Newly proposed Center City arena just another insult to fans
The best thing for the 76ers about their grotesque lose-to-win rebuilding process is that nothing they ever again could propose would dislodge it from the top of the bad-ideas scroll.
Darn, though, if they aren’t trying.
The other day, they announced a loose plan to move to a proposed arena in downtown Philadelphia. It’s what happens when an organization knows it can roll out even the most ridiculous ideas and still have a brainwashed segment of its customer base nodding along. Think trading up for Markelle Fultz.
Not that the city of Philadelphia has done much right in the last 50 years, but its existing stadium complex is inspired, functional, wellmaintained and everything any city should desire. Surrounded by two interstates, served by a subway, jabbed by Broad Street, at the base of the Walt Whitman Bridge to and from another state. Oh, and close to the airport, fitted with enough parking places to accommodate up to three pro-sports events in one day, just three miles from downtown yet situated on streets wide enough for game-day traffic, perfect for tailgating and designed to invoke a neighborly spirit among the town’s pro franchises.
It is the Olympic class, world champion of arena arrangement.
Since it is no longer 1972, the Sixers do deserve a basketball-first facility that doesn’t require plopping a floor atop a sheet of ice. They just don’t need it in an area literally laid out in the 1700s, the streets wide enough for horses but never for two delivery trucks and that guy who double parks. The Sixers will counter that their new arena — 76 Place, they are calling it — would be more convenient to public transportation. That invites the reminder: Anyone encouraging you to take public transportation does not take public transportation.
At the Sixers’ training center in Camden, there is some kind of rail station essentially at the back door. But how does Sixers owner Josh Harris arrive at the place? He lands a helicopter on the roof. That’s how he arrives at the place. Any chance J-Harry is found waiting at an underground PATCO station after a loss to Sacramento for a train back to a South Jersey park-and-ride after around midnight in 2031?
For a family of four choosing SEPTA to attend a downtown Sixers game, it would require driving to a station, parking (perhaps at a fee), buying eight tickets and, in the chill of February, waiting on the platform for a train that will stop 14 times on the way to the event. Afterward, there will be a heart-challenging sprint back to the downtown station and crossed fingers that the system hasn’t shut down for the night. Then there will be the return trip (with the same 14 stops) and another march to the parking lot. Then it’s back in the car to complete the journey that wasn’t supposed to involve a car in the first place.
Public transportation in Philadelphia is ideal for delivering individual riders into the downtown area for work. It is not designed to schlep families to basketball games that may not end until
10:30 at night. For that, the Sixers will stress that there are 30 parking lots within a half-mile walk of their new joint. A half-mile. Now doesn’t that sound like a nice, casual stroll for the family — presuming it’s not pouring rain — that chose to drive to a game?
And, just spitballing here, might those community-minded parking-lot operators triple their fees on game nights?
As the Sixers are couching it, the new place will be a boost to all the tap rooms and restaurants in the area. But if people are dining at a Market Street bistro, they are not eating at some other restaurant on the way to or near the existing stadium complex. The same amount
of money is going to be spent on food and drink and bartender tips either way. And book this: The Sixers will cram their new place with enough appealing food and drink options to incentivize their customers not to buy one Buffalo wing at a neighboring eatery.
Give the Sixers a standing ovation for their willingness to inject $1.3 billion into a construction project. That will create fruitful union jobs for years. But once the arena is standing, any claim that it will provide new jobs is a reach, because for every game-night employee working at the new place, there must be one not working at the old one.
If the Sixers felt they needed a
little breathing room from their noisy, Pattison Ave. hockey-baseball-football neighbors, one of their other proposed sites, the Navy Yard, would have kept the franchise in Philadelphia, taken advantage of all of the benefits of the existing complex and made it better. Instead, they will move downtown by 2031, or about when Ben Simmons figures to be healthy for an Opening Night visit.
It’s a while away, but at least it gives Josh Harris plenty of time to book a nearby helipad.