Inside Faye Anderson’s fight to bring transparency to 76ers’ push to build Center City arena

In June 2023, the city of Philadelphia’s Board of Ethics announced that it had fined a real estate firm over its lobbying efforts related to the proposed development of a $1.3 billion arena for the Philadelphia 76ers in Center City. 

The board found that the firm had violated ethics laws by filing expense reports that failed to disclose who it was lobbying for (the 76ers) and what the lobbying was about (the proposed arena).

News of the ethics violation caught the attention of Faye Anderson. A local advocate for government transparency and the founder of PHL Watchdog, Anderson had been closely following the 76ers’ plans to build a new arena on top of a Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority station near the city’s historic Chinatown neighborhood. She was one of many community members who voiced concerns about the proposed development — dubbed 76 Place at Market East — highlighting its potential impact on local residents, public transportation, and public safety, among other issues.

The ethics board’s report gave Anderson an idea: Now that she knew that lobbyists for the 76ers were meeting with city officials to push for the new arena, why not submit public records requests seeking access to documents that could shed more light on the organization’s interactions with local officials?

Starting in July 2023, Anderson filed separate requests with a number of city of Philadelphia departments as well as SEPTA for emails, reports, and other communications shared between the agencies and a wide range of city officials, developers, and others concerning the proposed arena. 

Those requests were denied. But rather than give up, Anderson decided to appeal the rejections to Pennsylvania’s Office of Open Records. She drafted her appeals at the same time she was attending a bootcamp for journalists of color run by the National Freedom of Information Coalition, which helped her craft the language she used to make her case to the OOR.

The appeals paid off. In both cases, the OOR ruled partially in Anderson’s favor, ordering the city and SEPTA to turn over some of the requested records. Instead of producing the documents, however, the city appealed to the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas, and SEPTA appealed to the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania. 

“What are they hiding?” Anderson recalled thinking after the agencies took her to court. “They thought, ‘She’s out here on her own.’ I guess they thought that would be the end of it. They had no idea that I had a lawyer.”

Arena plan dies, but fight for transparency continues

Paula Knudsen Burke, the Reporters Committee’s Local Legal Initiative attorney for Pennsylvania, began representing Anderson in the two cases in late 2023 and early 2024, respectively. Anderson said she was connected to Burke through the NFOIC bootcamp.

“It was such a relief,” Anderson said. Without free legal support from Burke and Abigail Sintim, the Reporters Committee’s NBCUniversal News Group Race Equity in Journalism Legal Fellow, “there’s no way I would have been able to figure out” how to fight the two cases in court. 

“They have been a joy to work with,” Anderson added. “I have complete confidence in them.”

While the cases against the City and SEPTA slowly played out in court, the 76ers made a major announcement in January: Instead of moving forward with plans to build an arena in Center City, the team said it was reversing course and partnering with Comcast Spectacor to build a new arena in South Philadelphia that it will share with the Philadelphia Flyers. The decision came less than a month after the city council voted to approve the controversial Center City arena. 

Following the team’s abrupt about-face, officials from the city asked Anderson if she still wanted the records she requested back in 2023.

“Why would I want to stop? They lost,” Anderson said. “They are the ones who are litigating, and if they want to end it, they can.”

The city has turned over some of the records Anderson requested, but it continues to withhold a number of documents, claiming in filings that it has produced all responsive records and that the withheld records are subject to numerous exemptions under Pennsylvania’s Right-to-Know Law. SEPTA, meanwhile, has argued in court filings that it does not have to produce the records Anderson requested because her requests lack the specificity required under the public records law.

In a recent opinion column for The Philadelphia Inquirer, Anderson wrote that “the public has the right to know how the 76ers arena debacle happened.” The piece notes that, despite city leaders’ statements that the team’s reversal came as a surprise, the plan had faced many hurdles, including strong pushback from SEPTA, which said in a report released last November — before the city council vote — that the development would “clearly cause significant disruption” and increase the agency’s costs.

“[F]ar more transparency was needed throughout the process — and it is still needed now,” Anderson wrote. 

It’s hard to know exactly what the records Anderson requested from the city and SEPTA will ultimately reveal. But she thinks they could answer some important questions about the interactions between city officials and representatives of the 76ers: Who was driving the conversations? What concerns, if any, did government employees raise about the development plans? And did private interests take over the public policymaking process?

As Anderson said, was this a review process or a “make-it-happen” process?

Learn more about City of Philadelphia Planning Commission v. Anderson.

Learn more about Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority v. Anderson.