City Council members approved the 76ers Center City arena proposal in a preliminary vote

Philadelphia City Council members voted Thursday morning to give preliminary approval to the 76ers’ controversial proposal to build an arena in Center City, likely ending a 2½-year saga that pitted the NBA franchise against leaders in neighboring Chinatown and paving the way for a transformation of the Market East corridor when the arena opens in 2031.

The legislation needed to authorize the $1.3 billion project is not expected to get a final vote until Council’s Dec. 19 meeting, its last of the year. But Thursday’s vote in a meeting of the Committee of the Whole, which includes all Council members, all but guaranteed its passage.

Thursday’s vote provided a major legislative achievement for Mayor Cherelle L. Parker to cap off her first year in office and a significant win for the politically powerful building trades unions that supported the project and stand to gain thousands of jobs. Conversely, it’s a loss for some leaders of the city’s progressive movement who opposed the arena from the start and for Comcast, which owns the 76ers’ current home, the Wells Fargo Center, through a subsidiary.

Parker on Thursday called the vote “monumental,” saying in a statement the benefits will extend “far beyond” basketball.

The mayor also thanked every member who voted for the legislation by name, saying she’s “grateful to each of them for their legislative leadership.”

As protesters chanted and shouted, the committee voted 12-4 to approve the arena legislation, with Councilmembers Jamie Gauthier, Rue Landau, Nicolas O’Rourke, and Jeffery “Jay” Young Jr. opposed. Councilmember Kendra Brooks, who also opposed the arena, was not present.

» READ MORE: How Philly City Council members voted on the Sixers arena

Negotiations between the 76ers and Council members dragged on for weeks, and the final sticking point was the size of the project’s community benefits agreement, which is supposed to fund measures that could reduce the burden of the project on neighboring businesses and residents, especially in Chinatown.

The 76ers initially offered to provide $50 million for the CBA, but lawmakers pressed the team to go further. The Save Chinatown Coalition called for the team to pay $300 million, a plan that was embraced by lawmakers critical of the project, and Council President Kenyatta Johnson at one point dangled the possibility of passing the legislation with a $100 million CBA, even if the team didn’t agree to that level of funding.

In the end, the legislation approved Thursday in committee included a $60 million CBA, representing a win for the 76ers in the final stages of negotiations.

After the vote, a 76ers spokesperson thanked lawmakers but said the team would need to go over the last-minute amendments.

”We appreciate City Council advancing these bills,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “This is an important next step in building 76 Place. We are reviewing the amendments that were added today to ensure they align with our understanding of our agreement with the City.”

Protesters supporting Chinatown filled Council chambers Thursday morning, many wearing red shirts with the words “No Arena.“ Xu Lin, owner of Bubblefish restaurant in Chinatown, said after the vote that the arena deal “will only make billionaires richer” — referring to 76ers owners Josh Harris, David Blitzer, and David Adelman — and said it may threaten his family’s ability to stay in the neighborhood.

“They will not be able to afford to live in the area anymore,” he said. ”I want my kids to point at Chinatown and say, ‘This is my community. My roots are here.’”

» READ MORE: As Chinatown advocates see ‘betrayal’ in 76ers arena win, others see economic opportunity for Philadelphia

The saga that led to Thursday’s vote will be remembered as a clash between a sports franchise that has called Philly home since 1963 and a neighborhood that has been a haven for the city’s Asian American community for 150 years. But it also saw a battle of billionaires, with the 76ers owners at odds with Comcast.

Hoping to move into a home of their own when their lease at the Comcast Spectacor-owned Wells Fargo Center expires in 2031, the 76ers in 2020 first proposed building a new arena at Penn’s Landing, but the team lost out to a mixed-use project that was more in line with what city planners had envisioned for the site.

Two years later, the team unveiled its plan to build an arena that would replace the western third of the Fashion District shopping mall, with a footprint from 10th to 11th Streets and Market to Filbert Streets.

Johnson said he had hoped to get more money out of the Sixers to aid Chinatown and other programs championed by Council members but was ultimately proud of the final deal.

”I would love if the Sixers went higher than $60 [million], but at the end of the day it was more than the $50 [million], right?” Johnson said. “They did move to 60. And we had a chance in the CBA to address a variety of different issues that particular members had concerns about.”

The vote was a defining moment of the first year of Johnson’s tenure as Council’s leader. The arena, he said, may create an “economic boom in Center City.”

”We’re the largest poor city in America, and this is an opportunity for us to build generational wealth, but also an opportunity to revitalize Center City,” Johnson said. “We also had opportunity to balance the interests of all parties who are concerned regarding this proposal before us.”

After the committee approved the legislation, it received a first reading later in the day during Council’s regular Thursday session, allowing it to come up for a final vote at next Thursday’s meeting. If any additional amendments are needed once the legislation is approved in committee, it would complicate the timeline because regular Council rules require an additional week for bills that get amended on the floor to be approved.

The arena is scheduled to open in time for the 2031-32 NBA season, and demolition is scheduled to begin on the East Market Street site in 2026.

The team pitched the project as potentially transformative for the long-struggling Market East corridor and said it would be “privately financed” with no city taxpayer support.

Those claims have since been complicated. The 76ers have said they are open to state and federal subsidies. The city has agreed to allow the team to make payments in lieu of taxes, or PILOTs, instead of paying regular property and use and occupancy taxes, an arrangement that will save the 76ers millions per year. And SEPTA has said that once the arena opens — on top of Regional Rail’s Jefferson Station — it will cost the cash-strapped transit agency $20 million per year or more.

But the most high-profile opposition to the arena has come from Chinatown residents and advocates, who have been protesting the project since shortly after it was unveiled in 2022. The neighborhood’s borders abut the proposed site.

Landau said she voted against the project because the CBA did not do enough to prevent the displacement of businesses and residents in Chinatown.

“We were ready to get behind this if there was enough to protect Chinatown,” Landau said. “And it just wasn’t there in the end.”

The civic association for Washington Square West, the other residential neighborhood that borders the project, also opposed it.

A series of public relations blunders put the project’s political prospects in doubt on several occasions, and the team has publicly flirted with accepting an offer to move to the Camden waterfront with the aid of $400 million in New Jersey taxpayer incentives.

But the chances for approval of the Center City proposal have looked strong ever since Parker emerged from the crowded 2023 Democratic primary for mayor.

The 76ers appeared to have given money to a “dark money” group backing fifth-place finisher Jeff Brown, so the new mayor does not owe her win to the 76ers. But her campaign benefited immensely from heavy spending by the building trades unions, which are led by her longtime ally Ryan Boyer, leader of the Laborers’ District Council.

The trades unions stand to gain years of steady work and have played a key role in generating momentum for the arena.

“We’re going to rebuild Market and put people to work,” said Mark Lynch, business manager of Local 98 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. “We’re going to give them jobs, careers, health care.”

Staff writer Layla A. Jones contributed to this article.