The Inglewood City Council has approved a plan that will displace 41 businesses and 305 workers to make room for a 1.6-mile automated people mover connecting the Metro K Line to the city’s burgeoning sports and entertainment district.
The city’s relocation plan, passed unanimously by the council on Tuesday, April 11, estimates it will cost roughly $12 million to move the businesses from their current locations. That total doesn’t include any of the cost to acquire the properties, the plan notes.
“We’re really trying to do everything we can to help people stay within the city and thrive through the process,” Lisa Trifileti, the consultant hired to guide the project, told council members.
The city has assigned “relocation specialists” to each business to assist with the application process and with finding a new home, though the plan states there is no guarantee “that the business owner will find a replacement site that it finds to be acceptable.”
Before voting on the plan, Councilman Eloy Morales pledged the city will “go above and beyond’ to help those affected.
“Whatever the law allows us to do, we’re going to take it as far as we can to help the businesses succeed,” he said.
The relocations are expected to “happen over an 18-to-24-month period” and only businesses occupying the space at the time that the city makes an offer for the property — which could begin later this year — will be eligible for the relocation funds, the approved plan states.
Most of the businesses affected are either at the Inglewood Center shopping plaza at Market Street and Florence Avenue, or at the Holly Park Plaza at Prairie Avenue and Hardy Street. Both locations are slated to be replaced with stations for the Inglewood Transit Connector, the automated rail system that will ferry visitors to The Kia Forum, SoFi Stadium and the Los Angeles Clippers’ future home, the Intuit Dome.
Amelia Hernandez, the owner of Selwyn Jewelers, said she is skeptical of the city’s promises. Selwyn is one of 21 businesses in the Inglewood Center that would be affected.
“It is going to affect more than 2,000 people who live within three blocks of this area, who walk here every day,” Hernandez said, noting that many of the plaza’s customers are elderly and live on fixed incomes.
She worries the project will “create chaos for the community” and leave business owners unable to recover.
One of the neighboring businesses went looking for a new space and found that rental rates were nearly double at other locations in the city, she said. “The prices are so astronomical, it’s a joke,” Hernandez said.
The ITC project, which has secured a little less than half of the $1.85 billion necessary, is being funded through federal, state and local grants.
At Tuesday’s meeting, the city council stressed that there are no plans to spend any city funds on the construction of the project. The cost of operating the transit system, however, has not been finalized yet.
The relocation plan was updated this month to remove an earlier proposal to take over a site used by a Vons grocery store on Manchester Boulevard. The city, in response to backlash from residents, removed the Vons from the project’s scope and altered the transit system’s first station to incorporate the maintenance facility originally slated for the Vons property.
Inglewood is expected to learn whether it will receive a federal grant covering the bulk of the funds needed for the project, roughly $1 billion, within the next few months. The city plans to begin making offers on the properties needed for the project by the end of this year and needs to begin construction in 2024 to meet a 2028 deadline to come online in time for the Summer Olympics.