Letters to the Editor | Jan. 19, 2025

IBEW Local 98 and our partners in the Philadelphia Building Trades have worked diligently with the 76ers throughout the protracted arena process. Although the new agreement was a pivot from the original plan, this partnership between the 76ers and Comcast is a significant development. The sports complex in South Philadelphia will be dramatically enhanced and expanded, providing the 76ers with the new state-of-the-art arena the team needs and deserves. Comcast has pledged to commit the financial resources needed to revive the dormant Market East corridor, which is critically important to the Parker administration. For IBEW Local 98 and the building trades, a $1.3 billion construction project just turned into a multibillion-dollar mixed-use development in a stunning new sports district that will keep our members working for decades.

Mark Lynch Jr., business manager, IBEW Local 98

In my extra silverware caddie, I have a silver tablespoon with Gimbel Brothers engraved on the handle. I assume this was pilfered sometime back in the ‘40s or ‘50s when we built a middle class and working people could afford a little luxury, like eating out at the store’s tearoom. Santa used to climb the fire truck ladder at our annual Thanksgiving Day Parade and enter Gimbels to see children until Christmas Eve. The problem facing our shopping district for the past 40 or 50 years isn’t Amazon, it’s the lack of living wages and time off. Fast food and shopping on Cyber Monday at work is the only way parents can get anything done, and far too often, DoorDash is the extra job that makes ends meet. Living wages and good benefits allowed us to have a consumer society and a vibrant downtown. Trickle-down economics destroyed it. Unless that changes, there’s no going back.

Mara Obelcz, Hatfield, [email protected]

I think it is just a sad commentary on what we have become as a society that the story of young scholar and athlete Noah Scurry being gunned down while getting into a car to go to school was relegated to The Inquirer’s Philly & Region section. What was on the front page? News of another Donald Trump sycophant trying to lie his way into a job, a murder that occurred in the ‘80s, how our mayor was played by two corporations, and, of course, Israel and Gaza news. I always thought of The Inquirer as a kind of barometer of what is important to everyday Philadelphians. I guess the killing of another youth just does not cut it anymore.

Vince Hughes, Middletown, Del., [email protected]

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