Inglewood Mayor James T. Butts Jr. thinks of “Star Trek” when he describes the transformation expected for his city over the next five years. To the mayor, the new NFL stadium slated to open in less than a year is Inglewood’s version of the Genesis Device, a miraculous technology from 1982’s “The Wrath of Khan” that could turn a barren planet into utopia.
As Butts sees it, the more than $5 billion catalyst at the former site of Hollywood Park will uplift the area around the stadium and then cascade to replace blight in other neighborhoods as well.
“That’s what’s happening right now, the Genesis effect,” Butts said. “We were once a City of Champions and we can be that again.”
Construction to last years
Although the newly branded SoFi Stadium will open in the summer of 2020 as the home of the Los Angeles Rams and Chargers, construction will continue for years after the first kickoff. In phases, the Hollywood Park site — 3 1/2 times the acreage of Disneyland — will gain apartments, four public parks, a 300-room hotel and new retail spaces, including a spot for Inglewood beer maker Three Weavers Brewing.
At the edge of the property, the renovated Hollywood Park casino already hints at what this part of Inglewood might look like: sleek, modern and a bit unfamiliar.
Across the street, developer Izek Shomof is renovating former Airport Park View into a high-end, 180-room hotel with a design that fits in with the nearby casino. If the Los Angeles Clippers build their grand, oval-shaped arena in the lots surrounding the property, the hotel — opening in 2020 — will be perfectly situated for both football and basketball fans.
The Clippers’ $1 billion arena, still under negotiation and extremely controversial, would come online four years later and bring with it yet another hotel, a sports medicine clinic, a training complex and the Clippers corporate headquarters. The team is proposing $100 million in community benefits, including $75 million for affordable housing.
And just like that, blocks once defined by a horse racing track, by the Lakers and the Kings, will have an entirely new purpose and two — potentially three — new professional sports teams.
Changes dramatic
For people who may not have visited Inglewood since the Los Angeles Lakers and Kings left in 1999 — both after 32 seasons in the self-proclaimed City of Champions — the changes will be dramatic, Butts said.
“You would be totally dumbfounded,” he said.
Back then, Inglewood had a troubling crime rate, high unemployment, a Sizzler and the “Big Donut,” Butts said.
By 2011, the city was on the path to bankruptcy. The Inglewood Unified School District was taken over by the state in 2012 and is still struggling today.
“It was a city devoid of hope with no aspiration for the future,” said Butts, a former Inglewood cop who in 2018 was elected to a third term as mayor.
When he first took office, the city had double-digit homicide rates. This year, fewer murders have been committed in Inglewood than in Santa Monica or Pasadena, Butts said.
Unemployment dropped from 17.5 percent in 2011 to 4.7 percent in 2019.
Finally, this largely minority community of 110,000 is climbing back to its feet. Indeed, there’s new interest in a city long written off by outsiders and even maligned for its crime in pop culture.
The Girl Scouts of Greater L.A. chose to relocate its service center to Inglewood from Marina del Rey. The L.A. Philharmonic is building a $14.5 million, Frank Gehry-designed Youth Orchestra center on South La Brea Avenue. And a Metro station is expected to open next year in downtown Inglewood.
A national — and even world — spotlight will be on the city in years to come. Inglewood will host Super Bowl LVI in February 2022 and the College Football Playoff National Championship in January 2023. And during the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, the stadium is expected to host the opening and closing ceremonies, as well as soccer competition.
Some benefiting already
Locals already are feeling the growing momentum from the new developments.
Amin Badrudin has owned a 7-Eleven franchise across the street from Hollywood Park for 27 years. Over nearly three decades, the area has been a roller-coaster, from the heyday of the Lakers and Kings in the 1990s to the low point when the racetrack closed in 2013.
“We went from the Avenue of the Champions to the Avenue of Nobody Here,” Badrudin said.
But that’s turning around for his store. He has a flood of construction workers coming in night and day. He’s remodeled once already and says he’ll need to expand to keep up with the demand.
Badrudin renewed his lease for 20 years just before other businesses in the neighborhood were hit with hikes. Sales have tripled since the Forum reopened in 2014, he said.
“I’ve never had it this good,” he said. “And it’s only the beginning.”
Others don’t share optimism
There’s a sense of hope in Inglewood again, but for some locals, the rapid changes feel more like a death knell.
In “the Wrath of Khan,” the Genesis Device was treated as a doomsday weapon, because if improperly used, it would first destroy whatever existed on an already habitable world to create a more “ideal” paradise.
And in similar ways, some business owners and tenants in Inglewood fear the wave of progress brought by the stadium is overwriting their hard work by shuttering their businesses and pricing them out of the city they called home during the worst of times.
Uplift Inglewood Coalition, a organization fighting for local tenants rights since 2015, recently tried to stop the construction of the Clippers arena, arguing the land should go to affordable housing instead. A judge ruled against the group earlier this month, but Uplift has pledged to appeal.
‘Fair shot at opportunity’
D’Artagnan Scorza, a member of Uplift, said longtime residents are being displaced by investors trying to make a buck at the existing community’s expense. The city — long a haven for middle- and working-class African Americans and Latinos — is at risk of losing its soul if the people who lived there for decades can no longer afford it, he said.
“This fight is about our future and making sure we all have an opportunity to thrive,” Scorza said. “A fair shot at opportunity — that’s what Inglewood has represented for so many people of color for so long.”
Rents have surged and previously stagnant properties have changed hands as speculators gobble up land near the stadium along Prairie Avenue. There have been improvements throughout the area, but in some sections older buildings seemingly have been left to rot as the land beneath becomes more valuable with time. Several business owners say they expect many would become parking lots in the future.
It’s up in the air exactly how much of an economic boon the NFL will be for Inglewood, though the stadium certainly is the core of renewed interest in the city. Economists often argue that the projected benefits of stadiums are overstated. However, most stadiums don’t have two professional teams to fill up the schedule. Inglewood is not providing any direct money to the project or the proposed Clippers arena, a move Butts says is designed to ensure the sports venues’ owners bear the risk.
“If they walk away, they’re walking away from their own money,” Butts said. “Inglewood can never be left again.”
The stadium and the rest of the Hollywood Park project are expected to add 10,000 to 12,000 permanent jobs once construction ends. Roughly a third are prioritized for Inglewood residents, according to the city. The Clippers arena will employ about 800 people and is expected to have a similar requirement for local hires.
Still, opponents have criticized those jobs as not paying enough to offset the increased cost of living in Inglewood.
Property values soaring
A new analysis by PropertyShark indicates citywide housing prices jumped 63 percent from 2014 to 2018, one of the largest gains in the South Bay.
Butts and the Inglewood City Council turned to rent control to protect residents, initially capping increases at 5 percent per year and then later lowering it to 3 percent.
Businesses are hanging on as best they can in the hope that opening day will change their circumstances. Some expect they won’t survive until the 70,240-seat stadium is christened on July 25, 2020, for a Taylor Swift concert.
Lawrence Scott, owner of Scottle’s Gumbo and Grill on Prairie Avenue, was elated when he first heard about the stadium. His restaurant is within view of the construction and he imagined his buckets of gumbo at tailgating parties.
Then the seemingly never-ending roadwork started. A median cut him off from the northbound lanes of Prairie. The U.S. Navy veteran found himself sitting in an empty restaurant for weeks without customers. His regulars visited less because the traffic was too much of a hassle, he said.
There is growing concern about the future traffic to and from the stadium, the Forum and the NBA arena.
City officials say they will be able to handle the influx of people just as they did when the racetrack was booming. They are already preparing for the Taylor Swift concert. That median, Butts said, is slated for removal, too.
‘Never been this stressed’
In the last two years, Scott racked up credit card debt and took loans from family and friends. A new owner purchased the building and let his lease expire. Scott expects his rent will go up, or the owner will tear the place down any day now. He can’t afford to move and he can’t survive until the Rams’ first home game, he said.
“Something that looked like it was going to be a great help ended up being the enemy,” Scott said. “I’ve had the business 35 years, and I’ve never been this stressed.”
A few blocks away, Blessed Tropical Jamaican Cuisine is one of the few businesses still open in the complex that also houses Badrudin’s 7-Eleven. Shawn Weir, the owner and cook for the past 11 years, said his monthly rent has jumped from $2,600 to $4,200. But sales have increased steadily, too, and he’s even landed catering jobs at the stadium.
He’s optimistic he can make it work, even if the benefits haven’t been fully realized yet.
“Hopefully, it gets better,” Weir said. “I’ve got to think positive, not negative, that’s just me.”
Weir, Scott and Badrudin all mentioned other restaurants, cafes and shops that were struggling or had already closed because of the shift in the local market. Longtime staple Ms. B’s M&M Soul Food announced earlier this year that it was opening a second location in Hawthorne because of uncertainty about its original restaurant in Inglewood.
Mayor: Some won’t survive
Butts doesn’t shy away from the fact that some local businesses will not survive the transition.
Here, the mayor takes a Darwinian view. Restaurants and shops that have a “product that people want” will do better from the influx of people, he argues. “Not everyone wants to spend top dollar for high-end dining,” he said.
He doesn’t see the entertainment district as the showcase for his city’s local flavor. It will be more commercial, more mainstream and more self-contained, he says. Visitors to the stadium won’t need to cross the street to get food, drinks or to even shop once the retail components come online.
And that’s typically what happens at other stadiums as well, according to sports economist John Vrooman of Vanderbilt University. Purchases at the stadium tend to come at the expense of local spending elsewhere.
“The indirect spin-offs are also small because most of the spending leaks out of the economy like a sieve and so the urban/regional multipliers are usually zero, zip … nada,” Vrooman said in 2016.
The city is making an effort to secure spaces at the new stadium for local vendors, too. But those spots will not be cheap. “If it fits and it’s local, it’s a win-win for the community,” Butts said.
Inglewood has seen a 100 percent increase in the number of business licenses issued, according to the mayor.
Downtown also expects rebirth
If the Prairie Avenue corridor is to become Inglewood’s entertainment district, then Market Street is expected to become it’s soul. Inglewood’s concept for the future of its downtown includes a proposal to close Market Street north of Regent Street to create a pedestrian-only area that would rival the charm of Old Pasadena. Butts sees its a complementary to the more commercial district around the stadium.
People who want to see authentic Inglewood and local ambiance will head to Market Street, he said.
The city is trying to secure funding for an automated people mover that would connect the Prairie Avenue venues to Market Street and the soon-to-be-opened Metro station in downtown Inglewood. The 1.8-mile transit system, however, has an estimated $600 million price tag.
The stops along the way would also serve an influx of new residents. Hollywood Park has 2,500 housing units in the works. Another 228 town homes are now on sale on the north end of Prairie Avenue, with prices ranging from $850,000 to $1 million.
Scorza, of Uplift Inglewood, said early proposals he has reviewed for Market Street suggest developers want to bring in yoga studios and other businesses that seem more tailored to a gentrified future, rather than Inglewood’s present.
“It’s like a slow-moving train that is picking up speed,” Scorza said. “It feels like it’s going to all be bad pretty soon. In another five years, Inglewood will not be what it is today.”
