Image: 76 Place at Market East CDR Resubmission Via Phila.gov
Philadelphia is experiencing an infrastructure boom because of an overall need for improvement and rising prices in other cities like New York City and Washington D.C. . Many neighborhoods around Philadelphia are filled with construction, whether it’s in University City, downtown or areas around Broad Street and Columbus Boulevard. With all this great development, however, comes a really big issue: displacement. Projects like the new Sixers arena and even a potential Temple stadium right in North Philadelphia put a huge bullseye on why development comes with inevitable displacement.
Let’s first look at the proposed Temple arena. Back in 2018, Temple University felt they were due their own stadium. The idea had been in the works since 2016 and was part of a larger plan to bring more new development to Temple. Currently, the Temple Owls play at Lincoln Financial Field, where the Philadelphia Eagles play; they lease it out, which comes with its own costs. For the stadium on campus to be an actual goal, the Board of Trustees had a few stipulations. Some of them were that “the university collaborates with community members and government officials to address local residents’ concerns, such as parking, trash, and noise.” Also, “the total budget for the football stadium [must] not exceed $130 million…[and] the proposed stadium [must have] a capacity of approximately 35,000 seats — about half the size of Lincoln Financial Field.”
This development sounds good in theory and would bring a lot more vibrancy not only to Temple, but to North Philadelphia as a whole, benefiting students and residents alike. But that’s when we get into displacement. When you have a big project like this, there’s going to be a lot of commercial development, which is one of the leading factors that drives housing costs in the area — especially when you’re trying to build in an already dense urban area like North Philadelphia.
Kate Goodman, a member of the Temple stadium opposition group, “Stadium Stompers,” spoke to WHYY, saying, “North Central Philadelphia has historically been a neighborhood of Black residents, and if there is a massive stadium built on top of that neighborhood, it is going to displace people directly and raise the land and housing prices.”
That’s what makes development so tricky these days in big cities, especially Philadelphia. Displacement in already marginalized communities will never go well. Another huge reason why plans for the stadium were postponed was because it wasn’t well received by Temple staff and students. Back in 2019, Philadelphia Magazine’s Steve Newman reported that “When surveyed, 58 percent of Temple students rejected the idea, with 30 percent in favor. The 2,800 faculty, librarians, and academic professionals represented by the Temple Association of University Professionals oppose the stadium 68 percent to 23 percent. The Faculty Senate passed a resolution that was supported by 375 and opposed by only 106.”
Looking at the Sixers arena, it’s being proposed in downtown Philadelphia, where a part of the now-fashion district mall sits, but also, more importantly, right down the street from Chinatown. Many residents in the area protest the arena being built because of the potential rising cost and inevitable displacement. As of last week, the plan has been moving forward as council member Mark Squilla released legislation about the new arena. The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Jake Blumgart said, “His goal is to prevent small businesses and residents from being displaced as large projects like the arena or the “Chinatown stitch,” which will cap part of the Vine Street Expressway north of the neighborhood, move forward and could cause property values to spike.” There has been a study about the generalized impact that the Sixers arena will have in the area, where it reports that it would affect Chinatown in a negative way. People who oppose the Sixers’ new arena will never go away, and for a good reason: because of the idea that it will push Chinatown residents out the way.
Displacement is a red bullseye in a large-scale project in urban centers, whether it’s the likes of the Temple stadium or the Sixers arena. But on the flip side, development boosts any city’s economic status. Critics have been saying the Sixers should just build the new arena in the Wells Fargo Center, the South Philadelphia sports complex where they play now, because of the space that’s available and residents who are close to the sports complex live blocks away, which makes displacement not an issue. But there’s big money involved in these situations, so we’ll see how the city deals with the inevitable displacement that comes with development.
Isaiah Ireland is a fourth-year Media and Culture major.