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![]() The South Philadelphia Sports Complex as it existed in 2003–2004. Clockwise from top right: Citizens Bank Park, Lincoln Financial Field, Wells Fargo Center (formerly the site of John F. Kennedy Stadium), the Spectrum (razed in 2011), and Veterans Stadium (imploded in 2004). Interstate 95, which passes the complex, can be seen at the bottom right corner of the photo. | |
Address | Philadelphia, Pennsylvania United States |
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Coordinates | 39°54′4″N75°10′19″W / 39.90111°N 75.17194°W |
Facilities | Wells Fargo Center Lincoln Financial Field Citizens Bank Park Xfinity Live! |
The South Philadelphia Sports Complex is the home of four major Philadelphia professional sports teams. The complex is located in South Philadelphia and is the site of the Wells Fargo Center, home arena for the Philadelphia 76ers and Philadelphia Flyers, Lincoln Financial Field, home field for the Philadelphia Eagles, Citizens Bank Park, home field for the Philadelphia Phillies, and Xfinity Live!, a sports retail and entertainment center.
The South Philadelphia Sports Complex was also once home to three iconic and since demolished stadiums: John F. Kennedy Stadium (1926–1992), Veterans Stadium (1971–2004), and the Spectrum (1967–2011). Prior to its development, the region that now is the South Philadelphia Sports Complex was a shanty town known as "The Neck" of the undeveloped League Island area, formerly Passyunk Township. Oregon Avenue was the southern border end of the city up to the 1920s.
As early as April 1914, "a plot of ground on Broad Street near the Navy Yard was also considered" as a location on which to erect a stadium for the Army–Navy Game with a capacity greater than Franklin Field and Shibe Park, both of which had not yet been expanded in 1914. [1]
In 1926 the City selected the area south of Oregon Avenue for the 1926 Sesquicentennial International Exposition and developed the large river delta land south of Oregon Avenue. South Broad Street was a grand European-styled boulevard surrounded by massive exhibit buildings and structures that were to be a testament to American science, culture, and progress for the future. Following the close of the celebration of these 150 years of American Independence on the Avenue of the Colonies of South Broad Street came quick total demolition except of the stadium.
Prior to building Veterans Stadium across Packer Avenue north of JFK Stadium was family entertainment of a bowling alley, and a drive-in theater that was a venue created by Camden, New Jersey, chemical company magnate Richard M. Hollingshead, Jr., whose family owned and operated the R.M. Hollingshead Corporation chemical plant in Camden and that peaked in popularity in the 1950s and 1960s.
NRG station on SEPTA's Broad Street Line is within walking distance of the three venues in the area. It was once known as Pattison Station until it was renamed AT&T Station under a naming rights agreement in 2010; the naming rights passed to NRG in 2018. NRG station is served by local trains along with special Sports Express trains making limited stops along the line before and after events at the Sports Complex. [2] SEPTA City Bus routes 4 and 17 provide service to the Sports Complex. [3]
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Formation | 2002 |
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Type | 501(c)(3) |
Headquarters | 3300 South 7th Street Philadelphia, Pennsylvania |
Region served | South Philadelphia Sports Complex |
Website | http://www.scssd.org/ |
The Sports Complex Special Services District (SCSSD)is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization in Philadelphia that was established in the year 2002 to minimize the impact of concentrating major sporting and entertainment facilities in a geographic area adjacent to established Philadelphia residential neighborhoods of South Philadelphia.
The mission is to protect community interests, improve neighborhood quality of life, and promote efficient operation within the neighborhood(s) of adjacent sports venues of the Citizen's Ball Park, Lincoln Financial Field, multi-event Wachovia Center and the former Spectrum Arena(demolished 2010). The mission is fulfilled by providing support and special services to the residential neighborhood(s) in close proximity to the South Philadelphia Sports Complex. [4]
Primary areas of supportive improvements include attention to traffic calming, directional signage, and orderly traffic patterns and flows, removal of an abundance of excess curbside street and sidewalk trash and debris with dedicated cleaning teams (other than normal City provided services), street tree care for over a thousand trees, landscape beautification of several public medial areas and walkways, recreational facility upgrades, upgrades to street lighting and traffic light enhancements, public safety initiatives, conducts special community events, attends public and civil meetings, circulates a calendar and newsletters, and provides announcements of high traffic events scheduled at the Complex so neighbors can plan family events and travel with knowledge of conditions in advance.
The boundary of the Special District is bounded by Oregon Avenue to the north, 7th Street to the east, I-95 to the south, and 20th Street to the west. It includes the Philadelphia neighborhoods of Packer Park and Marconi Plaza that are represented on the board by four neighborhood districts.
The Special District does not include the "Xfinity Live!" dining entertainment built on the former site of the Spectrum Arena. The impact of traffic and patrons have raised concerns by the adjacent neighborhood community and the parkland of FDR Park seeking to have a mechanism to deal with it in an organized structure, similar to the SCSSD.
The Sesqui-Centennial International Exposition of 1926 was a world's fair in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Its purpose was to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the signing of the United States Declaration of Independence, and the 50th anniversary of the 1876 Centennial Exposition.
The Wells Fargo Center is a multi-purpose indoor arena located in Philadelphia. It serves as the home of the Philadelphia Flyers of the National Hockey League (NHL), the Philadelphia 76ers of the National Basketball Association (NBA), and the Philadelphia Wings of the National Lacrosse League (NLL). The arena lies at the southwest corner of the South Philadelphia Sports Complex, which includes Lincoln Financial Field, Citizens Bank Park, and Xfinity Live!.
John F. Kennedy Stadium, formerly Philadelphia Municipal Stadium and Sesquicentennial Stadium, was an open-air stadium in Philadelphia that stood from 1926 to 1992. The South Philadelphia stadium was on the east side of the far southern end of Broad Street at a location now part of the South Philadelphia Sports Complex. Designed by the architectural firm of Simon & Simon in a classic 1920s style with a horseshoe seating design that surrounded a track and football field, at its peak the facility seated in excess of 102,000 people. Bleachers were later added at the open (North) end. The shape of the stadium resembles the horseshoe configuration of Harvard Stadium built in 1903.
The Spectrum was an indoor arena in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Opened in September 1967 as part of what is now known as the South Philadelphia Sports Complex, after several expansions of its seating capacity it accommodated 18,168 for basketball and 17,380 for ice hockey, arena football, indoor soccer, and box lacrosse.
The Broad Street Line (BSL), also known as the Broad Street subway (BSS), Orange Line, or Broad Line, is a subway line owned by the city of Philadelphia and operated by the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA). The line runs primarily north-south from the Fern Rock Transportation Center in North Philadelphia through Center City Philadelphia to NRG station at Pattison Avenue in South Philadelphia; the latter station provides access to the stadiums and arenas for the city's major professional sports teams at the South Philadelphia Sports Complex, about a quarter mile away. It is named for Broad Street, under which the line runs for almost its entire length.
Transportation in Philadelphia involves the various modes of transport within the city and its required infrastructure. In addition to facilitating intracity travel, Philadelphia's transportation system connects Philadelphia to towns of its metropolitan area and surrounding areas within the Northeast megalopolis.
South Philadelphia, nicknamed South Philly, is the section of Philadelphia bounded by South Street to the north, the Delaware River to the east and south, and the Schuylkill River to the west. A diverse working-class community of many neighborhoods, South Philadelphia is well-known for its large Italian-American population, but it also contains large Asian American, Irish-American, African-American, and Latino populations.
Southwest Center City (SWCC), also known as Graduate Hospital, is a neighborhood that is located in South Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, bordering Center City Philadelphia. The neighborhood is bordered on the north by South Street, on the south by Washington Avenue, on the west by the Schuylkill River, and on the east by Broad Street.
Broad Street is a major arterial street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The street runs for approximately 13 miles (21 km), beginning at the intersection of Cheltenham Avenue on the border of Cheltenham Township and the West/East Oak Lane neighborhoods of North Philadelphia to the Philadelphia Navy Yard in South Philadelphia. It is Pennsylvania Route 611 along its entire length with the exception of its northernmost part between Old York Road and Pennsylvania Route 309 and the southernmost part south of Interstate 95.
Walnut–Locust/Avenue of the Arts is a subway station on SEPTA's Broad Street Line in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The station is located between Walnut Street and Locust Street at 200 South Broad Street in the Avenue of the Arts district of Center City, Philadelphia.
NRG station is the southern terminus of SEPTA's Broad Street Line, located at 3600 South Broad Street, at the intersection with Pattison Avenue in the South Philadelphia area of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The station's naming rights were sold to NRG Energy in 2018. Previously, naming rights were sold to AT&T for eight years.
Marconi Plaza is an urban park square located in South Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. The plaza was named to recognize the 20th-century cultural identity in Philadelphia of the surrounding Italian-American enclave neighborhood and became the designation location of the annual Columbus Day Parade.
Comcast Spectacor is an American sports and entertainment company based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It owns the Philadelphia Flyers of the National Hockey League, the Maine Mariners of the ECHL, the Philadelphia Wings of the National Lacrosse League, the Seoul Infernal of the Overwatch League, and formerly owned the Philadelphia 76ers of the National Basketball Association. The company owns and manages the Wells Fargo Center and formerly managed the Spectrum in South Philadelphia, plus several community skating rinks in the Philadelphia region. The Comcast SportsNet (CSN) regional sports networks were also owned by Comcast Spectacor prior to parent company Comcast's acquisition of NBCUniversal in January 2011; CSN is now operated through NBC Sports.
U.S. Route 13 (US 13) is a United States Numbered Highway running from Fayetteville, North Carolina, north to Morrisville, Pennsylvania. The route runs for 49.359 miles (79.436 km) through the Delaware Valley in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. The route enters the state from Delaware in Marcus Hook, Delaware County. It continues northeast through Delaware County, passing through the city of Chester before heading through suburban areas along Chester Pike to Darby. US 13 enters the city of Philadelphia on Baltimore Avenue and runs through West Philadelphia to University City, where it turns north along several city streets before heading east across the Schuylkill River along Girard Avenue. The route turns north and heads to North Philadelphia, where it runs northeast along Hunting Park Avenue. US 13 becomes concurrent with US 1 on Roosevelt Boulevard, continuing into Northeast Philadelphia. US 13 splits southeast on a one-way pair of streets before heading northeast out of the city on Frankford Avenue. The route continues into Bucks County as Bristol Pike, heading northeast to Bristol, where it turns into a divided highway. US 13 becomes a freeway in Tullytown and continues north to its terminus at US 1 in Falls Township, near Morrisville. US 13 roughly parallels Interstate 95 (I-95) through its course in Pennsylvania.
Packer Park is a neighborhood in the South Philadelphia section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States that originally included 1,000 homes built in two unique builder developments, of Packer Park in the 1950s and Brinton Estates during the 1990s. It is now one of four residential communities to be designated as Packer Park. The original footprint community is also one of four adjacent communities that form Philadelphia's Sports Complex Special Services District. The approximate boundaries are Packer Avenue to the north, Hartranft Street to the south including FDR Park farther south, Broad Street to the east known as the Southern Parkway, and I-76 to the far west. Packer Park has been considered home to one of the most organized community groups in the South Philadelphia region.
SEPTA Route 38 is a bus and former streetcar route operated by the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States.
Aquarama Aquarium Theater of the Sea, also known as Aquarama, was a unique 1960s aquarium attraction located in South Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, at the intersection of Broad Street and Hartranft Street, just west of the South Philadelphia Sports Complex, south of Marconi Plaza, north of FDR Park, Philadelphia Naval Shipyard and Philadelphia Naval Hospital. It adjoined the east border of the newly developed residential neighborhood Packer Park at 3300 South Broad Street.
Poplar is a neighborhood in Lower North Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. It is located north of Callowhill, between Spring Garden/Fairmount and Northern Liberties, bounded roughly by Girard Avenue to the north, North Broad Street to the west, Spring Garden Street to the south, and 5th Street to the east. The neighborhood is predominantly residential, with commercial frontage on Broad Street and Girard Avenue and some industrial facilities to the west of the railroad tracks along Percy St. and 9th St.
Xfinity Live! Philadelphia is a dining and entertainment complex located at the corner of 11th and Pattison Avenue in the South Philadelphia Sports Complex on the former site of the Spectrum. It has become a media hub for various live broadcasts.
76 Place at Market East is a proposed indoor arena in Center City Philadelphia. It would be the future home of the Philadelphia 76ers of the National Basketball Association (NBA) and is planned to open in 2031. The arena would be located in Center City on the site of Fashion District Philadelphia near the Market–Frankford Line and Jefferson Station. 76 Place is expected to be privately funded at a cost of $1.3 billion by 76ers owner Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment (HBSE), with real estate developer and HBSE limited partner David Adelman leading the project.