City Council’s hearings on the proposed Sixers arena continue on, with hours of testimony and public comment in the books this week. There are three more hearings before the council officially charts a path forward: one next Tuesday, and two on Monday and Tuesday the week after that.
Billy Penn sat in on Thursday evening’s occasionally-heated public comment session, where nearly every speaker was opposed to the arena. We recorded some highlights from the night.
Perspective from the suburbs
One of the handful of testifiers in favor of the arena was Ken Avalon, a resident of the suburbs outside Philadelphia.
“I’ve been working in the city forever. I pay a lot of taxes here, I pay a lot of money here, I spend a lot of time in town. And we love coming to town, we love going to sporting events,” Avalon said.
Avalon explained that it takes him an hour to get to games in South Philly via SEPTA, while that commute would be cut down to just 25 minutes if the arena was built at Jefferson Station — which would make him more likely to attend evening games.
“If there’s a sporting event in town, if there’s a concert in town, us from the suburbs, it’s much more convenient for us to come into town,” he said. “I hear a lot of talk about money, obviously, there’s money throughout all of this. There’s 2 million people who live in the suburbs. There’s a lot of suburban dollars out there.”
Old and young neighborhood voices
Multiple Chinatown residents and frequent visitors to the neighborhood said their piece on Thursday night. One man, who introduced himself as Sam Sam, was among them. A refugee from Vietnam, he runs Little Saigon Cafe in Chinatown.
“I escaped my country in 1979, came to this country. Why this country? Because I thought it was a democratic country,” Sam said. “And now, why Chinatown’s so important to me? It’s my home is here. I never had home since I was 10 years old.”
“Now you try to build an arena in my town here which will destroy our town, our community,” he continued. “Chinatown can’t be replaced. Can never be replaced. The building can make money somewhere else, not in Chinatown.”
Sam also said that he saw someone die in front of him the previous day from a car accident on Spring Street. He explained that he’s concerned about safety in the neighborhood, and wishes that more attention would be directed towards that.
“Why do we spend all the time here to debate for the billionaires? Why don’t we all spend time to attend to the community, the neighborhood, for safety and living, good living?”
Kenny Chiu, a younger resident of the neighborhood now attending the University of Pennsylvania, also took to the mic. He spoke about his upbringing in Chinatown, mentioning the many development projects that have already altered the face of the neighborhood.
“My mom pushed hot dim sum carts at Ocean Harbor Restaurant. My dad worked construction in Chinatown with other Chinese immigrants. And my grandmother worked at the Convention Center and the Eagles games as an Aramark employee,” Chiu said. “I grew up in Hing Wah Yuen, a senior affordable housing complex built in Philadelphia, Chinatown, right next to the Vine Street Expressway that cleared several blocks of Chinatown’s businesses and housing. Before Hing Wah Yuen was built, the Federal Bureau of Prisons proposed a 750-bed detention center in the footprint of what would become the affordable housing complex that I grew up in.”
Chiu said he and other neighborhood youth were unconvinced that their elected officials had their best interests in mind.
“For years, Chinatown’s youth have listened to paternalistic representatives tell us what is best for our community. It has not fazed us from marching in the streets, speaking up at town halls, or calling our City Council members to oppose the arena,” Chiu said.
“Our aunties, uncles, grandmothers, grandpas, and our children, we never ask for anything. We keep our heads down, we work hard, hoping to pass down our earnings and our community of Chinatown to the next generation. We’ve taken one for the team of Philadelphia. We’ve actually taken many,” the student said, citing the Vine Street Expressway and Convention Center projects. “It’s time for Team Philadelphia to stand up for Chinatown.”
And younger still…
Lily Cavanagh, a third grade teacher at Chinatown’s FACTS charter school, said she asked her students if they wanted to send messages to City Council. She came to the mic with a stack of their letters, written on index cards, to read aloud.
“Even though I cannot vote, Chinatown is my home. And you are not going to take it away from me because a good mayor listens to the citizens, big or small. I am small, but I can say ‘no arena in the heart of our city,’ ” Cavanagh read.
“No arena in Chinatown. Please. This is not what we need. We need homes and food. Please. I don’t want the arena because Chinatown means a lot to me. My grandma and grandpa live in Chinatown, so I don’t want them to move away. And one more last thing: when it is hot, I love to go to Mr. Wish and get a nice cold drink,” one letter read, eliciting “aws” and applause from the chamber.
“People will be sad because Chinatown is the only place that feels like home and it keeps getting smaller,” one letter read. “People need their beauty sleep and it will be loud,” another one pointed out.
The stack of letters was passed around after Cavanagh finished reading the highlights; Councilmember Mark Squilla looked through the index cards as other speakers followed.
Medical concerns
Dr. Bill King, a pediatrician and outspoken opponent of the arena, came to speak in his white coat.
“I’ve taken care of all the Black babies in West Philadelphia,” King said when introducing himself. “If I haven’t taken care of you, that means you haven’t come to West Philadelphia.”
“Order of information,” Council President Kenyatta Johnson said. “Councilmember Jamie Gauthier, is this your pediatrician?”
“My kids are grown men,” the West Philly rep responded amid laughter from the crowd.
King described the layout of the three trauma centers in Philadelphia, saying that every trauma patient north of Girard Avenue is brought to Temple’s hospital, everyone west of the Schuylkill is brought to Penn Presbyterian, and the remainder of patients are all brought to Jefferson Hospital.
He said the arena’s potential to create gridlocked traffic near Jefferson is “probably the plan of a supervillain.”
“What we don’t need is a Sixers game to let out if we’re trying to go to Jefferson because that will take those five minutes [of] lights and sirens and turn them into 25 minutes,” King said. “It is exhausting when you try to do CPR for more than 5 minutes in the back of an ambulance. You can do it in the hospital; in the ambulance, after five minutes, we are fried. If you make it 25, people die.”
Criticism for union members
Katy DiSanto, who works at an arts institution in Chinatown, had fighting words for building trades union members supporting the arena — who had a larger presence in public comments in previous hearings that week.
“A lot of the remarks that I had prepared to say today were actually meant to be heard by the peanut gallery of building people who were here yesterday, and the fact that they are not here, I guess, shows how weak their dog is in this fight,” she said, to cheers from arena opponents in the crowd.
With the disclaimer that she was pro-union and believes that “the path to prosperity is through blue-collar jobs,” DiSanto criticized union members’ argument that the arena should move forward because it would provide jobs.
“Can you look me in my face today and tell me it’s worth bulldozing and choking out my job and the jobs of my neighbors, jobs that don’t just support families, but also support the irreplaceable fabric of our shared culture and heritage, just to, what, give a few temporary jobs to other people, jobs that can be done somewhere else? You would steal from Peter to pay Paul?” she asked.
A bit of chastising followed DiSanto’s hearing, with a city official reminding speakers to “respect the other public commenters who have come here.”
Joseph Pietty, a retired postal worker and member of the NALC union, spoke later. He said he was a die-hard labor supporter and had joined picket lines with construction unions throughout his life.
“But I cannot support the construction unions this time,” Pietty said. “Solidarity is not limited to only those beside you on the job. Solidarity means a common struggle of all workers against the rich and the powerful. When the majority of workers in Chinatown oppose a project that threatens their community, worker solidarity requires the construction trades to question the 76ers project.”
