 Inglewood Receives 2016 Top Prize For City of Champions Development
The City of Inglewood received the 2016 Westside Prize from the Westside Urban Forum in an event held on June 3, 2016 at the Casa Del Mar Hotel in Santa Monica. The City of Champions development proposal was judged to be the number one project from a land use and architectural perspective.
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INGLEWOOD RISING
As spring came to an end in 1999, anxiety gripped Inglewood like Shaq at the free-throw line. The city was inching toward an unsettling reality. After hosting countless legendary games in the Fabulous Forum, the Lakers prepared for their final game.
Two franchise teams -both the Lakers and Kings- were set to begin a new era in basketball and hockey at the Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles-an exodus that would cost Inglewood roughly $1 million annually in lost revenue from ticket and parking taxes.
Inglewood's future looked bleak. Businesses picked up and left; its signature Market Street deteriorated. What's more, the city had lost part of its identity. Many could not fathom that Inglewood would ever host a professional sports franchise again. But with the closure of Hollywood Park, Inglewood Mayor James T. Butts Jr. made it his mission to bring a professional sport team back to Inglewood and as fate would have it, several teams had been eyeing a move to Los Angeles, the deal set into motion when Rams owner Stan Kroenke purchased 60 acres of land in Inglewood.
Today, the "City of Champions" is not only setting out to recapture the former glory that often accompanies a successful professional sports franchise, but is striving to become an iconic mecca for multi-purpose entertainment as construction on Rams Stadium at Hollywood Park offers a tantalizing glimpse into the future.
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NFL's Rams Will Occupy the LA Coliseum Until 2019 Move to Inglewood
As he walks down the curved, red tunnel that leads to the playing field, Joe Furin is recalling some of the historic grandeur of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
"The '32 Olympics, Sandy Koufax, Jackie Robinson, the Fearsome Foursome - Deacon Jones, Merlin Olsen - everyone went down this tunnel," he says.
But where the tunnel opens to reveal the 93-year-old stadium's wide expanse, there is a slow but steady drip from the ceiling. Furin, the venue's general manager, has been working hard to patch leaks like this one. "Knock on wood, we think we've identified them," he says. But it's still a work in progress.
In just six weeks, the Los Angeles Rams will take the field at the Coliseum. It will mark the end of the
NFL's 21-year, self-imposed exile from Los Angeles. It will also be the first time the Rams play a game at the venue since 1979 - the year they went all the way to the Super Bowl before decamping for Anaheim.
The Rams' owner, Stan Kroenke, has announced plans for a $2.6 billion stadium complex at the Hollywood Park site in Inglewood, but it's not slated to open until 2019. So for the first three seasons back in L.A., the Rams will be playing at the Coliseum, which was state of the art in 1923.
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Police watched from a distance as Black Lives Matter marched through Inglewood; mayor says it worked
ething was missing Sunday night when more than 1,000 people marched through the streets of Inglewood as part of a Black Lives Matter protest against police violence.
There were no police officers in the middle of the action, no rows of cruisers trying to block where the protesters could move. In fact, demonstrators themselves were seen directing traffic around La Cienega Boulevard and Manchester Avenue, where the crowd had gathered. That prompted some television anchors covering the story to question where the police were.
The hands-off approach was by design, Inglewood officials said. Police and city leaders decided that they would keep their distance from marchers as long as they stayed peaceful and orderly.
Mayor James T. Butts, a former police chief of Santa Monica, said the "traditional" approach of police in riot gear carrying batons and flanked by heavy armored vehicles can be counterproductive.
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New Hollywood Park Casino to
open in the fall
Hollywood Park Casino, which first opened in Inglewood in 1994, is opening at its new location on West Century Boulevard this fall.
Hollywood Park Casino Co. said the grand opening of the Cary Grant Pavilion at the casino this fall "will usher in the city's aura of glamour and luxury as the first of numerous businesses included as part of the developing retail district in the Inglewood Community."
The project, which broke ground in July 2015, is part of the City of Champions Revitalization project, which will also later include the Los Angeles Rams NFL stadium. The casino will sit on nearly 11 acres and directly face the expanded Century Boulevard.
Designed by San Diego-based JCJ Architecture, the new casino will span 110,000 square feet and include 125 card game tables, simulcast wagering, a sports bar and restaurant (Century Bar & Grill), intimate lounge, gourmet café, and a 20 percent increase in high limit play while including historic elements of the original casino.
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Hollywood Park Casino in Inglewood aims to turn around its fortunes with new digs
The Hollywood Park Casino opened more than 20 years ago in Inglewood with the hopes of boosting the city's coffers, creating jobs and spurring development in the working-class community.
Celebrity gamblers such as William Shatner,
Jason Alexander and Ben Affleck have been spotted laying down bets at the card club adjacent to the Hollywood Park Racetrack and the Forum arena.
But hard times have fallen on the aging card club since the
Los Angeles Lakers
abandoned the Forum in 1999, the race track folded in 2013 and competing clubs have doubled down on swanky renovations to draw away the high rollers.
Now, Hollywood Park's owners hope to turn around the club's fortunes around with a move to a bigger facility next door designed to draw the wealthy clientele who will be visiting the $1.86-billion pro football stadium scheduled to open in three years in an adjacent multiuse development.
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Mark Ridley-Thomas Petition
Declare homelessness
emergency in California
On any given night, there are over 115,000 homeless people in California - 21% of the entire nation's homeless population.
Counties across the state are facing a pervasive and deepening homeless crisis that imminently endangers the health and safety of tens of thousands of residents, including veterans, women, children, LGBT youth, persons with disabilities and seniors.
Nowhere is this more evident than in L.A. County - 47,000 homeless, including more than 6,000 parents and children - where the tremendous scale of homelessness threatens the economic stability of the entire region by burdening emergency medical services and the social services infrastructure.
It is time to treat this crisis like the emergency it truly is. The increasing numbers of displaced homeless people and the lack of ongoing resources to stably re-house them require immediate and extraordinary action.
That is why LA County has taken the lead in a statewide effort to ask Governor Brown to declare a state of emergency in California to address this growing humanitarian crisis.
Please join us! Sign our petition urging the Governor to declare the homeless crisis a state of emergency and bring the concerted effort and resources needed to tackle this crisis in a meaningful way.
Then Share this petition with your friends on social media to spread the word even further.
Thank you for your concern and caring.
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10 shootings a day: Complex causes of Chicago's spiking violence
To understand Chicago's violence, start at Kostner Avenue and Monroe Street and walk west up a one-way stretch of graystones and brick two-flats. There on a boarded-up front door you'll see the red stain of gang graffiti. On the cracked sidewalk below lies an empty heroin baggie. Hardened young men sit on a porch.
This single block on the West Side - part of the Harrison police district - has been the scene of at least six shootings so far this year. A masked gunman shot a teen in the stomach. A father delivering groceries to his daughter was shot before he could escape gunfire. And in late June, police again unspooled the yellow crime scene tape in the alley behind the block after a teen was fatally shot in the head.
As Chicago heads into the often violent July Fourth weekend, these kinds of stories are all too common in pockets of the West and South sides. At the halfway point of the year, homicides have jumped by 49 percent citywide to 312 through Tuesday, reaching levels unseen since the late 1990s. Shooting incidents have risen by even more, marking the third consecutive year of double-digit increases.
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