Sixers new stadium being built in south Philly now. Chinatown off the table

[FireMorey]

Breaking News:

Multiple reporters are saying the Sixers have come to terms on an agreement to keep the Sixers in south Philly and build the new arena in the current sports lot instead of Chinatown. And Mayor Parker will be announcing the plan tomorrow.

[Mik317]

hoe ass franchise stay getting bullied by Silver

[MikRay]

Hopefully, by the time the arena is ready to play in, the only one left is Jared McCain - the rest of the roster can take a hike …..

[Arsenal]

hoe ass franchise stay getting bullied by Silver

Adam Slither continues meddling in our affairs! Little Joshy continues bending over for him!! Sad!!!

[M2J]

That's just dumb.

[Tony Franciosa]

Dysfunctional in all facets... I'm slowly losing complete interest in this team.

Also, it was NOT in Chinatown.

[Skates]

Did Silver promise us special ping pong ball privileges when we more silently go tank/rebuild mode again?

[Negrodamus]

Absolute disaster. Screw this team.

[HotelVitale]

You guys are funny, spent like a year saying that people should shut up and let the Sixers ownership do what they want to do, and then when the Sixers owners do what they want to do--get leverage over Comcast to keep things simple and profitable for them, without changing things up for their most loyal fans etc--that's somehow a disaster too.

[FireMorey]

The arena plan isn’t a disaster. What’s a disaster is its set to be built in 2031 and that’s probably the next time the Sixers will be good again at the rate they’re going.

[the_process]

Wait... why are the Sixers abandoning downtown plans and instead building on the parking lot in South Philly again?

I see they're going halfsies on a building with Comcast now after insisting for years they did not want to do that. Can someone tell me what the hell happened? Does it seriously involve Silver?

[JordanMars]

seems to me like a good sign that josh harris is selling the team

[Skates]

Comcast is a huge NBA connected telecom and media rights partner. Silver and the other owners wanted everyone to play nice with each other and now both teams get a new building, splitting it halfsies. The city gets the same thing it does every time one of the teams talks about building downtown, nothing, people like me that drive in from a distance are happy because south Philly works outside the city fans and somehow Goodell was involved in this so thank Harris for buying the Commanders and likely paying back some favor there. Oh, and we night get a WNBA team. Yay-ish.

[Iverson Armband]

You guys are funny, spent like a year saying that people should shut up and let the Sixers ownership do what they want to do, and then when the Sixers owners do what they want to do--get leverage over Comcast to keep things simple and profitable for them, without changing things up for their most loyal fans etc--that's somehow a disaster too.

Sixers fans just love to bitch about Josh Harris for everything.

[Mik317]

its moreso that yet again the ownership seems to be easily swayed by Silver and his ilk.

that legit is why we are in the situation we are in lol.

[Negrodamus]

You guys are funny, spent like a year saying that people should shut up and let the Sixers ownership do what they want to do, and then when the Sixers owners do what they want to do--get leverage over Comcast to keep things simple and profitable for them, without changing things up for their most loyal fans etc--that's somehow a disaster too.

I didn’t say they should do what they want, I was simply on the side of improving the city which desperately lacks an identity in the center of it. Presented with the opportunity to revitalized the core, I was excited. Now we’ll continue to have nightmare public transportation to and from a soulless parking lot where the only option for food and drink outside of the venue is the pathetic xfinity live.

It’s not surprising the city completely screwed itself; there is an illustrious history of fumbling the bag.

[M2J]

You guys are funny, spent like a year saying that people should shut up and let the Sixers ownership do what they want to do, and then when the Sixers owners do what they want to do--get leverage over Comcast to keep things simple and profitable for them, without changing things up for their most loyal fans etc--that's somehow a disaster too.

Sixers fans just love to bitch about Josh Harris for everything.

I certainly don't recall anyone saying anything as simple as let Josh do whatever he wants.

There were people who were for the arena downtown and these that weren't. People who were for it, officials that used their capital to advocate for it and pushed it through after years of back and forth and they have the right to be annoyed.

They got New Jersey involved offering incentives, when both parties just needed to talk and stop being jackasses. Whatever Comcast offered should've strategically been offered well before this became a sure thing, just for optics sake. I still feel an arena downtown would've been a great thing for Philly, as it probably would be for any area.

If Comcast weren't the idiots I know them to be... They'd try to jump in there and split the costs of the downtown arena, because getting that approved is a major deal.

If the area around that parking lot in South Philly was going to ever be developed. People would have done it already. There's no draw in that area except for the games or concerts so no other businesses can survive except for times where there's games or concerts

[the_process]

This was an opportunity to abandon the parking lot wasteland and build something with real character.

They even got the city to sign off on it, which is nigh impossible.

And seriously why are we doing Comcast favors? F*** them for too many reasons to count. It's time for Josh to sell the team. New owner fire everyone and trade almost everyone and start over.

Better yet, let the team move to Seattle and get an expansion franchise.

[Negrodamus]

The happiest people on Reddit/twitter appear to be the ones who thoroughly enjoy the uniqueness of having a sports complex that has all 4 teams. I’ve never heard the rationale behind that particularly since it’s extremely rare (and likely massively taxing) to attend more than one event in the giant blight we call the sports complex. If we build a 300 foot turd emoji down there, that too would be unique but have no real utility.

All of this coupled with those people are on the side of Roger Goodell, Adam Silver, and the Lurie really show that they’re not interested in what’s good for the city or the Sixers, but rather what’s good for the Eagles ownership and Comcast.

The most ironic part in all of this is Chinatown gets absolutely nothing out of this and continues the slow death. I’m sure the leaders of that movement are silently **** their pants.

[HotelVitale]

You guys are funny, spent like a year saying that people should shut up and let the Sixers ownership do what they want to do, and then when the Sixers owners do what they want to do--get leverage over Comcast to keep things simple and profitable for them, without changing things up for their most loyal fans etc--that's somehow a disaster too.

I didn’t say they should do what they want, I was simply on the side of improving the city which desperately lacks an identity in the center of it. Presented with the opportunity to revitalized the core, I was excited. Now we’ll continue to have nightmare public transportation to and from a soulless parking lot where the only option for food and drink outside of the venue is the pathetic xfinity live.

It’s not surprising the city completely screwed itself; there is an illustrious history of fumbling the bag.

Guess there’s no need to go back over everything now that it’s done, but I respect your bball talk and honestly didn’t really get this POV, seems like a lot or rhetoric and half truths. I’ve lived in many cities and the idea that 11th and market is in some death spiral or needs major ‘revitalizing’ always seems like a strange fiction or false panic. I go by there almost everyday and it’s always buzzing, it’s not fancy and exclusive but every city in the country would be thrilled to have a couple blocks of the city with historic commercial buildings, transit infrastructure, and Reading terminal and Chinatown. It’s a great area that feels like a real center of the city (and not just a tourist attraction) and I actually plan my commute route in order to spend some time in it—and it seems like you were excited to have the stadium there precisely for that reason too. So that area isn’t screwed and doesn’t desperately need the stadium to get by—plus the constant development everywhere around there suggests there’s plenty of other options.

I do understand that it will be difficult to put more large retail/commercial stuff there to fill in things like the fashion district but why would an arena that’s open maybe 60 nights per year and like 5 days be the fix that ‘revitalizes’ the area? The real dead zone of center city is around the convention center exactly because it’s a giant barn that’s only in use sometimes and otherwise sits empty. That’s what this stadium would mostly be (and then the location would be overwhelmed with traffic on game nights and disrupt the area). As for any economic vitality the construction would bring, same exact jobs will be there for the south Philly new arena so that’s a wash. And it won’t have negative impacts on the currently thriving parts of CC that the Sixers studies showed the CC arena would have.

I also don’t get what you mean by the ‘transit nightmare’ of the current stadiums. I live right on the El so the CC arena would’ve been amazingly convenient for me (literally maybe 12 minutes door to door) but the current one is also pretty convenient. Never wait more than about 3-5 minutes for the sub on the way to games and it’s a super quick ride, and there’s always a train waiting after the game too. It’s not as convenient for say Patco or bucks cty rail riders as a cc spot but it’s better than almost every other city has and i take it to every single game I go to. Dont think it makes any sense to call that a problem that desperately needs fixing.

Your point about the current stadiums having trash food/entertainment options? Sure that’s a thing. And I can understand people thinking it would’ve been fun to go to Chinatown and eat and then stroll over to a game. I think so too. But that’s a far far different argument than the arena being a major boon to the city or solving its problems etc, I always thought that was a poorly supported argument people ran to because they had personal aesthetic reasons for wanting the CC arena, not economic or city planning ones.