Chester PA Lands Soccer Franchise ??

Governor Ed Rendell was in Chester, Pa. on Thursday afternoon, taking the wraps off a public-private development deal that could lead to a Major League Soccer franchise in the shadow of the Commodore Barry Bridge. ***$47 million will come from the state ($25 million of which is contingent on the MSL franchise being awarded), leveraged with $30 million more from Delaware County and another $10 million likely from the DRPA. All that will be matched 4-to-1 all told by private investment.

Bottom line: a $414-million project to include not just an 18,000-seat soccer stadium -- assuming the league expands here -- but retail and office space, housing, even a supermarket down the line.

The planned stadium and hoped-for franchise would be the latest boost for the struggling city of Chester. A slots casino opened in the city in January as part of a harness racing track. The governor says that along with the year-old Harrah’s casino just up the road...
"...this development will, I absolutely believe, guarantee that Chester will become one of the first class cities in Pennsylvania -- a great place to live, to work, and to play." And even if pro soccer doesn’t come here, developers say, the rest of the project is a "go." In the past, the league has expressed interest in the Philadelphia area. But the St. Louis suburb of Collinsville is also in the running for the expansion team. This article was written by by KYW's 1060: David Madden .

It has now been reported that Chester will now have a MLS new franchise! This is for a City that does not EVEN HAVE A SUPERMARKET.

Here is a little history on Chester: Chester began losing its mainstay shipyard and automobile manufacturing jobs as early as the 1960s, causing the population to be halved in fifty years from 65,000 in 1950 to under 37,000 in 2000. Poverty and crime rose as the city declined. In 1995, the state designated Chester as a financially distressed municipality. Soon thereafter, the city's schools ranked last among the state's 501 districts, leading Pennsylvania education officials in 2001 to hire the for-profit Edison Schools to run the local school district for three years.[1][citation needed] Even the site Penn's Landing, which marks William Penn's first landing in the Province, sold its naming rights to the waterfront maintenance corporation in Philadelphia, whose memorial now marks William Penn's first landing in that city.

I only spend time in Chester during the daylight hours and I have taken a few wrong turns taking me to some scary areas that should not exist in this country but they do. So it will be an interesting future watching the redevelopment of Chester, PA with it's racing casino and a soccer stadium but no supermarket.