Inglewood set to take a 20-tenant shopping center Oct. 1 for a stadium shuttle hub

The city has $125 million budgeted for purchases and relocation, court orders in hand and eight parcels in play at Market and Florence. Tenants got 90 days' notice on July 1.

The shopping center at Market Street and Florence Avenue in Inglewood is scheduled to change hands on Oct. 1, and then come down. In its place the city plans a parking structure and a bus loop with bus bays — one hub of a shuttle network built to move concert and game crowds from the Metro K Line station south to the stadium district. According to The LA Local, whose report was also published by LAist, more than 20 businesses occupy the center, from restaurants to a jeweler, and all of them have to leave.

Karly Katona, an adviser on the shuttle project with Trifiletti Consulting, told The LA Local in an email that the city intends to take over the property on Oct. 1. Tenants were given a 90-day notice on July 1, she wrote, and will receive another 30-day notice at the beginning of September.

The paperwork behind the bulldozer

The Inglewood City Council started eminent domain proceedings in February covering eight parcels, and the city won court orders this summer allowing it to take parts of the property as early as October. The city budgeted $125 million for purchase costs and to help businesses relocate. Separately, it is putting $8.5 million into streetscape improvements and business renovation grants along Market Street, a commercial corridor the city has been trying to revive since it approved SoFi Stadium in 2015.

Mayor James Butts told The LA Local the Inglewood Transit Connector is for the greater good of the city, and that officials have empathy for the businesses losing their locations.

“The city feels for the people that don’t want to relocate.” — Mayor James Butts, to The LA Local

Butts said the city is making every effort to help businesses relocate.

The tenant side

Lavern Upton has styled hair for 15 years at Inglewood Beauty Salon, in the center's pink-walled space. She has found another salon about five minutes away, and it costs more. “They’re upending my livelihood,” she told The LA Local. She had been planning to leave the business in about five years, with an eye on retirement. “Now, I don’t know.”

Julia Walker, a stylist who works alongside Upton, said she wants something done about game-day crowds that sometimes spill into residential streets — and still doesn't want the center to go. “What’s going to be missed is this platform,” she said. Walker has not found a new location.

Neither has the Martin family, owners of Fiesta Martin Bar & Grill and Inglewood Pedicab, who rent five separate spaces in the center and told The LA Local they are working with the city on a relocation plan. “If you look at it personally, it’s going to affect our businesses, it’s going to affect the people that work with us,” Christian Martin said. “We try to see the best in the future of this city. We’re trying to find a happy medium.” Several storefronts are already empty and papered over. Others, including Red’s Flavor Table and House of Tacos, are still open.

How a rail line became a bus loop

The transit connector has been in the works since 2018, originally as an automated people mover. Inglewood and Metro pitched a $2 billion automated rail line and secured a $1 billion federal grant. In 2024, U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters came out against the people mover, calling it “ridiculous” in an interview with the Los Angeles Times and saying she would do whatever she could to stop it. Waters did not return an interview request from The LA Local.

Butts said this week that the federal grant was frozen, and that the city hopes to apply again. With the project stalled and the Olympics approaching, Inglewood pivoted to shuttle buses; planners say they want to revive the rail line at some undetermined point. Two more hubs are planned, at La Brea Avenue and Hillcrest Boulevard and at Hawthorne Boulevard and 111th Street, along with a second route running to the stadium from Lennox. The Market Street complex, per project designs, will take up almost an entire city block.