2023 Fall Issue of Urban Land - 57

In 2011, the city of Inglewood was on the
brink of bankruptcy. After decades of decline,
the city had a BBB-minus bond rating, a 17
percent unemployment rate, and crumbling
infrastructure. By September 2011, the city
would be cash bankrupt, unable to make payroll.
Twelve
years later, it's astonishing, inconceivable
even, to recall that Inglewood was
once in such disarray. Today, the city is a
vibrant enclave of Greater Los Angeles and a
destination for shopping, entertainment, and
sports.
For all of its problems, Inglewood had one
ace to play: a nearly 300-acre development
site at the center of the city. Formerly home
to the Hollywood Park Racetrack, the site was
the largest contiguous development opportunity
in urban Southern California, and it
proved to be the solution to the city's financial
problems.
When James T. Butts was elected mayor
in 2011, he set out to attract an NFL team to
Inglewood and to build a new stadium on
the Hollywood Park location. SoFi Stadium at
Hollywood Park, as it would become known,
catalyzed a transformative resurgence in the
city and propelled Inglewood into a new era
of glory.
Solving an urgent financial problem
Mayor Butts was aggressive in his pursuit of
an NFL team that would move to Inglewood
and shopped the Hollywood Park site as an
ideal location for a stadium development. He
saw a sports team as a way to lift the city
out of debt and support long-term economic
growth by creating jobs, supporting local
businesses, and generating tax revenue-and
the city had a good historical precedent as a
sports hub.
When it was home to the Los Angeles
Lakers and Los Angeles Kings, Inglewood
was known as the City of Champions. " Sports
and entertainment brings people from outside
of the city into your city. They come and
spend money, and they contribute to your tax
space, " Mayor Butts says. " I was determined
to make the city a sports and entertainment
destination once again. "
NFL teams showed enthusiastic interest
in the development site, and in early 2014,
Stan Kroenke, a real estate mogul and owner
of the Los Angeles Rams, announced plans
to develop an NFL stadium and relocate the
Rams to the site. Then, the Chargers also
announced plans to relocate to the city, giving
Inglewood two NFL teams to drive growth. In
the years since, the Los Angeles Clippers have
also relocated to Inglewood. That team will
play at the Intuit Dome, a basketball stadium
that is currently under construction amid plans
for it to open next year.
A stadium was the crown jewel of a larger
mixed-use district at Hollywood Park, which
includes housing, office, retail, a hotel, and 25
acres (10 ha) of outdoor space, developed by
the Hollywood Park Land Co., a joint venture
between the Kroenke Group and Stockbridge
Capital Group. An analysis at the time from
the Associated Press found that the project
would generate $100 million in tax revenue
in the first five years, and the developer estimated
the project would generate more than
$1 billion in the first 25 years.
" It was a boon for Inglewood financially
at a time when they were teetering on bankruptcy, "
says Tim Kawahara, executive director
of the Ziman Center for Real Estate at UCLA's
Anderson School of Management. " There was
some concern from the community, but all in
all, it was a fairly easy sell to have investment
come into an underinvested city and put it [on
much better] financial footing. "
Stan Kroenke's vision
From the Hollywood Park redevelopment's
conception, Stan Kroenke wanted to create a
world-class entertainment venue that would
bring cachet to Inglewood. " He wanted to do
something that was extraordinary, " says Scott
Hunter, regional director and partner at HKS,
the architecture firm behind SoFi Stadium. " He
wanted us to do something that had never
been done before. "
The 70,000-seat stadium took six years to
build and cost an estimated $5 billion. The site
had been previously entitled for a residential
mixed-use neighborhood with ground-level
retail, according to Hunter, but the addition of
FALL 2023
URBAN LAND
57
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