Claudia Lauer
Associated Press
Pedestrians cross 10th Street near Philadelphia’s Chinatown on July 22. Organizers and members of Philadelphia’s Chinatown said they were surprised by the Sixers’ announcement that they wanted to build a $1.3 billion arena just a block from the community gateway Arch. (AP Photo/Matlock)
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Wei Chen hopes that people visiting Philadelphia’s Chinatown will be able to see through the community’s gate arches to see residents chatting in Mandarin on the steps leading to upstairs apartments, or to see vendors selling traditional Chinese food to passing families, Instead of the huge Philadelphia 76ers arena just a block away.
“These apartments are filled with low-income people, seniors and new immigrants,” said Chen, director of community engagement for the Asian American Federation. “You have to think about how Chinatown was created. We’re not welcome in other neighborhoods.”
Chen and other organizers and members of Chinatown said they were surprised the Philadelphia 76ers announced on July 21 a $1.3 billion proposal to build an arena just a block from the community gateway Arch. Neither the group nor the owners consulted the community before the announcement, they said.
A spokesperson for 76 Devcorp, the development company behind the arena, said in an emailed statement that the process is in the early stages – years away from “any changes” – and that the company plans to work with the community to help shape the project and ensure it “Done Right”.
“Given previous Canterlot proposals, we are sensitive to the concerns of the Chinatown community and are committed to listening to and working with the community in unprecedented ways,” the statement read.
These are promises that many in Chinatown have heard before. After decades of development—like the Pennsylvania Convention Center, which houses 200 families; Interstate 676, also known as the Vine Street Expressway, which threatens to cut off parts of the neighborhood—as well as prisons, casinos and another sports Proposals for facilities have all been repelled by the community, and residents have their own profound playbook to choose from.
Nationwide, there are fewer than 50 Chinatowns, some more vibrant and larger than others. Many are rooted in urban areas that are considered red light districts. As cities grow and change around these neighborhoods, many Chinatowns are threatened by gentrification or development.
Like everyone else, Philadelphia’s neighborhood is just recovering after losing business during the pandemic, when restaurants in Chinatown were closed for dine-in. With hate crimes against Asian Americans quadrupling since 2019, many seniors don’t want to leave the community.
“It’s an ongoing struggle for people of color and low-income communities in Chinatown and other downtowns,” said historian Rutgers University Clement Price Institute for Race, Culture, and Modern Experience John Kuo Wei Tchen said. “For Chinatowns that play an important symbolic role in the city’s cosmopolitan claims, the interests of sporting authority often trump those roles.”
The 76ers are currently home to South Philadelphia, a few miles from downtown, along with most of the city’s other professional sports teams.
Many Chinatown residents and business owners worry that if a new arena is built, affordable on-street parking will disappear, traffic will increase, and hosting traditional celebrations and festivals could become more difficult. But they are also concerned that already rising property values could soar and force many people who depend on the community to leave.
Debbie Wei is a founding member of the Asian American Federation, an organization founded in Philadelphia in the 1980s to unite people of Asian descent to build community and fight oppression. She was an organizer of protests in 2000 when city officials wanted to build a Philadelphia baseball stadium on the doorstep of Chinatown.
“If it’s not a stadium, it’s a freeway or a convention center. Seattle…Detroit…Chicago, Boston, then Washington, D.C. I have friends who grew up in Washington’s Chinatown, but it’s destroyed now,” Wei said.
The home of the Washington Capitals hockey and Wizards basketball teams moved to Washington’s Chinatown neighborhood in 1997. Economic development experts say increased foot traffic and more desirable real estate have brought dynamism, but for the Chinatown community it has meant rising rents and restaurant chains forcing them out.
According to census data, in 1990, about 66 percent of the population living in Washington’s Chinatown area identified as Asian-American. In 2010, that percentage dropped to 21 percent. As of the 2020 census, that had dropped to about 18 percent in the two districts that make up part of Chinatown.
Wei described chains like CVS and Starbucks showing signs with Chinese translations next to them, calling it a “cosmetic illusion.” Chen worries that changes to Washington’s Chinatown could happen in Philadelphia.
“If you walk into a restaurant or a business, the workers are not Asian anymore. The bosses are not Asian. And a lot of the customers are not Asian,” he said. “So where is Chinatown? It doesn’t exist anymore.”
But Chinese-speaking households have been one of the fastest-growing populations in Philadelphia, according to the census. The community recently passed the 5% threshold, which means Chinese becomes the official voting language. In the most recent census, Asian and other immigrant communities contributed to the city reversing a decades-long trend of population loss.
Helen Gym, the first Asian American woman to serve on the Philadelphia City Council and an Ordinary Member, held up two T-shirts from a previous battle with a potentially harmful development that wanted to come to Chinatown. The first says, “Chinatown doesn’t have a stadium,” and the second removes the word stadium and replaces it with “casino,” a 2008 proposal that wanted a casino near the current arena proposal.
Gym previously joined the fight against the stadium and said now as a board member she is “extremely skeptical” of the Sixers’ proposal.
“For us, this is one of the most important parts, neighborhoods and communities in the city of Philadelphia,” Gym said. “This side has always been a community that is constantly investing in itself, its employees and small businesses. In fact, this side is the one that promotes the health and well-being of the city.”
After the stadium collapsed in 2000, the community developed adjacent space north of the highway to add a public charter school, a community center, an extension to the Church of Christ in China, Cambodia’s first arts center and other cultural organizations, Gym said. .
Wei was the first principal of the folk arts and cultural treasure charter school. The building’s owner turned down offers from developers who wanted to build apartments, she said.
“People don’t understand what Chinatown means to people in this community, people across the area think it’s their home,” Wei said.
“There are very few communities left in Philadelphia, real communities. They’re not just about geography; they’re about relationships and memory. They’re a place-based core that’s not only being systematically destroyed in Philadelphia and America; all over the world,” Wei said. “Once Chinatown is gone, it’s gone. You can’t rebuild it.”
