Ten years ago, Jamial Clark began contemplating what to do with his late mother’s legacy – a 10,500 square-foot retail building located in the heart of the Crenshaw district. He envisioned turning the space into a mixed-use and mixed-income multifamily development, but the process wasn’t as straightforward as he planned.
Clark, along with his sister Bridgette Reed, spent six years exploring options. That included meeting with various developers and receiving purchase requests – but nothing struck a chord with them until they met with Praxis Development Group in 2021.
“We’ve always wanted to be a part of the development because it was very close to us,” Clark said. “We didn’t want to just turn it over to a developer, which a lot of people pitched to us.”
Clark and Reed’s mother, Lucretia Clark, first purchased the building in 1995 after being a tenant and operating her hair salon in the space for years. Growing up in Crenshaw, the salon was “like a second home,” said Jamial, who recalled hanging out in the salon after school and helping his mother with her business.
While selling the building would have given Jamial a quick pay day, he was interested in doing something else. Thus, he held onto the property eventually partnering with Praxis on what has been dubbed The Clark on 54th, a 48-unit multifamily development with 2,100 square feet of ground floor retail. The completion date is estimated to be in fall 2026.
The project, which broke ground in December, will have 10 units designated to those earning 50% of Los Angeles County’s area median income. For a two-person household, this equates to a combined annual income of $60,600, according to the county’s Department of Regional Planning. The remainder will be market rate.
As The Clark on 54th continues to take shape, the development team plans to solicit art applications from local community members and commission one of the applicants to paint a mural on the building embodying the neighborhood’s culture and history.
‘The missing middle’
Kacy Keys, founder of Praxis, said The Clark on 54th is the type of housing that’s absent in the Crenshaw area – which is home to mostly affordable housing complexes.
“Fundamentally, we believe in mixed-income housing as a good social endeavor,” Keys said. “There’s certainly many conversations about the missing middle and if we only have neighborhoods that have either 100% low income and micro units or all high-end housing, that’s not creating healthy neighborhoods.”
Keys founded Praxis in 2019 with a strategy to partner with institutions and landowners who may not have development expertise on building out projects, leveraging her 25 years of experience in real estate to execute projects and benefiting from the cost reduction of cutting out land acquisitions.
Clark said there have been times when community members questioned his decision to work with non-Black developers, like Keys, given the demographic makeup of the community. In the Baldwin Hills/Crenshaw area, 71% of residents are Black, according to the Los Angeles Times’ Mapping L.A. initiative.
While Clark understands the concerns that come along with new developments and unfamiliar companies, he finds that his role in the project combined with his history living in the community, as well as the alignment between him and the Praxis team remedy those issues.
“The way (Praxis) came to the table and the way they handled this situation with everything that we had to go through is just a testament to them and their ethics,” Clark said.
Keys has also lived in Crenshaw for the last 25 years, giving her a solid view of what the neighborhood has in terms of housing stock.
“This project is really an expression of the four of us,” Keys said, referring to herself, Clark, Reed and Praxis Vice President Charles Wise.
In weighing the type of housing to build, there were a few considerations at play, including keeping costs down, the neighborhood’s existing multifamily landscape and lasting impact. Tailoring the project to meet density bonus requirements, the 48-unit development would need to have six affordable units – though Praxis opted for 10.
A fine balance
For Jermaine McMihelk, managing director of NewMark Merrill Hadler Community Partners, there are certainly pros for a project of this nature. McMihelk, a Black developer, focuses on retail real estate in underserved urban, minority communities. He finds that along with the cost benefits of this sort of development, incorporating market rate units with a percentage being affordable and subsidized can often mean better quality affordable units compared to projects that are 100% affordable. Additionally, residents of a higher-income level can both attract new businesses to the area as well as support existing retailers.
“It’s no secret there’s a housing crisis in L.A. and there is a significant problem with affordable housing,” McMihelk said. “At the same time, we don’t necessarily want to create cities in which we have these zones that are just strictly affordable and that can become quite poverty stricken and in its own way be very isolated.”
The balance between affordable and market rate can be difficult to find. As McMihelk put it: “For every market unit you build, there’s one affordable unit that can’t be built… and that’s probably another family or another person displaced.”
But without revamping an area’s housing stock, the community can become stagnant, according to Michael Anderson, principal of design firm Anderson Barker and author of “Urban Magic – Vibrant Black and Brown Communities Are Possible.”
“You’re giving people shelter, but you’re losing the next generation of Black and brown families who become the new working professionals,” Anderson said. Once they leave, “the community never grows to be self-sustaining and successful.”
Anderson recalled observing the shift in neighborhood and sub-city formation in L.A. from the 1980s to now, asserting that there used to not be much difference between what is now the Westside and Crenshaw. But what began setting certain communities apart – like Century City or West Hollywood – was that those who grew up in the area returned once they had made a better living for themselves than their parents, Anderson said. Thus, the younger generation generated more income in those neighborhoods, he said, comparing the trend’s impact to a succession plan.
“A succession plan happened naturally as they were consistently raising the household income,” he said. But in Crenshaw, the younger generations left the community after college. “That was creating more low-income impaction because the only people that were making money were the existing residents.”
That coupled with a majority of 100% affordable housing developments in the area has further kept the cycle going.
Clark agrees that a supply of market rate units would attract a younger population, adding that “a lot of professionals that grew up in the area would love to come back and live here instead of living on the Westside.”
Creating generational wealth
A big priority for Clark when planning The Clark on 54th development was maintaining ownership, adding that there are few buildings in Crenshaw under Black ownership. “(Among Black families,) a lot of times when we inherit properties, the first thing people want to do is just sell,” Clark said. “…It’s a big conversation you have to have in trying to create generational wealth and reinvest in the community.”
When opportunities for selling come along, an owner in a minority community often sells to the highest bidder, Anderson said, which can consequently deepen gentrification in that community. Because housing has become so expensive, people who are doing relatively well and want to become homeowners are looking at the less pricey areas like Crenshaw and Baldwin Hills because it’s what they can realistically afford. Previous owners are looking to make the best deal and that can often be from a white family, according to Anderson.
What’s great about The Clark on 54th development is that it keeps ownership with a Black family, Anderson said, calling this model “one of many solutions needed to address the issues of gentrification.”
At the same time, when someone is spearheading a project in their own community, McMihelk finds there can be increased pressure to please everyone which is not always realistic. Incorporating community feedback and creating something that truly serves the area is important, he said, but the chance for a local community member to make a successful business investment also matters.
“Families and developers who are from the community should, like everyone else, get the opportunity to wealth build… and so we also have to leave some space for the entrepreneur that wants to do well, but also do good,” McMihelk said. “Sometimes that gets drowned out in conversations that, again should be happening about displacement, about gentrification, but we need to equally talk about … wealth building.”
