A group called No Arena Gayborhood did a small protest outside of City Hall on Thursday, with their stance summarized in a press release:

PHILADELPHIA – On Thursday, the grassroots community group No Arena Gayborhood will hold a press conference at City Hall to take a firm stand against the proposed 76 Place arena in Center City, calling the project a direct threat to Philadelphia’s Gayborhood and the queer community it serves. 

Residents, performers, and small business owners from Philadelphia’s LGBTQ+ community will address the threat the arena poses to the historic Gayborhood. The Gayborhood has long been an affirming space and cultural hub for the LGBTQ+ community in Philly, persisting for nearly a century despite suffering greatly at the hands of predatory development in the past several decades. The proposed arena would be constructed dangerously close to this iconic neighborhood, threatening to displace queer residents and businesses. 

Following the press conference, No Arena Gayborhood will deliver signed petitions to city council members underscoring the ways 76 Place would threaten Philadelphia’s historic Gayborhood, its residents, businesses, service providers and the Greater Philadelphia LGBTQ+ community:

  • An arena just blocks from the Gayborhood poses a clear danger of gentrification and displacement. Developers will prioritize commercial establishments that cater to a more mainstream, non-queer audience, leaving LGBTQ+ businesses—bars, bookstores, restaurants, and even affordable housing—vulnerable to being pushed out. 
  • Arena traffic and congestion will jeopardize access to LGBTQ+ healthcare providers, services, and meeting places like the Mazzoni Center, William Way, Giovanni’s Room (the oldest queer bookstore in the entire country).
  • The arena also threatens to lead to job loss for many queer workers in the Gayborhood. While developers claim they will create new jobs, these positions are likely to be temporary and seasonal, rather than the stable, year-round employment offered by existing small businesses. This includes jobs for queer artists and performers who are vital to maintaining the cultural vibrancy of the neighborhood. 

Photos from the press conference show a group of maybe 20 people partaking, and the claims above feel like a reach.

For starters, the Gayborhood was not included in the 76 Place community impact study, described as an “extended boundary for which the Consultant Team collected limited data.” The 140-page document is focused on Chinatown and the word “Gayborhood” only appears five times, mostly in a three-paragraph blurb explaining the larger area. If you’re not familiar, the neighborhood is about two blocks south and west, on the opposite side of Market Street, and that’s the very northeastern corner. You see the boundaries in yellow on this carefully-prepared graphic:

The likely concern for the Gayborhood, which has already undergone a decade of gentrification by the way, is that fans drive into the city for a game or a concert and wind up circling portions of Chestnut and Walnut Street, which are already a congested mess and have been for years now. Hopefully, if the arena ends up being built, people will heed the call to take public transit and walk up the escalator from Jefferson Station, which is what the site is meant to accommodate. We’ll see if folks still insist on driving downtown when 2031 comes around, or if they wise up and realize they’re supposed to leave their cars at home and get on the train instead.

But the examples used in the press release are a stretch, especially bulletpoint #2. Giovanni’s Room, the queer bookstore, is located on Pine Street, about five and a half blocks away from the arena site. It’s as far south from 10th and Market as Underground Arts is north. William Way, the LGBTQ community center, is at Juniper and Spruce, a block off Broad Street. And the Mazzoni Center, which closes at 6 p.m., is at 12th and Locust. It’s hard to see how access to any of those locations, which are walkable from multiple mass transit lines, would be compromised because of a basketball arena between 10th and 11th on Market.


The Gayborhood has been on the periphery of the arena conversation, but found some headlines with the article published in the Philadelphia Gay News six months ago, suggesting that rowdy and homophobic Sixers fans will descend on the neighborhood and make LGBTQ Philadelphians uncomfortable. In addition to being totally ridiculous, the insinuation that Sixers fans are troglodytes was, quite frankly, offensive. If anything, the Sixers fan base is the most progressive and diverse in the region. It’s both funny and sad that non-sports fans in Philadelphia dabble in the same national media stereotypes that we’ve been trying to overcome for decades now. It’s like they saw some Eagles tailgating video from 20 years ago and think that’s what’s coming to Market Street.

So what’s the difference between Chinatown and the Gayborhood? Chinatown has a legitimate gripe because the arena site abuts one of their businesses and is flush against the neighborhood’s southern border. So even though the arena is not technically in Chinatown, and HBSE isn’t taking a bulldozer to the friendship arch, that community will be impacted by a half-decade of construction and the threat of accelerated gentrification up along the 10th/Filbert/Arch corridor. It’s not direct displacement, but the threat of indirect displacement. This was noted in the impact study, which also mentioned that the neighborhood is facing a generic, larger-level struggle and needs attention whether the arena is built or not. The Chinatown issue is a complex one, and requires attention regardless.

The problem, now two years in, is that hyperbolic language continues to ruin good faith, reasonable discourse on the topic. When you read some of these press releases and look at the social media rantings of various individuals, you’re led to believe that the Sixers are going to displace everyone and everything. That they have no regard for the Asian community and now the LGBTQ community as well. The Inquirer even published and deleted a story claiming that the arena was a human rights violation, taking us beyond the pale and back again. And when you consider that Chinatown and the Gayborhood are both unique and important minority communities, the discussion quickly jumps the shark because of the heightened emotion attached to the messaging.

But just because a message carries emotion doesn’t mean it’s a legitimate message, and what’s sad is that this weakens the legitimate gripes that other people have. We’re talking diminishing returns, the “boy who cried wolf” of protest, because you risk losing the sympathetic portion of neutrals who are starting to grow weary of the blanket “no” response to everything. Is this honest discourse, or hollow NIMBYism? And of course, opponents will say that the dismissal of their concern amounts to gaslighting, especially when it comes from white male sports fans, but where would you draw the line between gaslighting and calling bullshit? You’re gonna wear the Scarlet Letter anyway, whether you like it or not, so if something seems ridiculous, go ahead and point it out.

The Gayborhood will be fine. There’s really nothing to worry about when it comes to 76 Place.