I'm guessing they didn't want to do it in Philly because Viking Hall is, with all due respect, a pretty crappy arena, and it holds around 1500 people (not to mention WWE is realistic about what kind of crowd an ECW show would draw, and most other venues in Philly are too big for ECW). The Hammerstein Ballroom at the Manhattan Center is a very nice building (it was the original home of Raw) and it holds around 2500, I think, not to mention ECW did many popular shows there in their final months; in fact, I remember one of the major New York newspapers (the Daily News or the Post, I'm not sure which) ran it as a front-page story when ECW did their first show there.