Mayor Cherelle Parker came out Wednesday afternoon in support of the Sixers’ Market Street arena plan, which still needs to pass through city council before reaching her desk. It’s not a done deal for Sixers ownership, not quite yet.

Her support for the project was obvious considering the endorsement of the trades, who were key in getting her elected. You would only be surprised by the announcement if you were living under a rock, or had your head buried in the sand.

In the buzz surrounding her endorsement, the topic of the South Philadelphia sports complex was brought up again:

Nothing against @RealMamaEagle, because I see this opinion from a lot of people, but I don’t understand it. The sports complex is a bunch of parking lots with Xfinity Live. If that’s “iconic,” then we need to raise our standards.

Yet people romanticize the sports complex because they love the concept of “all four teams” being located in the same area. It’s a nice factoid, unique perhaps that the Sixers, Flyers, Phillies, and Eagles are all together. It makes Philadelphia different from other cities. But those are inessential concepts, or maybe incorporeal is the right word, because they don’t have any tangible, real-world impact.


Serious question –

How does Citizens Bank Park being across the street influence your Eagles gameday experience? How does the presence of the Wells Fargo Center improve or not improve your Phillies experience? It probably doesn’t, not unless you’re pulling some day/night doubleheader or going into Xfinity Live after a game to co-mingle with other fans. Do the other stadiums make for a pleasant aesthetic backdrop? I guess. You can make a case for increased energy and vibes when multiple events are going on at the same time, which others will argue just results in a larger clusterfuck of traffic.

Which is a good segue:

The other thing people say is that they like the sports complex because it’s out of the way. You can drive down, park, watch the game, and leave. That’s true to a certain extent, but anybody who has been to any game in the last 10 years knows that it’s definitely not an easy in and out. We’ve all sat in the parking lots in a line of cars trying to get back on the highway, so the thought of the sports complex being the poster child of convenience is demonstrably false. People just say this because they’ve accepted as normal 30+ minutes of congestion.

To that point, one of Philly’s defining characteristics is the love for “this is how it’s always been done.” We are parochial and resistant to change. And funny enough, when Comcast-Spectacor and the Phillies announced that they were teaming up to revamp the sports complex, you saw a lot of opinions out there suggesting that nothing was needed, that the complex was fine as is. People liked driving down, setting up their tailgate, and driving home.

I asked Chairman Dan Hilferty about this when we sat down for an interview over the summer:

“This is different because I would say three things. 1) go to the battery (in Atlanta), go to St. Louis, go to Milwaukee, go to some of these places where they’ve turned it into where you can do more than just a game. But your ability to get in and out has been enhanced, parking is still the same, and if you don’t want to be part of that, you won’t be part of that. …those who want to just drive and park and go the game, or take public transportation to the game, their experience won’t change. But we firmly believe, I’ll tell you what, if an apartment complex goes up, I’d want to rent an apartment, as a fan I’d like to experience that. I think you can live in that old world, be comfortable with that space, be comfortable experiencing it the way you did, or you can be (part of) what’s changing in the way fans want their experience to be.”

That was a good answer I thought, because you’re leaving the door open to the “this is fine” crowd while also giving consumers more options than they already had. You’re addressing both concerns at the same time. Comcast is on the record saying they’d like to build a bunch of new things down there, to give people more to do and enhance the experience beyond just a bunch of parking lots and a rudimentary tailgating scene for the Phillies and the Eagles. There really is not much tailgating done for Flyers and Sixers games, because, well, most of the season is played in the dead of winter.

The other thing that I’ve noticed is that no Philadelphia Union fan talks a big game about the sports complex, because… Subaru Park is not at the sports complex. And Subaru is a fun, unique, and enjoyable gameday experience. You’ve got the Commodore Barry Bridge in the background, excellent sight lines, and an improving pregame scene around the stadium. They’re not attached to South Philly and never were, so for Union fans, the idea of the Sixers breaking up the sacrosanct “all four teams” thing matters very little, if at all.

The biggest takeaway in all of this is that we as consumers are in a situation where this Comcast vs. Sixers beef could result in more OPTIONS for us. We may come out of this with a new and different downtown arena, while at the same time the Flyers, Phillies, and Eagles turn the sports complex into an interesting and exciting new experience. Isn’t that an ideal outcome? Isn’t that better than a bunch of parking lots?

The only reason the sports complex is “iconic” is because, for most of us, it’s all we’ve ever known. It’s tradition, I guess, but just because something is traditional doesn’t mean it’s good. A good example of this is cranberry sauce at Thanksgiving