Inglewood’s downtown still struggles. Can it spark to life before World Cup, Super Bowl?

Just a mile away from SoFi Stadium, a stretch of downtown Inglewood is eerily quiet. The historic Market Street corridor, once a bustling center for Black-owned businesses and a hub of commerce going back to the early 20th century, is now marked by shuttered storefronts and boarded-up buildings.

Structures standing since the 1940s sit lonely and abandoned, including the iconic Fox Theatre, which closed nearly 40 years ago.

“Market Street, we’ve been waiting for it to get more viable over all these years,” said Terry Dulan, owner of Dulan’s Soul Food Kitchen, a long-standing, family-owned staple on Manchester Boulevard.

It’s been almost six years since the opening of SoFi Stadium. Two adjacent venues, YouTube Theater and Intuit Dome, opened in 2021 and 2024, respectively, joining the Kia Forum, which reopened after significant renovations in 2014. The sports and entertainment corridor along Prairie Avenue has become a major economic driver for the city of Inglewood, with SoFi Stadium grossing over $175 million in revenue and bringing in 1 million visitors in 2023 alone, according to Billboard.

And yet, on most nights, Inglewood’s downtown is subdued and inactive. While a few longstanding businesses have managed to attract regular customers on the otherwise empty street, many others have closed due to rent hikes and eminent domain to make way for planned transit centers.

Once the thriving core of downtown Inglewood, Market Street is marked with “For lease” signs and boarded up buildings.

(Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

But now, a transformation for Market Street is becoming urgent, with Inglewood hosting L.A.’s World Cup matches in June, Super Bowl LXI in 2027 and the Olympics in 2028. The city has launched an $8.5-million state grant program to help revitalize the corridor with hopes of attracting more visitors to Market Street ahead of the major events.

“The purpose is to have Market Street, which used to be downtown Inglewood, regain its luster and attractiveness,” Inglewood Mayor James T. Butts said in an interview. “We want to make it Wall Street, Third Street, Old Town Pasadena.”

The city will award 16 restaurants and nearly 20 other businesses with grants of up to $250,000 each for exterior and interior renovations.

Dulan said he started to notice a significant downturn in business on Market after the Lakers left the Forum for Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles in 1999. The decline only worsened in the following years, particularly after the Hollywood Park racetrack closed in 2013.

“We’re hoping that [the program] helps the businesses become more attractive to guests that are coming from out of town,” said Dulan, whose brother Greg runs Dulan’s on Crenshaw, a longtime community hub along the Destination Crenshaw corridor.

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Open since 1999, Dulan’s Soul Food Kitchen is located near downtown Market Street on E. Manchester Boulevard.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

The grant funding was awarded through Inglewood’s Destination Market Street program that launched in June. Like the ongoing Destination Crenshaw initiative, Destination Market Street aims to renovate business facades and add more parking, outdoor seating, pedestrian lighting and enhanced landscaping. The corridor also sits just inside the southwestern edges of the new Black Cultural District, which covers a large swath of South L.A.

Six restaurants will receive up to $250,000 each: Little Belize, Randy’s Donuts and Chinese, Keokia’s Kitchen, Dulan’s Soul Food Kitchen, the Wood Urban Kitchen and Rosalie’s Caribbean Cuisine. Nine more restaurants have been approved for grant funding pending final documents.

The project is a signal of hope for business owners who recall what Market Street once was. Despite the promising development, a string of other restaurants and businesses have been left out, demonstrating deeper challenges for the corridor in the long term.

“The gentrification of Market Street is already happening through the closure of the businesses that are already there,” said Allen Frimpong, co-founder of Zeal Co-op, a creative arts cooperative for Black artists.

Dulan’s Soul Food Kitchen, with an additional location on Century Boulevard, plans to use the grant to combine its kitchen, dining and event spaces into one uniform space.

“I’m hoping that maybe this will help turn the corner and we can get more traffic on the block, and get some more businesses to open and become like a cultural area that you can visit, that’s not in the sports complex,” Dulan said.

Melissa Stoudamire, owner of the Toast & Jam (formerly the Rusty Pot Cafe), is slated to receive a grant. She plans to use the money to rebrand the restaurant with a “New York street cafe” aesthetic. “I think that it will also be an opportunity to make it … a little bit more of an elevated experience for the customers after so many years,” Stoudamire said.

Some businesses on Market Street were not able to secure grant funding due to ineligibility; others were rejected due to an “overwhelming interest.”

Allison Simon, the owner of Black Being, a nonprofit yoga studio on neighboring Queen Street, submitted all her paperwork in June but was rejected in November, after the city said it would focus on businesses solely on Market Street.

Simon was hoping to renovate a room in her yoga studio, which she uses for events. Without those funds, Simon chose not to move forward with the renovations. “I’m afraid to invest more money into a building that might not be here,” she said. “I don’t really have the trust of the city right now that it’s worth it.”

Amanda-Jane Thomas opened Sip & Sonder coffee shop with co-owner Shanita Nicholas on Market Street in 2019 and was forced to close in December 2025. The coffee shop did not receive a grant and Thomas said there could have been more transparency surrounding the project timeline, process, criteria and guidelines.

Despite serving as a vital third space for downtown Inglewood, Sip & Sonder was forced to permanently close its Market Street location.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Babette Davis, owner of Stuff I Eat, said the restaurant was ineligible for the grant due to not having a lease. The vegan restaurant that has served as a local staple on Market Street for nearly 20 years will close on April 26, after a corporation purchased the building and increased the rent. 110 N. Market St. LLC did not respond to requests for comment.

“This pretty much came out of nowhere,” Davis said. “We were never able to get a lease with them, and they just decided they wanted to go up on the rent astronomically, and we couldn’t afford it.”

Since opening at 114 N. Market St. in 2008, Davis said her building has “felt like home.”

“The love that was shared between ourselves and the community, we will definitely miss that,” Davis said.

In addition to increasing rent, lack of property maintenance has been a concern for some business owners. Simon said when she first got her building she had to fix electrical and plumbing systems.

“To come into a business, and then need to fix the building as well. … It’s like, how can anybody afford that?” Simon said.

Frimpong, who co-founded the Downtown Inglewood Business Assn., said the city needs to establish a system to mitigate rent increases and the lack of code enforcement, as well as inform small business owners of their rights when leasing a property.

As part of the grant agreement, landlords are required to sign a rental increase protection form that limits rent increases to 5% for three years, aiming to protect businesses from hikes following the renovations.

As part of the Inglewood Transit Connector plan to improve mobility, the city also plans to develop two transit hubs to connect Market Street to the entertainment venues. These hubs would include parking structures, bus rotaries, transit amenities, and pick up and drop off areas.

The city plans to demolish a strip mall on Market Street and Florence Avenue to build one of the mobility hubs. Some businesses will receive funds for relocation, including Randy’s Donuts & Chinese.

Butts said the improvement efforts to Market Street are meant to make the whole city more walkable and pedestrian-friendly. “This is just another incremental step along the way towards [the] resurgence of Inglewood,” Butts said.