The city of Inglewood has transformed in the past decade into one of Southern California’s premier sports and entertainment destinations.
With the World Cup behind it and the 2027 Super Bowl LXI and 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games ahead, the city has turned its attention to its downtown business district.
With a population reaching almost 108,000, Inglewood has experienced a recent economic boom centered on its sports and entertainment district along Prairie Avenue and Century Boulevard, which was fully realized in 2024 with the opening of the Intuit Dome. The city was already home to SoFi Stadium, the Kia Forum and YouTube Theater. Hollywood Park, the mixed-use development surrounding SoFi Stadium, has added retail, restaurants, offices, housing and entertainment venues, with more projects underwater.
But the boom has not reached all of Inglewood. The challenge has been ensuring that the next phase of the city’s economic renaissance reaches the small businesses that have long called the city home. A mile from the stadium district, Market Street – the city’s historic commercial core – has struggled with empty storefronts and thin foot traffic even as billions of dollars poured into venues down the road. The city unveiled an $8.5 million initiative to revitalize downtown’s Market Street, and it’s preparing to break ground on a transit project – all on a timeline set by the Super Bowl and the Olympics.
“There has been a lot of great investment coming to Inglewood,” said Cherella Nicholson is president of the Downtown Inglewood Association, who also owns Queen Haven Events & Community Space on Queen Street in downtown Inglewood. “But one of the challenges that I’m seeing is that it’s not equitable economic development.”
Becoming ‘an international city’
And the investment in the city has been substantial.
“It’s more than sports and entertainment,” said Inglewood Mayor James Butts. “We became an international city in June and July.”
Inglewood hosted eight World Cup matches at SoFi Stadium this summer, with total attendance of 561,656, according to FIFA. The city also drew crowds downtown during the tournament, holding two viewing events on Market Street with large screens, Butts said.
“We activated Market Street and put up big screens, so that people that didn’t have tickets could enjoy the ambiance of the event, and Market Street was packed on both those occasions,” he said. “On downtown Market Street, every location that sold beer ran out of beer. So that’ll give you an idea of the kind of foot traffic that came through the downtown area.”
Butts, who took office in 2011 and is serving his fourth term, also pointed to Inglewood’s growth beyond sports venues as evidence of a more diversified local economy.
The Girl Scouts of Greater Los Angeles moved its regional headquarters to the city in 2019. NFL Network followed in 2020, relocating from Culver City to a new headquarters at Inglewood’s Hollywood Park. The Los Angeles Philharmonic opened its Youth Orchestra Los Angeles Center in 2021. ESPN finalized the move of its Los Angeles studio operations to the Hollywood Park campus in September.
The city’s relationship with Hollywood Park and its developer, Los Angeles Rams owner Stan Kroenke, has recently become more complicated. This month, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge ruled that the 2015 development agreement governing the project was void and unenforceable, siding with Inglewood in a dispute over more than $400 million that Hollywood Park claims it is owed for infrastructure improvements and services. The ruling also calls into question development rights for remaining phases of the 300-acre project. Butts told The LA Local that he hopes the two sides can find a way forward. “I look forward to talking with them and seeing what we can do to move forward as partners,” he said.
Hollywood Park has disputed the ruling and could appeal.
Still, the city’s fiscal fortunes have risen alongside its sports economy. Based on Inglewood’s adopted operating budget for the fiscal 2025-2026, general fund revenues are estimated to total $249 million, which represents an 11% increase from the previous fiscal year. That included $11.1 million in anticipated fund balance carry-over. Higher revenue projections are the result of increased property tax, admissions tax, vehicle license fees, utility-user taxes, and other tax revenue.
Butts also pointed to employment in the city as evidence that the growth has reached residents.
“We had a 17.5% unemployment rate when I took office in February 2011, and now it’s been as low as 4.7%.,” Butts said. “There are more people employed in Inglewood now in prevailing wage jobs than any time in the history of the city.”
A different world
Still a mile away, the economic picture is more complicated. Downtown Inglewood is an older commercial district centered on Market Street. Market Street is largely made up of smaller storefronts and local businesses.
In June 2025, the city launched its $8.5 million economic development initiative targeting Market Street. Grants of up to $250,000 are available to eligible business and property owners for painting, signage, new lighting, storefront windows and awnings, ADA-compliant upgrades, furniture and fixtures and hazardous material abatement.
Twenty-three grants have been disbursed, with nine pending, according to LA Local.Several restaurants will receive these grants, according to the Los Angeles Times. Little Belize, Randy’s Donuts and Chinese, Keokia’s Kitchen, Dulan’s Soul Food Kitchen, The Wood Urban Kitchen, and Rosalie’s Caribbean Cuisine are among the grant recipients.
Some businesses on Market Street were ineligible, while others were turned down because of “overwhelming interest,” according to the Los Angeles Times. Even when the grant funding, some downtown business owners faced barriers accessing it, Nicholson said.
“One of the challenges that I did hear from the business owners is that it’s a reimbursable grant, so they have to spend the money and then submit receipts before accessing the fund,” she said. “It might be a challenge for folks to even spend $50,000 at a time to then get reimbursed.”
Many local entrepreneurs often also learn about grants and contracting opportunities after deadlines have passed, said Sandra Aispuro, treasurer of the Downtown Inglewood Association and vice president and retail operations manager at City First Bank’s Market Street branch. And among City First Bank’s small-business customers, she said that few have received contracts tied to development along Century Boulevard.
“These contracts or grants that are being handed out, a lot of business owners didn’t even know about (the opportunities),” said Aispuro. “When they found out about it, it was too late. The deadline had passed.”
A piece of the strategy
The grants are only one piece of the city’s downtown strategy. “The next phase is transit,” Butts said.
In August, the Inglewood City Council approved a public-private partnership to build the Inglewood Transit Connector’s mobility hubs. The $261 million design and construction budget will be covered entirely by grants from the state’s Transit and Intercity Rail Capital Program and from Metro.
Within the transit plan, Market Street, Manchester Boulevard and Queen Street will receive new hardscape and landscaping, irrigation, traffic controls, street furniture and pedestrian lighting. The three mobility hubs will add more than 1,000 parking spaces. A pedestrian bridge over Florence Avenue will connect downtown directly to the Metro K Line’s Inglewood Station. Construction begins this fall.
The project is intended to address one of the remaining challenges created by Inglewood’s rapid development: moving visitors between regional transit, downtown and the sports and entertainment district. For downtown business owners, the question is whether the new infrastructure will bring visitors to Market Street or move them through the area on their way to the stadiums and arenas.
Butts said the city is addressing both.
“At the same time we have awarded a number of $250,000 facade grants for businesses on Market Street,” he said. “And our focus right now is restoring usable parking for the businesses on Market Street and to relieve the traffic congestion of people coming into the Kia Forum, SoFi Stadium, and the Intuit [Dome].”
The city is still racing to address decades of underinvestment in downtown before the Olympics arrive, said Allen Kwabena Frimpong, co-founder of Inglewood-based creative arts cooperative Zeal and program consultant for the Downtown Inglewood Association.
“The timeline is expedited and they’re building the ship as it’s sailing,” he said. “Everything has piled up and now you’re trying to fix everything in 18 months.”
The transit plan
As part of the transit plan, the city will demolish a strip mall at Market Street and Florence Avenue to build a mobility hub.
As presented by Lisa Trifiletti, project manager for the Inglewood Transit Connector (ITC) project during a 2023 city council meeting, the plan originally called for as many as 44 business to be displaced – 21at the Market Street Station and 17 at the Hardy Street Station. But in a December 2025 meeting of South Bay Cities Council of Governments, Butts and ITC project representatives reported that 23 businesses would require relocation as part of the Phase I acquisition process.
When asked to confirm the report that the project is proceeding through eminent domain and that the city has budgeted $125 million for property acquisition and business relocation, Butts said only that there is “$287 million in grant funding for purchase and relocation grants.”
He did not confirm the use of eminent domain, the number of businesses receiving help, or how the $287 million breaks down.
“Some of those businesses have been around for 30 or 40 years,” said Nicholson. “These are businesses that have been passed around in generations of families.”
City’s affordability
These changes are unfolding alongside a sharp rise in housing costs. Median gross rent for a unit in Inglewood rose 41% from $1,267 a month in 2018 to $1,787 in 2024, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. Median home values climbed 84% over the same period, from $431,400 to $792,800. About two-thirds of Inglewood residents are renters.
Butts said the city’s rent cap is the strictest in the state. “We have the 3% cap on rents,” he said. “The average rent in Inglewood is lower than anywhere in the South Bay.”
The city’s Housing Protection Ordinance states that rents in properties with five or more units can increase 3% in a 12-month period. For properties with four or fewer units, the allowable increase is 5%.
However, landlords can raise rents further when inflation exceeds 3%, or by making improvements or petitioning the city. If a tenant moves out, a landlord can reset the rent to market rate. Units whose certificate of occupancy was issued within the previous 15 years are exempt from the ordinance.
“The housing prices, if you look at the median income and how much people make per household, this housing stock is actually not affordable,” said Nicholson. “We should have learned from other cities when they have fast economic growth with sports and entertainment districts.”
Butts counters, saying the city’s growth still has been designed with everyone in mind.
“Do you know that not one Inglewood resident that owns a house has had to move, but they have become residential millionaires?” he said. “We’ve structured this renaissance of Inglewood so that everyone who has been here is a beneficiary.”
