NBA's plans for a new arena threatens Philadelphia's Chinatown

Philadelphia's Friendship Gate marks the entrance to Chinatown.

In the 1800s and the early 20th Century, it was easy to get rid of Chinatown. Just set it ablaze. 

Nowadays, the sophisticated way of destroying the ethnic enclave is to call it redevelopment.

The latest battle for Chinatown is heating up in Philadelphia where the National Basketball League's Philadelphia 76ers want to build a new arena.

“It’s important for people to stand up and voice out,” said Steven Zhu, head of the Philadelphia Chinese Restaurant Association, during a press conference Monday, Jan. 9. “There are people understanding how the issue is so serious, that this is something that will destroy Chinatown.”

Over 40 Chinatown groups have joined a coalition opposing the Sixers' proposed basketball arena.

“What most people don’t know when they’re going for dim sum in Chinatown is that Chinatowns started as a direct result of the violence against the Asian American community. They were forced to create Chinatowns in order to survive,” said Bethany Li, legal director of Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF).

The Philadelphia 76ers announced plans last summer to build a $1.3 billion arena just a block from the community’s gateway arch with a planned opening in 2031. The development company behind the arena, 76 Devcorp, said it planned to work with the community to help shape the project.

Since the NBA franchise announced its intentions, Chinatown residents, business owners, and community advocates have been fighting the prospects of having the arena built in their own neighborhood, completely changing the physical aspects of the community and almost certainly altering the demographics of the businesses and people who live there.

ARTIST'S RENDERING

The proposed 76er arena would be a stone's throw away from the Chinatown Friendship Gate.

The arena will most likely raise property values which in turn raise rents for the mostly small businesses and drive away low-income residents who will not be able to afford the cost of living there.

Business owners have also raised concerns about the traffic congestion that could ensue during home games that as a result will cause locals and others to avoid Chinatown altogether, effects on local businesses, attendees opting to go for concessions instead of what the community offers, parking, and public safety.

A 76 Devcorp spokesperson reiterated that statement Monday, saying the company would “continue to meet with community stakeholders to discuss the facts surrounding the proposed arena and how it will positively impact the area.”

Opponents to the Philadelphia project point to what happened to the Chinatown of Washington D.C. Where once a community of 3,000 lived, worked and played, only a few hundred Chinese residents remain the neighborhood that still has a Chinese gateway marking beginning of what was once Chinatown. Critics and planners blame the construction of the Capitol One Arena, home of the NBA's Washington Wizards that drove up rents and drove away local businesses.

New York City's Chinatown is undergoing another battle against plans to build what would become the world's tallest jail in the middle of the neighborhood. The proposed jail would impact one the city's densest areas home to with senior housing, green space, and small businesses.

Philadelphia's Chinatown survived earlier attempts to build in their community. In 2000, the community protested the Phillies’ plan to build a $685 million baseball stadium. In 2008, the community mobilized again to stop the development of a 3,000-slot-machine casino.

Government policies have changed these traditionally working class, Asian, family household neighborhoods into communities that are now composed of more affluent, White, and non-family households. From the expansion of institutions like universities and medical centers in Boston, to New York City's former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s massive rezonings promoting development in New York, and the government’s encouragement of luxury condominiums and casinos in Philadelphia, "local governments have dramatically transformed what these immigrant neighborhoods look like."

RELATED:

• Chicago's Chinatown bucks national trend and is flourishing 
• America's Chinatowns being squeezed out by gentrification 

In the 1800s and early 20th Century, a number of fires burned down Chinatowns around the nation. In Honolulu and Santa Ana in California, authorities declared Chinatown a source for the plague and burned it down. A number of "suspicious" fires took out Chinatowns in Denver and San Jose, Calif. In some instances, such as in Pacific Grove or Antioch in California, fires were started for the real reason - racism.

Today's Chinatowns often characterized by low rents and single-occupancy residences are also being threatened by gentrification.

“We’re slowly being gentrified out of existence,” said University of Massachusetts professor Andrew Leong, who coauthored a 2013 report on Chinatowns commissioned by AALDEF. “You’re talking about displacement of those kinds of people that have rented from these unattractive units for decades.”

“Chinatowns have provided the city’s immigrants with support networks and affordable housing for over a century,” said Bethany Li, staff attorney at AALDEF. “Gentrification and ongoing redevelopment projects, however, threaten to destroy the sustainability of these once-thriving immigrant communities.”

“The gentrification that threatens to transform these areas is not just the natural result of market forces or the general evolution of these cities,” said Li. “They are a very direct result of local policies of neglect, demolition, and redevelopment that local governments have perpetuated for decades."

“Our community has been here for 150 years, and we’re not stupid,” Steven Zhu, head of the Philadelphia Chinese Restaurant Association, said in a prepared statement. “We know this is a land grab. We know the billionaire developers’ interest is in taking our land and erasing our community.”

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