How Comcast Could Build Philly Live! AND Keep The Wachovia Spectrum

One year ago, Comcast-Spectacor announced plans to build Philly Live!, a retail/entertainment district designed by the Cordish Company to be constructed in the Philadelphia Sports Complex beside the Wachovia Center.

However, the plans did not include the Wachovia Spectrum, as it would be demolished to make way for Philly Live! to be completed. Nothing was definite, but the thought of losing the Spectrum was alarming.

This week, however, Comcast-Spectacor finally made it official: Ed Snider announced that after the 2008-2009 hockey and indoor soccer season, the Spectrum would close its doors.

Built in 1967 under Ed Snider to house a new Philadelphia NHL team, the Spectrum served as the home of the Philadelphia Flyers and Philadelphia Sixers from 1967 until 1996, when the Wachovia Center was built across the parking lot.

However, rather than being demolished upon completion of the new arena as arenas such as Boston Garden were, the Spectrum became the new home of two new teams: the Flyers' AHL affiliate Philadelphia Phantoms, and a new indoor soccer team named the Philadelphia KiXX.

Assumably, the Phantoms and KiXX will be relocated after the season, with the Wachovia Center assuming all of the Spectrum's other events.

However, upon looking over the plans for Philly Live!, I noticed something intriguing: the only section of Philly Live! that will be placed on the plot of land currently occupied by the Spectrum is a hotel—the hotel that might not even end up as part of the final plan. The rest of Philly Live! would be built on top parts of the current parking lot.

This begs the question, "With all the open space in Sports Complex, why does a hotel have to be placed where the Spectrum is?"

This picture illustrates where Philly Live! will be constructed. I (shoddily) outlined in red the areas where Philly Live! is slated to be built. In blue, I outlined another feasible location for the hotel that would allow it to be just as accessible to the rest of the Sports Complex and Philly Live! itself, without sacrificing the Spectrum.

Why couldn't Cordish and Comcast-Spectacor have planned the project in this way in the first place? This is not a situation where an abandoned building is being demolished to make way for something else, as was with the Vet, with Boston Garden, and as will be with Yankee Stadium. This is a situation where two teams are being evicted from a stadium that houses over 100 events a year to make way for something else, even though the plans could be very easily repositioned to disallow this.

So what is the point here? Is Comcast-Spectacor no longer interested in paying for the Spectrum's upkeep for two minor league teams and concerts and other events that could be assumed into the more modern Wachovia Center?

Comcast is a company that would seem to be loaded with money (judging by my cable/Internet/phone bill, at least). I would think that it would make more sense to move the hotel to the adjacent section of the parking lot and keep the Spectrum.

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