Several weeks ago, I wrote about the uselessness of a Community Benefit Agreement. Every few years, another city finds out that their historic CBA is really just the team promising to do things a certain way with little to no guarantees in writing. Oh, the owners of the Detroit Red Wings & Pistons didn’t actually hire local workers when building their new arena? What a shame. Pay a few bucks as a fine. You can keep the $250 million taxpayer dollars, though.
In Philadelphia, the 76ers want to build a new arena in the city at a cost of $1.55 billion dollars. Even though it is difficult to find a single citizen who agrees with the 76ers plan, the mayor got on board with the agreement recently. Even though the arena deal was put together in complete secret from the public, it includes a $50 million dollar CBA! Which also was put together in secret…which is odd as the whole point of a CBA is to talk to the community and figure out a deal. One local faith leader called the CBA an “insult” to the area. As the local newspaper noted, the CBA is “is surrounded by more questions than answers”.
But today, the team was in front of the city council for the second day in a row. When city officials noted how little money was ACTUALLY included in the CBA for the community, the team responded by simply stating that they “cannot go above” the $50 million dollar number and were therefore “unwilling to budge” on changing the CBA. When a city official asked the team how exactly they got the $50 million dollar number for the CBA, the team did not know. That sounds quite scientific.
I absolutely loved how one councilmember answered the team’s claims:
“It seems like we’re not getting our fair value…The 50 million, from everybody I’ve heard here, doesn’t seem to be final for us. It seems to be final for you, but we have to sign off on this” — Councilmember Nina Ahmad, MetroPhiladelphia, 11/13/24
But what about the changes that will need to be made to the metro system right below this new arena? This metro system, called SEPTA, needs almost $250 million dollars from the state just to stay afloat this year. As the city noted in talks today, SEPTA is in a “financial crisis”. However, if the team wants this metro station to be operational for arena events, it will need $30 million dollars worth of upgrades. Is the team going to pay for that? Of course not. The team testified that they “would pay for physical changes to Jefferson Station needed to support the arena” but “not willing to fund the transit system’s operations”.
As a consequence, the team will not pay for any “operational costs to increase service on game nights”. Needless to say, they will pay for a few things to make it look nice but thereafter, nothing. When the team tried to act as if SEPTA was happy with the team’s proposal, another councilmember shot back with “I’ve heard from SEPTA, and I know that SEPTA is not satisfied”. Ouch.
By the way, can someone explain to me how the team could ask the city council to approve this deal when neither the mayor nor the team have given city councilmembers a single piece of documentation on the “negotiations between SEPTA and the 76ers”?