Gooooooooal? -- NO

For someone who has played soccer since I was 8 years old you would think the idea of a professional soccer team coming to Philadelphia would thrill me to no end.

Well, kinda.

AEG sports management group, a nationally recogonized sports/ business entity has plans for a new MLS team: soccer-only stadium, and all... for the Chester Waterfront.

http://www.philly.com/philly/sports/20071210_Daring_to_dream_of_soccer_stadium.html

My problem isn't with the location, as much as it is the reasoning. AEG envisions new shops, restaurants, and residences/ condos; providing an economic shot-in-the-arm to the city of Chester.

I don't see it.

Ask anyone who goes to Campbell's Field, or the Aquarium, or the E-Center in Camden if they live there; the answer is always the same. No. They come in, enjoy the event while secluded from the "real" city, and then they leave.

You don't revive a struggling area by disenfrachising the people who live there even more than they already are. The number of jobs that will be created are insignificant, and those jobs are usually part-time at best. Any long-lasting changes to the city need to occur with financial and political support of the people who already live and work there. Establish rec. fields, supplement local businesses with reduced taxes, and provide better infrastructure (this does not include monitored/ gated parking garages at the base of new condo buildings). This is where the $30 to $45 million in State subsidies should go- not into construction of a Stadium that would host approx. 20 matches a year. Only after a city is capable of supporting it's own should it have to face the challenge of supporting others coming in. If you don't, then you end up with one of two things happening:

• The "new city" can not sustain itself and ultimately fails.
• The "new city" works, but at the expense of the people already living there; usually by pricing them out of the neighborhood they have grown up in. In that case you have not solved anything-- you've simply relocated it.

Believe me-- right now the last thing someone living in downtown Chester needs coming in is another place to get some A&F and a Starbucks coffee.