FC Greater Philadelphia: A Kick in the World Class Direction

Imagine that I hand you a ten-dollar bill.

If I told you that unless you hand back the ten-dollar bill the Eagles will leave Philadelphia, would you return the money? If you’re like most native Philadelphians, you consider the Eagles extended family members and wouldn’t think twice.

Now imagine I tell you that unless you give back the ten-dollar bill, the region will lose out on its bid for a professional soccer team. Would you still comply?

On Thursday, it became official: Pennsylvania’s collective ten-dollar bills will finance construction of a stadium to be built on the Chester Waterfront for Philadelphia’s new Major League Soccer team. More than half of the $115 million stadium will be publicly funded, including $10 million from the Delaware River Port Authority, $30 million from Delaware County, and $47 million from the Commonwealth.

Public financing of a private stadium has ignited a fierce debate on the appropriate use of the taxpayer money. Proponents argue that the public funding should be viewed as an investment. The stadium promises to serve as an anchor for a planned $385 million waterfront development project that could create thousands of jobs, which would support millions of dollars in annual personal earnings and tax revenues. If realized, the project could revitalize a city otherwise mired in abject poverty.

Skeptics discredit grand economic impact estimations, citing retrospective analyses that universally have found limited economic value in taxpayer-funded stadiums. They argue further that stadiums are too infrequently used to truly serve as a neighborhood anchor.

The debate comes on the heels of Pennsylvania’s $1 billion investment to replace Philadelphia’s dilapidated Veterans Stadium and Pittsburgh’s aging Three Rivers Stadium with four state-of-the-art facilities. The upgrades assured that the cities’ football and baseball teams would remain in state and competitive for generations to come.

Economists were critical of using tax dollars to finance Pennsylvania’s four new football and baseball stadiums, an investment that amounted to over 10 times the cost of Chester’s new stadium. Nevertheless, taxpayers hardly batted an eye. Clearly, elements other than direct economic impact drove public opinion. The investment wasn’t viewed in bricks and mortar or jobs, but in protecting civic identity.

Civic identity was at issue last year in Greater Philadelphia’s failed bid for the U.S. nomination for the 2016 Olympics. The U.S. Olympic Committee explained that the region’s greatest weakness was not in its bid, but in its global identity. Greater Philadelphia’s identity, the USOC found, was not negative. It was non-existent.

The Olympic experience encouraged Greater Philadelphia’s civic leadership to prioritize regional visibility. Subsequent efforts have attracted the 2008 U.S. Olympic Trials in table tennis and gymnastics, two sports with worldwide appeal. These events have helped to elevate Greater Philadelphia’s global profile.

The Economy League has transitioned from a leadership position in the Olympic effort to initiate “World Class Greater Philadelphia,” a visioning process dedicated to making Greater Philadelphia a world class region. World class regions have world class identities. A world class identity requires a worldwide identity.

Thanks to significant taxpayer investment, Greater Philadelphia’s identity now includes soccer, the world’s most popular sport. Soccer’s global reach will not elevate Greater Philadelphia’s identity overnight. But the World Class initiative is not intended to transform Greater Philadelphia overnight. It’s about developing a shared vision around an actionable plan to be achieved over time. To the extent that soccer improves Greater Philadelphia’s global visibility, the region’s successful bid is one free kick towards a world-class future.

Many of you would have hesitated to hand back the ten-dollar bill to bring soccer to the region. But would you invest ten dollars in a world-class Greater Philadelphia?