a lot of sites before this one? Yes. I think this is the best site in the country, based on what it is.”

Did the other sites include possibilities in New Jersey?

“No,” he said. “This is a Philadelphia team. It is not moving.”

» READ MORE: If the Sixers want to build a downtown arena, they and the city have to answer some questions first

He couldn’t have been clearer. So from now until ground is broken, if it ever is, David Adelman and the Sixers are on notice. They are on the record making these hard and heady promises to the people of the city Adelman says he wants to save. Like anyone charged with shaping so much of Philadelphia’s future, they should be held to those promises every step of the way.