FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 12/04/2024

The Asian American Chamber of Commerce of Greater Philadelphia AACCGP stands with the hundreds of businesses we represent in Chinatown and urges the City Council to negotiate for a larger Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) amount, as the current $50 million CBA is grossly inadequate. The data provided in the city's community impact study clearly estimates that nearly half of Chinatown's businesses will face negative impacts from the arena. While the developers proposed to make an average PILOT/U&O payment of $6.0M/year over 30 years which makes $5.5M/year in year-one of operations and increases 10% every 10 years, based on our assessment and data collected from a recent Small Business Owners' survey, we agree with Councilmembers Brooks and O'Rourke that a substantially higher investment from the team would compensate for the property taxes that the city and school distric are foregoing as a result of the plan to lease the arena site to the 76ers. As such, the Chamber supports the proposal made by At-Large Councilmembers Kendra Brooks and Nicolas O'Rourke which advocates for minimum of $300M CBA amount.