A new business group, the Downtown Inglewood Association, is aiming to spread the wealth of the city’s development rush to businesses in its downtown commercial core.
“We want them to be able to take part in this expansion,” said Rashunda Rene, a small business consultant and association board member. “We want to make sure the businesses that have been here have the same opportunities (as the stadiums).”
A crowd of small business representatives mingled during the association’s official launch party on May 6 at City First Bank.
The group’s formation follows a decade of rapid development in Inglewood centered on SoFi Stadium, the Kia Forum and Intuit Dome. Meanwhile, Market Street, the city’s historic commercial district, has seen a stubborn stream of business closures.
Sip & Sonder, a coffee shop that helped anchor the corridor, shuttered in December, followed in April by the celebrated vegan restaurant Stuff I Eat.
“It’s become really desolate,” said Latorya Mitchell, who has worked on Market Street for 20 years. “Sip & Sonder gave us hope. To lose that, it was a lot for us.”
Inglewood officials are putting cash into reversing the street’s fortunes. City council members approved $8.5 million worth of business grants and new landscaping, sidewalks and other streetscape improvements on Market Street in March.
The city plans to eventually link downtown to the stadiums via the Inglewood Transit Connector bus hub. Inglewood Development Services Director Bernard McCrumby said streetscape work should begin later this summer.
Despite the city’s efforts, organizers behind the new Downtown Inglewood Association told The LA Local they want more: greater ground-level connections between small businesses, more support from property tax dollars and a cultural district designation for downtown Inglewood.
They plan to put the cultural district plan forward at a city arts commission meeting on May 27.
“Small businesses will be here before and after those sports and entertainment events,” said Cherella Nicholson, the association’s president and co-founder of Queen Haven Events. “There’s not an active chamber (of commerce). Downtown businesses want a place of networking.”
A representative for the Inglewood Airport Area Chamber of Commerce declined to comment.
McCrumby said the city wants to keep its small business community vibrant, including on Market Street.
“We’re not interested in any of those businesses shuttering,” he said. “We want to do what we can to keep them active.”
Allen Kwabena Frimpong, one of the organizers behind the association, said the idea for an association came from a Market Street business study led by the ZEAL Cooperative, a Black arts cooperative that spent a few years at 310 E. Queen St.
ZEAL surveyed 10 different Market Street businesses and held focus groups with a handful of them. Two-thirds of the businesses were Black-owned or minority-owned, and only one owned its own space.
Many of the businesses, surveyed in 2024, said they wanted more downtown investment from government officials. By the time of the Downtown Inglewood Association launch, several of the businesses had permanently closed
“I know what it was like when (Market Street) was full,” Nicholson said. “This is the restart of something really exciting.”
