Mayor Cherelle Parker held a 76 Place town hall meeting on Wednesday night at the Pennsylvania Convention Center. How constructive it was is anyone’s guess.
Shown is the Fashion District shopping center and the proposed location of a new Philadelphia 76ers NBA basketball arena adjacent to the Chinatown neighborhood of Philadelphia, Friday, July 22, 2022. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
By Denise Clay-Murray
For much of last week, the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Center City seemed to be the center of events with questionable constructiveness.
On Tuesday night, the Convention Center hosted media from around the world and surrogates from both sides of the aisle during the debate between former President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and current Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris. I’m still trying to figure out why the spin room was so far away from the National Constitution Center where the actual debate was held, but ours is not to wonder why, I guess.
But on Wednesday night, Mayor Cherelle Parker held a town hall meeting to hear from all sides on a topic that is going to take up as much of Philadelphia’s bandwidth as the presidential election.
That topic? The proposed $1.55 million stadium for Your Philadelphia 76ers!
(I can’t help it. I’m an old school Sixers fan.)
About 800 people, most of them from the Save Chinatown Coalition, took up three meeting rooms in the Pennsylvania Convention Center and lasted more than three hours, unless you don’t count the impromptu salute to the late Frankie Beverly.
(I’d be willing to bet that most of the folks in the room were asking themselves ‘Who is Frankie Beverly?’)
Mayor Parker broke down a lot of things that will go into her reasoning before she allowed the stakeholders to speak. While the project will exist in just one place, the stadium and whether or not it happens will have an impact on the entire city.
She’ll be basing her support for the project on what’s best for the city, Parker said.
She also let them know that she was not going to tolerate any foolishness.
“The wrong way to attempt to influence me, is to attempt to bully me,” she said. “This meeting will be done decently and in order.”
Those who attended the meeting were almost as interesting as those who didn’t. For example, I didn’t see anyone from 76 Corps. I found that kind of weird. It’s your project. I would think you’d want to be there.
Maybe they weren’t there because they knew that the meeting was going to start off with a bunch of people who made their opposition to the project clear. Various members of the Save Chinatown Coalition, wearing red and white No Arena In Chinatown t-shirts came to the microphones.
This was just the latest project that threatened the neighborhood, said Harry Leong, who has spent his life in Chinatown. While he appreciates the mayor’s need to listen to everyone, there’s only one right answer, he said.
“I wonder if Mayor Parker is aware that Chinatown has been threatened by predatory projects for more than 50 years,” he said. “After all this history of fighting for our community, we would have hoped for support from the city. This project will destroy our community. If you allow this arena to be built, you are telling us all that it is OK to watch our community die.”
Meanwhile, groups of union workers in support of the project also made their voices heard, saying that the nation’s poorest big city needs more investment, not less.
While protecting Chinatown is important and needs to happen, so does the economic development that this project will attract, said Ryan Boyer, president of the Building and Construction Trades Council. This section of Market Street can’t go on like this, he said.
But while we’ve heard a lot from them, I was not necessarily interested in the point of view of the unions — Boyer is the president of the Building Trades. Do you really expect him to oppose work for his members? — but the view of the African American Chamber of Commerce.
Representing the AACC was the Rev. J. Henry Buck Jr., pastor of Germantown’s Grace Baptist Church. As part of his remarks, he mentioned the problems that the Black community in Germantown has sometimes had with the Asian merchants that have businesses there, especially in the area of hiring.
He also said that Philadelphia needs the stadium.
“The African American Chamber of Commerce supports the efforts of 76 Place,” he said. “Now is the time for Philadelphia to take a stand and become a world-class city.”
(I don’t know how a city that is hosting the World Cup, the MLB All-Star Game, and the 250th anniversary of America itself over the next couple of years isn’t already world-class, but maybe I’m confused.)
That said, Buck’s words encapsulate what I’m keeping my eye on in terms of this project. Considering the way that the Sixers are dividing communities of color in this case, fixing that divide is going to require a discussion between the Asian and Black communities that is a long time coming.
Hopefully, the discussion will be constructive.
Here’s an FYI: City Council won’t be meeting this Thursday due to the desire of Councilmembers to attend the funeral of Philadelphia Police Officer Jamie Roman. On June 22, Roman was shot in the neck while performing a routine traffic stop. He died of his injuries on Tuesday.
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