I've heard time and again how the newly proposed Sixers Center City arena at the beleaguered Fashion District Mall would be "good for Chinatown," almost as much as I've heard 10th and Market isn't in Chinatown, and both are equally insulting.
There's this "I know what's good for you" mentality in Philadelphia that has historically driven development in communities that never asked for it, often with questionable outcomes. If a new arena would be so great for business, why aren't any other neighborhoods begging for it in their backyards? Those who NIMBY casinos and stadiums out of their own neighborhoods are often the first to applaud those developments when they're proposed where they don't live.
To say other neighborhoods don't need the proposed arena's injection of business implies there's something wrong with Chinatown. Most scoff that it's a low income area, which isn't completely true or its entire story. It's an immigrant community with as much wealth as poverty. To attempt to lift its built environment to the pedigree of, say Old City, doesn't lift up its residents most in need, it displaces them, a false solution and the foundation of the both hailed and hated g-word.
Chinatown as a neighborhood isn't struggling. In fact, when COVID-19 blasted its way into Philadelphia, Chinatown was the first to respond. As a result, when pandemic-induced shutdowns ran roughshod through our neighborhoods, closing down countless businesses, Chinatown came out the other side bustling as it ever had been, if not more so. Those who claim Chinatown would benefit from an arena's business are either woefully unfamiliar with the neighborhood or, most insidiously, think Chinatown doesn't need more business, they're saying it needs new business, business that caters to a broader and more homogenized Philadelphia.
Chinatown is more than just business. Like the Gayborhood or the Italian Market, Chinatown is comprised of homes, schools, and churches. In these cultural enclaves, businesses serve as byproducts of their denizens, not tourist attractions. That's not to say they're isolated or unwelcoming, but the dichotomy doesn't help a community's members, it alienates them. What's unwelcome are outsiders trying to alter what works well within community to quell the insecurities and discomfort of those who visit. You wouldn't go into a neighbor's house and start rearranging their furniture the way you like it on the off chance you might stop by again.
As a community, Chinatown knows the intent behind the support for the Sixers arena more than any other in Philadelphia. The reason the arena's been proposed for 10th and Market is the same reason The Gallery, The Pennsylvania Convention Center, and the Vine Street Expressway were dumped there.
To city planners and politicos who remember Philadelphia's darkest days, Chinatown is Center City's last perceived remnant of midcentury blight. Once wedged between Skid Row and The Furnished Room District's flophouses, they want it gone. Like the stunning movie theater at 22nd and Market that was completely ignored by preservationists because it had since become a strip club, Chinatown is guilty by its historic association with neighboring red light districts, and City Hall has been trying to eradicate it for 50 years.
Chinatown, vibrant as it is, is a self-sustained community that hasn't succumbed to the sterilization and organization of redevelopment. That in itself should be enough to tell everyone else to leave it alone, especially in this era of progressively woke cultural awareness. But this is a 21st century American city, and xenophobia has managed to ferret its way into the most self-righteously progressive circles. In today's Philadelphia, anything that doesn't cater exclusively to the status quo must be reinvented, even when the status quo has literally everywhere else to eat craft burgers, drink local brews, and drop $50 on a candle making class.
Despite the fact that all efforts to tame Chinatown's authenticity have been abject failures (see the aforementioned Gallery mall, Pennsylvania Convention Center, and Vine Street Expressway), City Hall is still willing to capitalize on the idea of Chinatown, as long as it becomes anything it never was. Like the rainbow street signs that cropped up throughout the Gayborhood just before it was callously renamed "Midtown Village," City Hall and the Sixers will undoubtedly flood the area with all the dragon-branded trappings of what anyone shopping for a Mogwai might expect to find when searching for a stock photo of "Chinatown."
Look at DC if you want to see the future of our Chinatown: garishly stereotypical fanfare bordering on the offensive, fast casual chain restaurants, and a few authentic holdouts wedged between a Starbucks and a Smashburger like the lingering apartment house at the end of Batteries Not Included.
It's either ironically aloof or deliberately hypocritical that those who support this Sixers arena are quick to point out that 10th and Market isn't technically Chinatown, right after rhetorically pondering why Chinatown doesn't want its business. Google Maps might not place 10th and Market within the confines of Chinatown's official borders, but after being boxed in by an expressway and the sterile walls at the ass end of a convention center, Chinatown's had nowhere else to grow. Early renderings for the Fashion District's redesign even show Chinese imagery illuminating the ceiling of its 10th Street underpass. The city, and those championing the Sixers arena, know very well that 10th and Market isn't just part of Chinatown, it's its gateway.
The Sixers Center City arena might be great for business, but only those antithetical of everything Chinatown is. What's more, once Ocean Harbor and Four Rivers become a P.F. Chang's and a Panda Express, those who pushed for the Sixers arena will be lamenting the loss of one of North America's last great Chinatowns, a loss at their behest. And aside from mega-cities like Chicago or New York where downtown real estate is so valuable they're forced to build as densely as possible, America has repeatedly set precedents that downtown arenas do nothing positive for the neighborhoods they encroach upon. Even in Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania Convention Center not only obliterated dozens of historic properties to make way for its presence, its expansion continues to eat away at what's left of the west side of Chinatown for its asphalt prairies, plaguing its lingering residents with noise from conventioneers who treat Camac Street like a suburban Walmart parking lot. When no large conventions are being held there, it's a ghost town.
Philadelphia might be booming on paper, but it has no shortage of developable real estate. The Sixers could have proposed an arena as part of the emerging Schuylkill Yards or Penn's Landing's waterfront redevelopment without upending a community. But City Hall and the echo chamber of those who don't live in Chinatown and rarely visit have hypocritically deemed this locale most fit, all because this neighborhood refuses to bend to their pressboard idea of 21st century American urbanism.
From the Gayborhood to Fishtown, from Spruce Hill to the Italian Market, this city has spent the last half century trying to eradicate anything culturally unique while claiming to be one of the nation's most diverse cities. There's isn't a more eloquently deserved word for this but "gross."
Of course all of this should be moot. Ignore the bevy of land available for an arena along the Delaware River or atop the Schuylkill Yards (dare I even mention the mythical "Bellweather District" at the demolished Sunoco plant that will likely rival Chernobyl as a superfund site well into the 21st century?), and there's a perfectly great neighborhood surrounded by ample parking right on a subway line where a new Sixers arena won't bother anyone. And that's exactly where it is.
