On Sep. 7, over 3,000 protesters gathered on the north side of Philadelphia’s pouring rain to protest the proposed 76 Place arena in Chinatown. Their numbers were on par with a similar demonstration last June, says Kaia Chau, one of the founders of Students for the Preservation of Chinatown (SPOC), citing the continued opposition to the arena from groups around the Philly area. Included in the crowd were many students from Swarthmore, Haverford College, and Bryn Mawr College, where Chau graduated from last year.
“The protest was incredible! The streets around City Hall were completely packed; my friends and I could barely see the speakers,” said June Shin ’25, “Clearly, a lot of people cared about preserving Chinatown. So many speakers from all across the city came in solidarity to show support for the movement and to demand answers from Mayor [Cherelle] Parker and the billionaires still invested in this gentrification project.”
At the protest were many different groups and organizations who all brought a different angle to resistance to the proposed arena. Clergymen and pastors from POWER Interfaith, representatives from Philly Thrive, and members of the Apache Nation on their way to Washington, D.C., were just some of the groups who joined the Save Chinatown coalition on that Saturday.
The Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corporation, a longstanding nonprofit in support of Chinatown’s preservation, voiced their opposition to the arena in early 2023, saying it “deeply imperils the future of Chinatown.” They cited fears of dislocation, congestion, and the loss of character, and referenced polls showing that more than 90% of residents and local businesses opposed it.
The march came shortly after the City of Philadelphia released the long-anticipated impact studies that it had commissioned and the 76ers Development Corporation had funded. While the findings were mixed, the impact studies did affirm many of the fears that Chinatown activists had raised in opposition, including that the development “could potentially result in the loss of Chinatown’s core identity and regional significance.”
Swarthmore Assistant Professor of History Vivian Truong, who has spent much of her career researching Chinatowns like Philadelphia’s, said, “The arena threatens to make the surrounding area less of a living community and more of a theme park, where thousands of sports fans and concert-goers would descend during game days and shows and leave [the arena] empty for most of the year.”
Sony Devabhaktuni, Swarthmore assistant professor of art, architect, and writer, researches “how the street, as a material overlay of infrastructural systems, plays a role in civic life.”
“In what remains of Chinatown, the streets have a quality that allows for everyday exchange that I think is pretty remarkable and unlike almost any other part of Philadelphia,” Devabhaktuni said.
This quality, according to Devabhaktuni, is threatened by the stadium.
“Chinatown has an everyday quality due to the density of storefronts, community services and residential units that are home to recent and not so recent immigrants,” he said. “The stadium threatens that everyday-ness by transforming the surrounding area into a zone that services people coming and going to games. Game day visitors will have their own needs and priorities which will reorient the spatial economics of the neighborhood.”
Another concern of the activists is the effects of the arena on housing and real estate in Chinatown. Chau feels that this is a part of the conversation where her perspective as a student is relevant. Key players of 76DevCo, the development company set to build the arena, also lead or own university student housing companies, which Chau thinks demonstrates their character as developers.
“As college students, we all have a very personal connection [to this] because of how the developers of 76DevCo have made their money,” Chau said, citing practices of skyrocketing rents that exploit students while also changing working-class neighborhoods near universities.
Truong also pointed to the past remaking of Race Street into the Benjamin Franklin Bridge and the building of the Vine Street Expressway as necessary historical context for the current arena proposal. The latter demolished around a quarter of the neighborhood’s housing, even after some concessions were made to activists.
“The arena is just the latest project in a long history of a neighborhood facing displacement,” Truong said.
The impact studies that the 76ers commissioned seem to back up these fears, finding, “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.”
While large businesses would see economic growth, according to the report, because only 1/4 of small businesses in Chinatown own their properties, all the others would be vulnerable to rent increases that could come from the arena.
Despite these concerns, the developers seem pleased with the findings, referencing the reports’ statement that the arena would generate around $1.9 billion in direct spending, 710 jobs, and $390 million in tax revenue over 30 years of operation. Additionally, the studies did report that the 76ers’ goal of 40% of attendees arriving via public transport is attainable.
The activists say even these findings are more complicated than they seem. For one, the $390 million in tax revenue is far less than the 76ers’ original estimate of $1.5 billion. Chau is skeptical of the tax agreement that the arena rests upon. “These are billionaires who are claiming that this is going to be privately funded, but I don’t actually think it’s going to be privately funded,” she said, citing the plan to have the 76ers give the land under the arena to the city and then lease it back. This would allow it to avoid paying real estate taxes and instead give “payments in lieu of taxes,” or PILOTS, and is the arrangement currently used by the major league sports arenas in South Philadelphia.
J. C. Bradbury, an economist who studies arena finance at Kennesaw State University, estimates that this would cause a reduction of between $1.6 and 6 million in what the 76ers would pay the city, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
“There are just so many sectors of the city that are being disinvested in, and particularly institutions that should be available to youth are being disinvested in,” Chau said. “At the same time, the city is prioritizing this billion-dollar arena.”
Other concerns note that the studies find that traffic would only be manageable if the 40% public transportation goal was met. Additionally, while the $340 million is an estimate of direct city revenue, an external analysis by University of Washington Real Estate Professor Arthur Acolin found that the arena could cost the city ~$900 million because of losses in other sectors.
However, just a week and a half after the march, Philadelphia’s Mayor Parker announced on X that she had made the final decision to support a legislative package to approve the arena. “This is an historic agreement. It is the best financial deal ever entered into by a Philadelphia mayor for a local sports arena. And I wholeheartedly believe it is the right deal for the people of Philadelphia,” she said. She continued, “To the People of Chinatown, please know that I hear you. We have the best Chinatown in the United States, and I am committed to working together to support it.” This article was written before the Parker Administration had planned to reveal the details of its agreement with developers on Sep. 25.
The mayor’s announcement kicks off the city government’s process for approving the arena and is a huge setback for the activists opposed to it. Truong said the announcement didn’t surprise her but was still disappointing given the results of the impact studies.
Shin, Chau, Truong, and Devabhaktuni all discussed the connections they felt existed between their roles at Swarthmore and Bryn Mawr and the fight against the arena.
Shin was first introduced to the movement thanks to a talk Truong held with the movement leaders. From there, he took her Asian American History course and then attended a movement meeting during his summer in Philadelphia.
“A couple Swat students attended with me, and we helped design some of the banners that were going to be used for the September rally,” Shin said. “All of us Swat students agreed to spread the word about the September rally as soon as the school year started. I printed a few fliers and shared the rally information in notable activist group chats on campus, but otherwise I’ve just been on the sidelines cheering on this incredible cause that the people of Chinatown have been fighting for.”
Although Chau enjoyed her time at Bryn Mawr, she worried that the TriCo’s location in the suburbs created a separation people felt from the city and its happenings. She also said that conversations at liberal arts colleges about movements do not always translate to action in the communities.
“I think part of that has to do with the distance, but I think it also has to do with being in this intellectual bubble where we’re familiar with how these systems work, so we feel that we don’t really have to do any work beyond that,” Chau said.
Chau also knows that one of the first places in Philadelphia that students in the TriCo explore is Chinatown, given its location right next to Jefferson Station at the end of the train lines. She wants people to realize that the restaurants, stores, and bubble tea shops they love to go to with friends may not exist if the arena is built.
“Also, these restaurants and businesses are people’s livelihoods, and they’re being threatened because of this arena,” Chau said. ”Even though we might not be directly connected, we still have the privilege of having this amazing education and learning how these systems work. One of the responsibilities that come with this knowledge is to actually do something with it,” she said.
From the faculty side, Truong researches Chinatowns in the context of urban gentrification, police violence, and Asian-American social movements. She has also taught classes on Chinatowns, brought topics of Chinatown activism to campus, and has served as a connection from Swarthmore to some of the community organizations that are involved in this work in Chinatown.
Referencing Chau and her co-founder, Taryn Flaherty, a UPenn student, Truong reflected, “The active role of students and youth at the forefront of the movement for Philadelphia’s Chinatown shows how the impact of this arena will be felt for generations.”
Devabhaktuni has taught Swarthmore classes about urban infrastructural history and policy, including Chinatown’s infrastructure. In the spring, he taught a class on the construction of the Vine Street Expressway through Chinatown and its effects on local streetscapes, as well as the Biden Administration-funded project to build a cap over the highway and connect North and South Chinatown.
SPOC recently received a grant that allowed it to refocus on founding and running the Ginger Arts Center in North Chinatown. This center is part of a hope to “nourish and sustain” Chinatown while also fighting the arena’s development.
And, despite the Mayor’s announcement, Chau still feels that hope. “Philly’s Chinatown is really unique in that we have been able to pass down traditions of resistance and organizing throughout generations, and have also been fortunate enough to win a lot of these fights.”
“Even though it sucks having to keep going through the same fight over and over again, I think a sort of cool thing that happens is that every time Chinatown’s resistance gets started, our community gets stronger,” Chau reflected. “We have this opportunity to pass down this tradition of organizing.”
