Greg and Terry Dulan are anxiously awaiting the game to be played. Super Bowl.
they think it will bring a great economic stimulus for Inglewood and it will be a boost to his small business, Dulan’s Soul Food Kitchen, a restaurant that opened in 1999 and has been a beloved city icon ever since.
“With the big game right around the corner, we expect business to do very well,” said Greg Dulan sitting next to Terry, his brother, in a new wing of the restaurant that they plan to open in time for an avalanche of clients that will arrive on the weekend of the Super Bowl. “But I was joking with my brother that maybe we should sell spots to fans who want to use our parking lot that day. We could make a lot of money and we wouldn’t have to open, so we could watch the game.”
That kind of optimism was palpable as I spoke with residents who have been shocked by the arrival of SoFi Stadium, which was completed in 2020 at a cost of nearly $5 billion. It rises like a spaceship shaped like metallic arches next to the Forum, a still-standing arena that was home to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s and Magic Johnson’s Lakers, as well as Wayne Gretzky’s Kings before both teams moved to downtown Los Angeles in 1999.
Along with the stadium came the NFL Rams and Los Angeles Chargers. Next up: the NBA Clippers, who are building a stadium near SoFi, scheduled for completion in 2024. Professional sports have triggered evolution and nervousness.
“Inglewood is a dynamic city, on the move,” Greg Dulan, 63, told me.
However, Greg Dulan admits that all the talk about the change in Inglewood has raised concerns: gentrification.
In the 20th century, Inglewood went from being a mostly white Ku Klux Klan stronghold during the 1920s to a city that struggled with desegregation during the 1970s to a majority black population during the 1990s. Inglewood came to symbolize the black mecca through its representation in popular culture, through films about personal growth such as “The Wood” and “Dope” or as the home of the main character of the HBO series “Insecure”, although now more than 50 percent of the population is Latino.
Not long ago, however, this city of nearly 110,000 located next to Los Angeles International Airport was so strapped for cash that it struggled to provide basic services. In 2012, the state of California took over its school system. Except for a few struggling stores and longtime gems like Dulan’s — where customers line up in long lines outside to sample popular dishes like fried chicken, sugar-coated sweet potatoes and slow-cooked oxtail — downtown it felt like a ghost town.
“Over the next few years, I do not know what is going to happenGreg Dulan commented.
I’ve spent quite a bit of time in Inglewood, because I’ve been reporting on the area for years, but before I walked its streets again last week, I hadn’t been back since 2015. The growth was impressive: Not just the stadium, but the light rail line, the Frank Gehry-designed youth philharmonic hall, newly built apartments, and trendy cafes and restaurants that dot the downtown corridor next to many shuttered businesses.
Here’s some of what I learned from some residents who balanced their optimism with valid concern: around the Super Bowl:
Jennifer y Madison Tyler
Educator and student, 54 and 20 years old, respectively. Inglewood residents since 2008.
“In 2008, 2009 and 2010, if I saw someone walking down the street who wasn’t black or brown, I thought, ‘Hmm, he must be lost,’” said Jennifer Tyler, a longtime educator, who sat next to her daughter Madison, 20, in a swanky new downtown cafeHilltop Coffee + Kitchen.
“But now it’s not that way anymore. It’s much more diverse and that’s great, but also… Well, it’s quite interesting to watch. My downstairs neighbor was building an Airbnb and out of nowhere new people are using it. Then we see a white couple with their baby and a stroller walking down the street, talking as they walk, and I’m like, ‘People don’t do that on Crenshaw Boulevard!’”
Jennifer Tyler voiced a complaint I’ve often heard from her about the way the SoFi changed its city: the rise of a very slow traffic jam spilling over into residential neighborhoods. On the other hand, he noted that places to hang out — new shopping options, multiple Starbucks — have just increased along with street beautification.
“I have mixed feelings, because, yes, it is very good that we have all this now in the neighborhood, but it pisses me off that we couldn’t have it without the specter of gentrification”, he mentioned.
James T. Butts Jr.
Mayor of Inglewood, 68 years old.
“People said no one was going to come back to Inglewood,” noted James T. Butts Jr., a former Santa Monica police chief who became Inglewood mayor in 2011. Butts added, “We had our last $10 million left. and by September of my first term we had not paid the payroll; we were going to be insolvent”.
I ran into Butts, considered a driving force who helped bring new stadiums, teams and other developments, while walking down a street near City Hall.
“Now it’s different,” he said. “The Rams came, the Chargers immediately joined. Now the Clippers will come.”
He looked around, smiling as he radiated a kind of certainty that I don’t think I’ve heard from anyone else: “What you see is the beginning of a Market Street renaissance!” he opined, referring to one of the main boulevards of the center. “Y a city that is changing for the better”.
“We say two things: the only thing that has changed in Inglewood is everything and it is the new Inglewood, but with the same people.”
Joan Ty
Business owner, 42 years old.
“I ask the Holy Spirit to help me move forward,” said Joan Ty, owner of Joan La Fashion. Ty immigrated to the United States from the Philippines 17 years ago and she is an important part of the community: a store owner willing to give away some of her clothes to the homeless.
“When I started my business, no one was talking about the Rams, the Chargers or a stadium,” he said. “We are happy that they are here, but also we are concerned”.
Ty mentioned that he goes out of his way to don’t give up during the pandemic Y hope the rent doesn’t increase from your shop.
Like many locals, Ty also took advantage of rising home values. Recently, sold his Inglewood house and moved to the farthest countyor but affordable in Riverside, saving money, even if it means now spending up to four hours in the car on the way home from work.
Ty commented that the move had benefited him a lot, but losing a beloved resident does not bode well for a city that tries to circumvent the changes with prudence.
“Know some people who also sold their houses” to earn good money, he told me. “They are moving away. One of my friends is moving to Arizona.”
