Early Takeaways From a First Look at the 388-Page Sixers Arena Study

The City of Philadelphia released the Sixers arena study on Monday night, many months late, but thankfully published while we’re still alive.

It is 388 pages spread out over four different documents, analyzing community impact, design, economics, and traffic.

It is a total beast. Impossible to break down fully without a few days and several sets of eyeballs, but I spent a couple of hours on Monday night skimming each of the documents and put together an initial set of CliffsNotes for you.

community impact

At the top of this section is a memo written from Martine DeCamp, who is the Interim Executive Director of the Philadelphia City Planning Commission, addressed to John Mondlak of the Department of Planning and Development. Her correspondence contains some bullet points that I’m going to reference in breaking down the report:

• The community impact is mostly focused on Chinatown. They only collected limited data for Washington Square West. “The City requested a focus on Chinatown.”
• Market East: “According to the study, impacts on Market East are inconclusive – with or without 76 Place, the area will continue to face significant challenges to development and vibrancy. Development of the Arena, however, provides the opportunity with additional planning and intervention to reinvigorate the Market East retail corridor if transportation and safety challenges can be met.”
• Chinatown: “Since Chinatown is a unique and interconnected system, the consultant study identified that significant impact to small businesses or transportation could affect the whole community. These impacts may trigger a cascade of indirect impacts throughout the system, which could potentially result in the loss of Chinatown’s core identity and regional significance.”
• They believe that 1 out of 5 Chinatown small businesses will experience positive benefit from the arena. They also say “Half of the small businesses in Chinatown are not positioned to benefit from the Arena and may experience negative impacts.”
• This is a key takeaway: “Although the project will not lead to direct housing displacement, there is evidence for increased indirect displacement of small businesses and low- and fixed- income individuals through gentrification and loss of cultural identity in Chinatown if the 76 Place were built.”
• It’s noted several times over that Market East is more or less shite and needs help.

design

I’m doing some sourcing from DeCamp’s notes again for this section.

• A new arena located at 10th and Market Streets is “appropriate for Center City Philadelphia… The Review Team believes that arenas benefit urban downtowns by attracting crowds on event days and adding to the vitality of the city setting.”
• They like the raised event floor, transparency in building facades, and widened sidewalks.
• Their biggest concern is “lack of a true civic and public open space on or adjacent to the site.” They note that most NBA and NHL downtown arenas have some sort of public gathering spot.
• They want more information on arena floor plan to maximize “active uses.”
• They also want more details about the side of the building butting up against Chinatown to “ better understand the relationship of the arena design
• to the adjacent businesses on both 10th and 11th Streets.“
• They want to further explore the plaza idea and “refinement and updates” to the planned skybridge connecting to the remaining portion of the mall.

economic

• This one has a TON of information to look over. One of the more significant takeaways from Conventions, Sports & Leisure International is that “The Philadelphia CBSA, from which the majority of Arena attendees is anticipated to originate, has a variety of positive market indicators, including robust market size and high-income household base, that place it among other markets that support multiple professional arenas and demonstrate its ability to absorb new events. The CBSA has some challenges, including a higher share of low-income residents, but overall demographics are within range of other multi-arena markets.“
• Philadelphia, “with the presence of a second major league arena, could host 53 ANNUAL INCREMENTAL TICKETED EVENTS and generate approximately 613,000 ATTENDEES “
• Negative impact for the Wells Fargo Center, obviously, but study thinks both arenas would be financially viable.
• They think a new arena could bring 35 new concerts to the market, along with three “other sports/dirt shows” and 15 “family shows,” which would include stuff like Cirque Du Soleil, Jurassic World Live Tour, Monster Jam, and the Circus.
• $390 million is the estimation in new tax revenue for the city, state, and Philly school district.

traffic

There’s a memo here from Michael Carroll of the Office of Transportation and Infrastructure Systems written to city Managing Director Adam Thiel.

• “40% (public) transit use is attainable but not a foregone conclusion“
• They believe each event ticket should come with a free ride on SEPTA or PATCO in order to encourage mass transit use.
• They do NOT encourage discounted parking with tickets.
• “If no more than 40% of attendees drive, traffic operations remain manageable. However, even marginal increases in auto trips above that threshold would result in gridlock at critical intersections”
• “If the percentage of auto trips is higher than proposed, the Sixers should be held responsible for providing additional mitigation and strategies to increase non-auto trips to the proposed level.”
• They DO believe there is enough garage parking to handle the arena parking demand.
• “while the results can’t be interpreted out of context, they can support comparisons between No Build and Build scenarios to determine the effect of the arena. Such comparison shows a 4% to 12% increase in density, the standard HCS measure of congestion. This level of increase in congestion is considered a minor impact on overall traffic operations.”

early summary

The main negative in the report is the Chinatown consideration, and that’s a detailed, 140-page document that will require much more analysis. There’s concern about indirect displacement of businesses and residents which will heavily impact a “unique and interconnected system.” The biggest Sixers win, I think, is the study supporting the viability of two arenas. I’ll have to go through the data further and see if we can come up with some kind of estimate on the number of dark nights in the building, but no doubt HBSE and David Adelman are very happy with those results. As far as traffic, those conclusions seem neutral. The consultants believe that as long as a certain threshold of public transit is used (which is a big if), that the area can handle the amount of cars coming in for game and event nights. And on the economic front, they’re predicting close to $400 million in net new tax revenue for PA and Philly over the course of construction and 30 years of operation.

We’ll dive more into this on Tuesday, but that’s your CliffsNotes for now. The main focus moving forward I think is the Chinatown angle, and then further examining the concert pages and traffic study. The design review is a bunch of esoteric, architectural stuff, but the more surface-level and understandable stuff deserves a 2nd, 3rd, and 4th look.

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