The Philadelphia Inquirer, 1/13/25: “When Mayor Cherelle L. Parker in September unveiled the terms of the agreement she reached with the 76ers to build a new arena in Center City, she vowed to go all out to help promote the project to the public and win City Council approval for it.

‘We are fighting back to back for this,’ Parker told reporters.

It turns out the 76ers did not have the mayor’s back.

In December, as Parker was traversing the city to sell the arena deal, the Sixers were meeting behind closed doors with Comcast — which through a subsidiary owns the Wells Fargo Center where the Sixers are tenants — to strike a different deal entirely: one that would keep the team in South Philadelphia and scuttle plans for a facility on East Market Street.

The team’s announcement this week that it would do just that represented a blow to Parker, who expended significant political capital in her first year in office to tout the Center City project as “the best financial deal ever entered into by a Philadelphia mayor for a local sports arena.”

After publicly expressing support for the project in September, she embarked on a citywide tour to promote the agreement. She aggressively lobbied City Council to pass legislation that would enable it, and she endured months of a public pressure campaign by the arena’s outspoken opponents.

Even before she took office a year ago, the arena was part of Parker’s political calculus. It was a major campaign issue during the Democratic primary for mayor in 2023, when she was backed by the building trades unions that supported the arena for the construction jobs it would create. She separated herself from progressive opponents by saying she would not ‘express reflexive opposition.’

In the end, some observers said she and the lawmakers who voted for the project look as if they were used as a bargaining chip in a dispute between the Sixers ownership and Comcast leaders.”

Read the full article here.