The committee is in town on their "where should we hold our convention" tour. Aside from the fact that it would make it easy for me to attend, I don't particularly care if it's here, and I don't want a fairly broke city shelling out any money for it, but the truth is Philly probably is the best place in the country (that I'm aware of, of course, I am not omniscient) for such an event.
I've been to a few of these things. There's the main event, and the side events. The main event is the big thing, of course. You need a basketball arena. You need to make the security people happy, meaning for better or for worse they need to be able construct a security zone around the arena. That security zone ideally shouldn't, you know, shut down a big part of your city. You need people to be able to get to and from, and in and out of, the arena without too much (of course, there is a lot) hassle.
The arena isn't in the middle of the city here, but it is accessible by a quick subway ride. Security people for these things seem to be frightened by rail. They shut it down in Boston in 2004 and in Denver in 2008 (ridiculous given that buses are a much greater threat potential), but hopefully the station is just far enough away from the arena that they wouldn't do that here. A security zone might bug a few residential blocks in South Philly, but wouldn't be that much of a big deal.
Then you need to house a hell of a lot of people. I'm not sure if the exact numbers on Philly hotel rooms, but we have quite a lot within good range of the arena. And there's good transit out to Jersey and the burbs to add on to that.
Aside from the main event, there are side events. You need conference rooms and bars and restaurants to host all of the various delegate happy hours and interest group shindigs and whatnot. Philly has plenty of that within easy access of the arena.
