What did $400 million buy at the Wells Fargo Center?

It’s an early April evening, in a lounge on the balcony level of the Wells Fargo Center.

Much of this upper-deck concourse is set up like a sports bar, with fireplaces, sofas, marble coffee tables, and video screens, along with requisite food-and-beverage concessions.

The Sixers are playing the rival Boston Celtics on the court below. While fans lean over a drink rail, roaring as Joel Embiid pops in a jump shot over Al Horford, Tony Wright of West Philadelphia has melded himself into a brown leather chair nearby. He faces a bank of TV monitors showing a variety of sports. The action is at his back.

Isn’t he here for a Sixers game?

Wright, a truck driver, smiles and points to a monitor showing the game: “Oh, I’m here,” gesturing to friends behind him at the rail. “I just needed a little break.” His phone also happens to be showing the ESPN app.

New City Terrace, as this former skybox section is called, is part of a new era at what owner Comcast Spectacor calls the “new” Wells Fargo Center. A recently completed $400 million renovation changed the arena inside and out, top to bottom.

Ike Richman, who handled publicity for the opening in 1996 and was vice president of public relations for Comcast Spectacor through 2017, recently went to a Flyers game. Though he had known every inch of the center, “I didn’t even recognize it,” said Richman, who has his own public relations firm. “It really is a whole new building.”

The center was a civic marvel when it opened on the former site of JFK Stadium in South Philadelphia. It replaced the Spectrum, the home of the Sixers and Flyers, built three decades earlier across the parking lot.

At more than 700,000 square feet, what was then called the CoreStates Center was 80% larger than the Spectrum.

The center helped Philadelphia land the 2000 Republican National Convention. On a stage set up at what was by then the First Union Center, George W. Bush accepted the party’s nomination beneath a swirl of confetti and balloons.

Times — and sponsoring bank names (Wachovia had it just before Wells Fargo) — change. Arenas require upgrades.

Sixteen years after the Republican convention, the Wells Fargo Center hosted the Democratic National Convention, with Hillary Clinton smiling beneath the confetti and balloons. The upgrades to suites that accompanied the 2016 convention marked the start of the current renovation.

The initial budget was $265 million. The $400 million total is only slightly pricier than the arena’s original $210 million construction tab, adjusted for inflation. All of the renovations have been privately funded, said Valerie Camillo, president and CEO of Spectacor Sports & Entertainment, a division of Comcast Spectacor.

The overall goal, Camillo said, “was to create a world-class arena with a distinctively Philly feel.”

Aramark, which oversees and operates the concessions through a long-term partnership with Spectacor, has helped drive many improvements in the back of the house and in menus. Hometown names such as Federal Donuts, Delco Steaks, Buena Onda, Insomnia Cookies, and Chickie’s & Pete’s are represented.

Kitchens were revamped and cooking ventilation hoods were added to accommodate more stands, to expand variety, and to speed service throughout the building. One new sandwich stand on the concourse level is named Carselliano’s, a South Philly-ish portmanteau of three Aramark managers who helped direct the food project: Kevin Carney, Mike Casella, and Justin Musciano.

Most apparent to arena-goers are wider concourses on the main levels and mezzanine, and the premium entrance and lobby adjacent to the VIP parking lot. The complement of bars rose from seven to 18, including a setup for premium seat-holders just off the arena floor (called Shift4, after a partnership with the tech company) with an exhibition kitchen flanked by two 50-foot bars. There also are bars devoted to tequila and whiskey. Two companies working with Comcast Spectacor patented a 4K kinetic scoreboard (price tag: $21 million) that is 50% larger than the previous one.

The club level, which received more than $50 million in upgrades, now houses branded food stands by chefs Marc Vetri (MVP, a pizza stand) and Jose Garces (Garces Eats, now featuring dishes from his Village Whiskey restaurant) and twin bars (Chamberlain’s and Clarkie’s, named after hometown heroes Wilt Chamberlain and Bob Clarke) whose bar-top tables change between hardwood and ice depending on the sport du jour.

The club level also has Adrian, a sit-down restaurant, whose seats face the court/ice rink, designed by Stephen Starr. This is the first project since Aramark acquired a minority stake in Starr’s restaurant company in late 2021, said Alison Birdwell, president and CEO of Aramark Sports and Entertainment. “But, you know, let’s go big. We were able to leverage Stephen in a very unique way that we had not obviously had access to before, and really put that premium brand in an environment to show our commitment to service and execution.”

Birdwell said she, Starr, and Camillo worked together on reimagining what was the Cadillac Club. Price tag: $12.5 million, Camillo said.

The venues give the club level new energy. “When you walked around the club level before, you felt like you were in a hotel” — passing a series of numbered suite doors — “and now that it’s wide open, it totally brings you closer to the action, and the action actually extends out into the arena,” Richman said.

Solid outside walls were removed in favor of glass to bring in the sunlight and, on the club level, to create a bar facing Center City Philadelphia.

With ticketing almost all digital now, the box office on the main level’s Broad Street side was downsized and pushed into a little-used corner to make way for an expanded food hall. Chickie’s & Pete’s has added a grab-and-go format, the better to speed lines for Crab Fries and tenders. Beer cans are sold in a self-service setup. In some areas, fans can tap orders onto touchscreens and have food delivered to their seats — a feature that Birdwell said gives people more autonomy in their purchases.

Nothing was off the table in terms of ideas. A Spectacor executive visiting the Comcast-owned Universal Studios theme park in Florida enjoyed an over-the-top dessert at Toothsome Milkshakes, and cinched the rights to open a similar stand on the center’s mezzanine.

New public habits also guided the changes.

People used to go to a game to watch a sporting event. Venues now must provide more attractions to a world that lives on phones. “The idea is to keep fans coming in the door to give them something to participate in and to enjoy when it’s becoming easier to have other options for entertainment,” said Jonathan Ernest, who teaches sports economics at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. “It used to be that the closer that you are — to center court, to center ice — dictates how valuable these seats are.”

Operators are now adding amenities to the less-expensive seating areas to generate more revenue. “It’s not that it’s necessarily the person who wants to be courtside who also wants to be in this club level lounge,” Ernest said.

The changes also present opportunities for additional revenue. BetRivers Sportsbook at Rivers Casino, for example, has naming rights to an upper-level lounge that is set up like a sportsbook.

“The renovation is really adding more retail opportunities,” said Joel Maxcy, who heads the sports-business department at Drexel University’s LeBow School of Business and has attended several Sixers games this season. “I think a fan going in would say, ‘This is nicer,’ and because there are more options in terms of, food and beverage, probably on average the spending goes up, too. And that’s what they’re after — more opportunities to sell stuff inside the arena.”

Asked whether there was anything that budget wouldn’t allow Spectacor to do, Camillo replied: “Not that I can think of. In fact, quite the opposite. When we have found things that we thought would really enhance the customer experience, we’ve gone back and been able to secure additional funding, when needed.”

The public can see only part of the upgrades. The HVAC system was redesigned in 2019, even before the pandemic moved ventilation to top of mind. It allows a full exchange of outside air every 30 minutes, a $11 million line item.

The payoff, Camillo said, has been the Net Promoter Score, which measures customer experience and predicts business growth. From 2019 through this season, she said, the Wells Fargo’s score is up 30% and the blended guest-satisfaction scores, which rate a series of areas including building cleanliness and experience with retail concessions, are up 22%.

There is another matter: Comcast Spectacor owns the Flyers. In 2011, it sold the Sixers to Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment, which announced plans to develop and build its own $1.3 billion arena at Fashion District Philadelphia that would open in 2031, after the lease at the Wells Fargo expires.

Camillo said the Sixers’ plans were not on the horizon when the renovations began. “We would have done it with or without the Sixers,” she said.

“This is all fully funded on our side, and we hope it benefits everyone in the building, from the Sixers to Villanova [basketball] to performers.”

The Flyers and Sixers, incidentally, were vastly different performers when the center opened in August 1996.

The recently lackluster Flyers, which just wrapped in seventh place in the NHL’s Metropolitan Division, made it to the semifinals in the 1995-96 season behind Eric Lindros and the Legion of Doom line.

The hot Sixers, now in the NBA playoffs, finished their 1995-96 season in seventh place of the Atlantic Division — and were 28th of the 29 NBA teams in attendance. It was a time of optimism. Comcast Spectacor had bought the team in spring 1996 from Harold Katz (and sold it in 2011). The Sixers lost their first home game at the center on Nov. 1, 1996, but it featured a 30-point performance from their rookie guard, Allen Iverson.