No arena in the heart of our city march tomorrow at 1pm on the north side of city hall!

Because even the impact studies paid for by the people behind the arena proposal say that the economic benefit to the city will be literally 1/5th of what they said it would be this time last year and called the proposal "barely adequate" and acknowledge that it will cause Displacement for the local community. The arena, when looked at from the best angle, is practically the embodiment of gentrification and will reduce one of the most walkable neighborhoods in all of the United States to a car infested wasteland and destroy the vibrant Chinatown that exists in the area today.

This one arena would take the place of dozens of small amd medium businesses directly and lead to pricing out hundreds more nearby.

We don't need a second meca to car culture (the existing arena in south Philly is barely any less connected to public transit but surrounded by a sea of parking) in our city, and especially not in the heart of it.

The proposed arena is privately funded.
I am firmly on board with keeping this out of center city.
I'm also firmly on board with keeping the area a shopping area and not a bio lab.

If people were to turn out to games like they have historically, this would cause havoc on our already crumbling infrastructure. It would increase traffic in the city. It would deteriorate public transit. It would inflate ride share costs across the city. Traffic on the surrounding highways is already intolerable. People are going to sit in traffic then find out there's no where to park then never come back. This is such a horrible, horrible idea.

I'm slightly less concerned with Chinatown losing its significance but that's certainly a big part of this. There's no chance this arena would significantly increase revenue enough for local businesses. You'll see growth in national chain establishments in the area where sports fans would sooner flock to. Rent and housing costs would skyrocket in the immediate area leaving a vacancy for wealthy investors to buy up and flip for tens of millions.

This should 100% go to Camden in an area that's already in need of local business and infrastructure improvement.

Arenas are big and it would destroy a lot of the neighborhood that is there

Why would a city not want to be inundated by tens of thousands of people on roads, paths, and transit routes that were not meant for tens of thousands of people?

During the Giants World Series, parking surged about 10x in pricing. Traffic ground to a halt. People walked miles just to get to the stadium. The surrounding neighborhood was drown by these people who were not there to spend money at shops.

Over the last thirty years, building sports stadiums has served as a profitable undertaking for large sports teams, at the expense of the general public. While there are some short-term benefits, the inescapable truth is that the economic impact of these projects on their communities is minimal, while they can be an obstacle to real development in local neighborhoods.

https://econreview.studentorg.berkeley.edu/the-economics-of-sports-stadiums-does-public-financing-of-sports-stadiums-create-local-economic-growth-or-just-help-billionaires-improve-their-profit-margin/

Edit: see also https://lemmy.world/post/19601342