The Mall And The People
The Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza in Los Angeles has been a neighborhood landmark since 1947. The mall is now the focus of an ownership struggle pitting community groups against the city and a major commercial developer. Photo courtesy of Los Angeles Wave Newspapers
In Los Angeles’ Baldwin Hills and Crenshaw neighborhood, a community group fighting gentrification has drawn an economic line in the sand around a struggling shopping center
Jackie Ryan stopped during a recent conversation with a journalist to consider what had just happened:
For decades the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza mall, south and west of downtown Los Angeles, had been the center of commercial life in one of the nation’s largest Black communities. It has long been the economic focus of the neighborhood, and Ryan, a long-time Crenshaw community activist, had been fighting to keep the mall in the hands of community investors.
But at the end of August, and after years of a fierce and public debate over the fate of the aging shopping center at Crenshaw and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevards, L.A. city officials and the Planning and Land Use Management Committee approved the sale of the mall property (it’s owned by out-of-state private investors). It was sold to the Harridge Development Group, a Los Angeles company led by chief executive David Schwartzman, a longtime developer who’s built thousands of homes and commercial buildings in Southern California.
The Harridge Group’s planned overhaul of the mall will include retail space, a 400-room hotel, a 10-story office building, 410 apartments and 551 condominiums. The overhaul may take years and up to $1 billion to finish, financial reports said.
This plan is great for supporters of the sale, who’ve long called for a makeover of one of the nation’s oldest traditional shopping centers, especially after having suffered through the loss of major retailers like Walmart and Sears.
“The passion and commitment to South Los Angeles by our community runs deep,” said District 8 Councilman Marqueece Harris-Dawson. “This community has been waiting on this development for 10 to 12 years and (the Harridge deal) will provide the kind of investment that South Los Angeles deserves.”
The community’s bid
Ryan believes that a competing offer by Downtown Crenshaw, an advocacy group she belongs to, is being unfairly dismissed because it’s pushed by Black community groups in the Crenshaw and Baldwin Hills neighborhoods. Downtown Crenshaw, wants to turn the mall into an “urban village” that includes affordable housing, a healthcare clinic, child care, a job training campus, conference space, and a community arts center. The group raised $115 million in funds and has offered to purchase the mall through a community land trust.
Although similar in dollar terms, there are key differences between the two bids: The estimated $140 Harridge deal includes $30 million for a Macy’s store on the site, but not owned by the mall. The Downtown Crenshaw offer doesn’t include the Macy’s building.
During a recent Martin Luther King, Jr. "Kingdom Day Parade," the VIP Breakfast was held at the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Mall in Los Angeles, California. A featured speaker was parade organizer Dr. Adrian Dove. Photo by Sheri Determan/WENN.com, via Alamy
But Downtown Crenshaw’s offer has been repeatedly turned down, even though it’s backed by investors like Kat Taylor, wife of billionaire Tom Steyer, the Annenberg and Katalay foundations, and neighborhood homeowners associations, tenants unions, merchants and labor groups, business organizations and local artists.
Ryan insists that, unlike the Harridge Group’s plans, Downtown Crenshaw wants to see the mall owned and operated by the Black community with money from community-minded investors and philanthropists that are used to support Black businesses and programs.
That’s why Ryan is convinced that economic racism is behind the bidding process she says was tilted against her group. She said that Downtown Crenshaw was given just three days to address questions from city officials and reorganize its bid. Yet “they gave Schwartzman extension after extension to come up with the money for the bid.”
“In my opinion, it was a racist project from beginning to end,” said Ryan, who, for decades, ran the Zambezi’s Bazaar boutique in the Crenshaw neighborhood.
“How many properties (at the mall) are owned by African Americans (in the Harridge plan)? I would say none of these properties are owned by an African-American entity,” Ryan said. “We tried to have an equitable bidding process but the greed and unfairness was overwhelming.”
An unsettled debate
With the city’s blessings on the Harridge deal, the hill is higher now for local opponents like Ryan. But she and other activists are not ready to give up the fight for the mall.
Damien Goodmon, a board member of Downtown Crenshaw, said that the fight for the Crenshaw mall is far from over. “It is going to be litigated in the courts and reviewed by oversight bodies,” Goodmon said. “In addition to Downtown Crenshaw evaluating our many legal options, we are aware of at least four lawsuits that are currently being discussed by public pension fund members, civil rights organizations, and another qualified Black bidder that was passed over.”
The NAACP and Black Lives Matter-LA are appealing to Maxine Waters, the area’s congresswoman, and considering legal action against the pension funds and international banks behind the Harridge deal, citing the 1866 Civil Rights Act and its provisions against housing discrimination.
“It’s not over yet,” said former Los Angeles City Councilman Robert Farrell. “We have prevailed before in stopping developers. Downtown Crenshaw has put together a viable plan — it just needs a shot to be considered.”
Downtown Crenshaw’s lobbying is believed to have derailed at least two promising bids for the mall over the last few years.
Rev. William Smart, head of the Southern California chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, leads a protest against the sale of the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza mall in Los Angeles. Photo courtesy of Los Angeles Wave Newspapers
If Downtown Crenshaw fails this time, Ryan said, what will be left is Black store operators and owners paying higher rents and higher prices for commercial property.
“They’re going to hit us with high rents and move us out of the community,” she predicts. “Everywhere that black people are, they are being forced out of their communities with high rents. … We are not leaving the land that we currently occupy. To deny that is to deny reality and we will continue to fight to own the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza.”
David Schwartzman, Harridge Development’s chief executive, has noted the protests surrounding the sale of the mall. He insists there will be opportunities for Black merchants and store owners to receive assistance from the company in the future. "We have a long history of successful real estate development in the City of Los Angeles, and look forward to working alongside community-based groups, neighborhood associations, civil rights organizations, merchants, neighboring property owners, businesses and local government leaders to implement a successful reinvigoration of the Property with the mall remaining as its center," Schwartzman said in a written statement.
The Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza mall is considered prime real estate. On Crenshaw Boulevard next to the property, there is ongoing construction of the Crenshaw/LAX light rail line that will run to the Los Angeles International Airport. The 8.5-mile, $2.14 billion rail line will accommodate approximately 45,000 passengers a day and is predicted to dramatically increase foot traffic to the Crenshaw area’s retail core.
“Everywhere that black people are, they are being forced out of their communities with high rents. … We are not leaving the land that we currently occupy."
Crenshaw Plaza opened in 1947, one of the first regional shopping centers in the United States. In the mid-1960s, the mall emerged as a major economic and cultural hub for the African American population in Los Angeles.
The mall’s anchor stores once included pillars of the retail industry, like Macy’s, TJ Maxx, Sears and Walmart. Walmart closed in 2016 and Sears closed in 2020. Macy’s and TJ Maxx are still operating.
Before the coronavirus pandemic, the gradual demise of these retail anchors, and the closing of several other stores and kiosks in the mall, stemmed foot traffic inside the center. The popularity of online shopping also pushed Capri Urban Investors (CUI), a private equity firm, to offer the property for sale, even though the mall remains popular within the community.
Schwartzman’s ambitious plan includes moving the existing Museum of African American Art to a more prominent place in the mall. And community events and gatherings — such as the Winter Wonderland and the Pan African Film Festival — would remain.
The new developers also said the housing project, to be built on what is now a supermarket, could begin within 18 months with other additions and improvements to come while the mall stays open. Moreover, Schwartzman said, Black and women business owners will be targeted for partnerships, start-up capital will be available for Black entrepreneurs and Black store owners could get an ownership stake in the mall.
Mistrust and suspicion
Local residents and merchants are skeptical.
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” said Jeree McClellan, 31 years old and a life-long fan of the mall. He was enjoying lunch in the mall’s food court. He predicted that instead, Black business owners would not be able to stay open under higher rents he said the new owners will charge. “I feel like the mall needs to remain a staple in the Black community and that Black businesses should be able to remain open. They should not be closed down.”
Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza has long been a gathering place for the community. During the coronavirus pandemic, it was set up as a major vaccination site. Photo by Ringo Chiu, via Shutterstock
Another community resident, Clevurn Lewis, 74, said she remembered a construction project in the mall in the 1960s when she was 18.
A retired teacher, Lewis said, “I’m very upset because I know that our people had enough (money) to purchase the mall but they were denied the opportunity to present their bid. I feel that the sale was based on race and not equality. Why can’t Black people own something in our own community that is solely Black and run by influential community people?” she asked.
Charles Brister, founder of the 1-800-Unite-Us organization, a Black business referral service, said that he was a regular customer at Malik’s Books and James Broomfield Clothing on the mall’s second floor.
“Blacks have patronized this mall for years,” he said. “The bottom line is that I feel the mall should be owned by Blacks because it is in the Black community.”
“If the mall was Black-owned, the money being paid for rent would stay in the community. If 50 businesses in the mall were paying $5,000 a month in rent, that would collectively be $250,000 in rent,” Brister added. “That would be millions in rent money staying in the community instead of leaving our community.”
After hearing about the sale, long-time South Los Angeles community activist Mollie Bell felt strongly that the deal was “unfair and unjust.” “How did our politicians allow the mall to be sold?” she wondered. “I want to ask that question of Marqueece Harris-Dawson and (Los Angeles City Councilman) Mark Ridley-Thomas. They should have been opposing this sale because the selling of the mall is definitely a move towards gentrification.”
“Black folks are steadily losing our voting bloc and our neighborhoods,” Bell said, which echoes the trend toward gentrification that is affecting Black and Brown neighborhoods across the country. “Just to have someone outside of our community buy from under us without any community input is not fair and not right.”
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Editor’s Note: Downtown Crenshaw, one of the bidders for the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza mall, has been represented by the Veritas Group communications firm. The Veritas Group also manages palabra’s social media accounts. No Veritas Group employees or affiliates participated in the reporting or writing of this story.
Shirley Hawkins has written for the Los Angeles Sentinel, the California Crusader, The L. A. Watts Times, Our Weekly, Our Times (a subsidiary of the Los Angeles Times) and currently writes for the Los Angeles Wave. She loves writing stories about people who have overcome obstacles, in the hope that it will inspire and empower others to overcome adversity.