Though long established, by the 1950s and 1960s Philadelphia’s Chinatown—a district just blocks from Independence Hall and predating the nearby Liberty Bell tourist destination—was seen by outsiders as a slum.
“It was considered undesirable to live in,” explains Deborah Wei, who grew up in the neighborhood at that time, exploring the local shops and restaurants with her parents. “It was known as skid row, with lots of bars, and a red-light district.”
Chinatowns arose 150 years ago as a response to rampant anti-Chinese violence. As Chinese people fled the western United States and made their way east, racism followed. They created enclaves of safety, such as the one in Philadelphia, in areas of cities considered undesirable—the only places where they were allowed to settle.
By the mid-to-late 1970s in Philadelphia, however, this image began to shift as “redevelopment” efforts unfolded in and around Chinatown. An expressway was constructed, splitting Chinatown into two. In the early 1990s, a convention center was built, displacing families.
By the early 2000s, there was a concerted push by city hall and certain business interests for a new Philadelphia Phillies stadium in Chinatown. By 2009, developers unveiled plans to build casinos in the neighborhood, another project that many Chinatown residents opposed.
But the pressure from forces looking to “develop” in and around Chinatown has been unrelenting. In July 2022, 76 Devcorp, the development arm for the 76ers NBA team, unveiled its plan to build a privately funded $1.3 billion arena in the Chinatown area. 76 Devcorp plans on attaining the necessary zoning permits by this summer, with the goal of opening the new arena in 2031.
“It’s capitalism run amok,” says Wei, who has been organizing in Chinatown on issues affecting its community since the mid-1980s. Wei is a founding member of Asian Americans United (AAU), a progressive activist group that is part of a growing coalition opposed to the proposed Sixers arena.
The proposed facility has become one of the city’s major political debates—permeating the campaign leading up to the May 16 mayoral primary. In early April, the city announced it would review the impact of building the arena. Progressive candidate Helen Gym, who lost the vote, was one of few candidates who had taken a clear stance against the arena. Democratic primary winner and presumptive future mayor Cherelle Parker (perhaps expectedly) more favorable toward the arena—she won the primary with the backing of construction and trade unions that want it built.
Wei warns that an arena built in the Chinatown area would not only take up a huge amount of downtown space, it would drive up property taxes and rent. In addition to displacing people, the stadium would also displace more people-centered development, such as spaces for the arts, nonprofits, and small businesses.
The Sixers are owned by a partnership of billionaires, which include David Blitzer, who heads Blackstone’s Tactical Opportunities group, which invests $35 billion. Blackstone was cited by the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to housing as responsible for creating a global housing crisis as it purchased properties lost in the 2008 housing crisis, including in the United States, jacking up rents by 30 to 35 percent in many places and evicting tenants.
The billionaire investor said to be leading the effort to build the arena, David Adelman is a powerful real estate developer in Philadelphia and beyond. For the past two decades, Adelman has been CEO of Campus Housing, which has built private housing at more than fifty colleges and universities. He is also co-founder of Franklin Square Investments (FS), an investment firm which manages now $73 billion in assets, including $20 billion in office space in Philadelphia’s Navy Yard.
The stadium plan, “will drive small business and longer-term residents away,” says longtime Chinatown advocate Ellen Somekawa of the stadium plan.
After connecting with Wei in the 1990s and serving as AAU director, Somekawa became executive director of the Folk Arts-Cultural Treasures Charter School, founded in response to the lack of consistent focus on and care from the city for the interests of mainly Asian immigrant and refugee children.
To study the effects of major facility construction on a neighborhood like theirs, Somekawa and Wei made a trip in September 2022 to what remains of the Chinatown in Washington, D.C. As in Philadelphia, the D.C. Chinatown had once been a vibrant place. But after the Washington Wizards moved their stadium there in 1997, it became a shell of itself.
“We met with people displaced by the NBA arena that was built there,” Somekawa said. “I found myself looking at the Chinatown gate, and not really seeing a community anymore. The local Starbucks and Walgreens had Chinese language signs on their doors but there’s not an authentic community there. The elderly who remained, many of them in low-income housing, now must take a bus and travel an hour and a half to get to the nearest Chinese supermarket which is twenty-six miles away.”
That same fate could befall Philadelphia and other Chinatowns across the country, as developers disrupt, displace, and destroy working class communities of color to gain control of valuable land and maximize profits. Already gentrification and the rising cost of living have negatively impacted Chinatowns from Boston to San Francisco, driving small businesses further away from downtown and forcing residents and workers to scatter across a wider area.
Historically, Chinatowns and similar enclaves—including Manilatowns and Japantowns along the West Coast—have been neighborhoods where Asian Americans, immigrants, and refugees alike could find respite and community amid widespread discrimination.
“The local Starbucks and Walgreens had Chinese language signs on their doors but there’s not an authentic community there.”
The formation of Chinatowns and similar Asian enclaves was a survival tactic, concentrating forces to defend against violence, as well as to create vital internal networks for jobs and resources.
For many, it’s also served as a source of cultural renewal and connection, according to Wei, who describes how important Philadelphia’s Chinatown, one of the more robust and longstanding in the nation, was to her parents who had immigrated to a mostly white suburb right outside the city in the early 1960s.
“It was a safe space,” Wei remembers. “It was the place where they could find the food they wanted, that reminded them of home. It was also a place where they could speak their language and talk to people and not feel ashamed.”
Through diligent advocacy work, Chinatown has hosted a renaissance of community and institution building for Asian communities in Philadelphia, according to Somekawa. Organizations including Asian Americans United, the Philadelphia Hoyu Chinese American Association and the Philadelphia Suns actively work to reclaim the streets for community celebrations and expressions of cultural pride. Youth leadership programs engage young people in caring for the community.
Thomas Betz, priest of the Holy Redeemer Chinese Catholic Church and School in Chinatown, says he’s seen Asian Americans, immigrants, and refugees from across Philadelphia come to the neighborhood to celebrate major holidays in order to reconnect with food and music that can bring them some form of joy and solace.
“You have Asians from other parts of the city, East Asian international students coming to Chinatown to hang out, to spend time in the tea shops, at the bars that are Asian-owned,” he says. “Philadelphia Chinatown is a destination for many people.”
Organizing in Chinatown also helped establish the Mid-Autumn Festival—which attracts Asians from all backgrounds to the city to take part in food and festivities—now one of the city’s largest annual celebrations.
“It was the training and engagement of young people in understanding their history, their place in society, in how best to serve their community, that would be passed down from generation to generation,” Somekawa said. “Now, we have young people growing up who never knew a Philadelphia where we didn’t have a Mid-Autumn festival.”
This hard-won sense of community has cultivated a constituency now ready and willing to resist the development.
Two broad-based coalitions opposing the arena include Save Chinatown Coalition, formed in August 2022, and is made up of over thirty organizations citywide. It includes the Asian Pacific Islander Political Alliance (API-PA), Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance of Philadelphia, Reclaim Philadelphia, the Cambodian Association of Greater Philadelphia, Juntos, and VietLead, among others. The other, the Chinatown Coalition to Oppose the Arena, includes organizations such as the Chinese Restaurant Association of Greater Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania Chinese United Association, and the Philadelphia Hoyu Chinese American Association.
No Arena in Chinatown Solidarity, an organization founded by local Jewish activists has expanded to include people across many faiths. Restaurants and restaurant workers joined in solidarity through the formation of RICE, the Restaurant Industry for Chinatown’s Existence.
A major march and rally against the arena is planned for June 10.
“Our responsibility is not to only save Chinatown,” Wei says. “Our responsibility is to educate people about what’s happening all over the world as a result of these forces.”