Robin René Cole spent countless weekends in middle school at the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza in the ‘80s, where she and her mother would browse through the lines of department stores and mom-and-pop shops.
Now 62 years old, Cole recently traveled to the suburbs of Chicago to demand the mall be given back to her community.
“We are in the midst of gentrification throughout this nation,” Cole said. “That mall should have been our restitution.”
In 2020, Capri Capital announced it would sell Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza to CIM Group, an outside developer. Thousands of residents including community-centered developers and civic organization leaders formed the Downtown Crenshaw Rising coalition to halt the sale and create their own redevelopment plans.
The group began a two-year battle to secure community ownership of the mall. They had successes, blocking the sale to two developers and fundraising to create a $115 million bid of their own.
Despite their relentless efforts, DWS, an affiliate of Deutsche Bank managing the sale of the Crenshaw Mall, announced on Aug. 25, 2021 it had sold the property to the Harridge Development Group, a real estate development company based in Hollywood, for $111 million. With the future of the historic fixture in the South L.A. sealed, residents who fought for the mall are torn. Residents and members of Downtown Crenshaw Rising who believed community ownership of the Crenshaw Mall would mark the first monumental step toward regaining their splintering community must now grapple with fears that the outside developer will exacerbate the inevitable displacement of their community amid already rapidly-rising home prices and growing changes in their neighborhoods.
For many Downtown Crenshaw Rising members, DWS’ decision to sell the property to the Harridge Development Group despite the fact the coalition submitted a higher bid indicated the sale was one more instance of the racially-discriminatory gentrification of the Baldwin Hills and Crenshaw community.
“The racism is so evident that it’s just devastating,” said Veronica Sance, a member of Downtown Crenshaw Rising and resident of Baldwin Hills for fifty years. “Here we are in 2021 and we’re still being treated like it’s 1876.”
Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Mall
The Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza lies at the intersection of Crenshaw Boulevard and Martin Luther King Jr Boulevard in Baldwin Hills.
A Cultural Hub for Black Los Angeles
In recent years, the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza suffered serious blows after losing two of its anchors, Sears and Walmart, emptying roughly a third of its business capacity. The onset of the pandemic then forced the mall to shut down, another blow to a property already struggling as retailers and department stores across America are shrinking. Though currently a shell of its former self, the Baldwin Hill Crenshaw Plaza once served as a cultural center for the area.
Spanning 40 acres across the intersection between Martin Luther King Boulevard and Crenshaw Boulevard, the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza comprises over 850,000 square-feet for retail space, office use and a 75,000 square-foot movie theater.
Also known as the Crenshaw Mall, the space has historically served as a hub for Black Los Angeles.
Much of the cultural significance surrounding the Crenshaw Mall stems from its roots — prior to the mall’s construction, the location included the Broadway-Crenshaw Center, one of the first regional shopping centers to exist in the United States.
“It was such a vibrant community,” Cole said. “People admired that whole area."
Broadway Stores, a Southern California-based retailer, built the Broadway-Crenshaw Center in 1947, creating California's first open-air retail complex. The 550,000 square-foot property offered South L.A. its first major centralized shopping space with a Woolworth’s variety store, a Vons supermarket and the owner’s signature Broadway department store.
In 1988, in an effort to expand the commercial activity within the area, former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley called for the construction of a large indoor mall, bringing forth the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza and replacing the Broadway-Crenshaw Center. The mall introduced a series of chain stores to the community, with Sears, Broadway and the May Company anchoring the development.
“This is the oldest historic plaza in Los Angeles County,” said Malik Muhammed, a business owner inside the Crenshaw Mall. “This is prime real estate… this is a gold mine.”
For Cole, the mall acted as a source of a certain quality of goods and services often found outside of her home.
“[The Crenshaw Mall] was our shopping area, our little mecca, and it was something I didn’t have to drive 10 miles to get to,” Cole said. “For anything that’s healthy and good, we always have to leave our community.”
The contention surrounding the future owner of the Crenshaw Mall attracted attention from every corner of the community.
“The Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza is the center of our community,” said Gina Fields, the Chairperson of the Empowerment Congress West Area Neighborhood Development Council (ECWA). As one of 99 neighborhood councils in Los Angeles, ECWA serves as an independent advisory body to the City of Los Angeles advocating the betterment of Baldwin Hills, Crenshaw and Leimert Park.
“It's too important for us to leave it sitting there as a big, white, empty carcass in the middle of our community,” Fields said.
Black Wealth Amid Rising Gentrification
As a low-income resident, Sance fears the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza’s redevelopment will catalyze greater gentrification, with outside members driving up property values and displacing long-term residents of a region that is 68% Black.
“No one wanted to live over here,” Sance said. “Now it's prime real estate and everyone wants to come in and push us residents out that have lived in this community all our lives.” In 1970, 80% of South L.A. residents were Black.
The changes to the ownership of the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza illustrates one facet of the expanding gentrification of South L.A. Median home prices in the 90008 zip code — encompassing Baldwin Hills, Crenshaw and Leimert Park — have increased from $632,500 in Nov. 2016 to $1,303,500 in Nov. 2021, according to real-estate brokerage firm Redfin.
“Leimert Park, Crenshaw and Baldwin Hills are sort of the last standing African American neighborhoods in Los Angeles,” Fields said. “We spend all of this time trying to get great businesses in [the community] and then gentrification comes and we feel like we're being kicked out of the neighborhood.”
Community ownership of properties in Baldwin Hills and Crenshaw has long been the goal of community organizations seeking to offset the growing forces of gentrification in Southern California.
“South L.A. has been home to historically low-income, Black and immigrant populations that have been neglected by private markets and capital,” said Miranda Rodriguez, the deputy director of the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), Los Angeles chapter. "Private market goals and outcomes very rarely align with community asset and ownership outcomes.” LISC is a nonprofit organization centered on supporting community development programs in 44 states.
At LISC, Rodriguez leads community development initiatives such as the Black Economic Development Agenda to empower marginalized communities of color to maintain economic control of their local areas.
“If there isn’t a strategy, whether that’s led by elected officials, private organizations or community groups, to intentionally create asset building and ownership opportunities in communities,” Rodriguez said, “then often times the private market wedges those mom-and-pops and and low-income renters out of their homes and communities.”
Rodriguez said structural barriers to homeownership, employment or education, left many people of color with fewer opportunities to build wealth across generations. The Black Economic Development Agenda works to close some of those gaps.
The rapid changes to Crenshaw’s demographic makeup and economic activity has struck fear into many residents. Cognizant of rising home prices driven by increasing outside developers in South L.A., Sance said she's concerned she’ll join the thousands displaced by gentrification.
“I am afraid that I'm going to be one of the first to lose their housing,” Sance said. “This is why I've been fighting this, I'm trying to stay where I lay my head at night.”
Downtown Crenshaw Rising intended to counter the effects of gentrification through its community-ownership model. Led by Black activists, experts and residents, Downtown Crenshaw Rising aimed to create Black wealth in the neighborhoods many residents feared they were losing.
Members of Downtown Crenshaw Rising have previously worked in community-focused development projects across the country. Paul Yelder, the coalition’s Board Treasurer, served as the executive director of the Dudley Street Incorporated, a community land trust overseeing 30 acres of land controlled by Boston residents. Other prior involvement by Downtown Crenshaw Rising members in community projects includes Board Secretary Malcolm Harris, who redeveloped properties into affordable housing as the Director of Programs and Organizing at the T.R.U.S.T. South LA.
Resident Speaks on Fear for the Future
Veronica Sance, a longtime Baldwin Hills resident and member of Downtown Crenshaw Rising, discusses why she believes its best for the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza to be community-owned.
According to its website, the group formed in the spring of 2020, drawing on longtime residents.
Working alongside the coalition’s leaders, Baldwin Hills and Crenshaw residents seeking to contribute to Downtown Crenshaw Rising’s efforts played a pivotal role in publicly advocating for community-ownership of the shopping center. Joining from the inception of the organization, many residents mobilized to protest against upcoming buyers of the mall in the months to come, staging multiple demonstrations in cities across America to draw attention to the unfolding situation in their neighborhood.
Sance said the announcement of Crenshaw Mall’s sale sparked outrage with her and other residents. Sance connected to Downtown Crenshaw Rising through a community activist she’d known while working at Liberty Community Land Trust.
“I was appalled,” Sance said. “I knew that whatever the community was going to do to try to put a stop to it, I wanted to be a part of it.”
Sance, Cole and other activists, many of them older women, became known as the Grandmamas.
In April 2020, word came that the CIM Group, commercial real-estate company based in Mid-Wilshire, would buy the mall. One month later, focusing on the lack of affordable housing units in the proposal by CIM Group, Downtown Crenshaw Rising circulated a petition throughout the community that garnered over 10,000 signatures.
In June, a few weeks after the petition’s creation, CIM Group announced it was stepping away from the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza acquisition in an Instagram post.
"This is a tremendous Black victory and a testament to the power of our community," said Damien Goodmon, a Downtown Crenshaw Rising board member, in a blog regarding CIM Group’s retreat from the acquisition.
After the sale to CIM Group dissolved, DWS later selected New York real estate companies LIVWRK and DFH Partners as the buyers in Oct. 2020.
Downtown Crenshaw Rising continued its campaign, drawing attention to LIVWRK’s history of partnering with Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of former president Donald Trump. Using the same tactics as they did against CIM Group, members of Downtown Crenshaw Rising protested outside the home of LIVWRK founder Asher Abehsera.
On Dec. 11, 2020, LIVWRK became the second company to drop its plans to acquire the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza after rising pressure from the community.
During its short existence, Downtown Crenshaw Rising gathered widespread support for its campaign, including former President of the LA City Council Herb Wesson and LA County Supervisor Holly Mitchell. The organization also found backing from an array of neighborhood councils, local business associations and philanthropic foundations such as the Annenberg Foundation.
Downtown Crenshaw Rising also launched their #40AcresAndAMall campaign online, drawing comparisons between the community’s pursuit of the mall and the unfulfilled Civil-War-era promise for 40 acres and a mule for freed Black families. Residents and Downtown Crenshaw Rising members included the hashtag in their Facebook posts related to the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza acquisition.
The group also offered T-shirts printed with “Stop Gentrification” and “Save Crenshaw Mall.” Six Sev, an entrepreneur and artist local to Crenshaw who once collaborated with the late South L.A. rapper Nipsey Hussle, designed the T-shirts.
By Feb. 2021, Downtown Crenshaw Rising had amassed over $28 million in a two-week fundraising campaign, drawing contributions from prominent figures within and outside the local community. With further financial backing, the group submitted a $115 million bid to purchase the mall.
The group’s proposal sought amenities and features that addressed the needs of local residents in Crenshaw, including affordable housing units, local hiring requirements and a prioritization of local procurement contracts.
But in May 2021, Goodman revealed the Harridge Development Group placed a new bid for the mall to challenge Downtown Crenshaw Rising’s bid without an official announcement from the developer or DWS.
“We came up and ended up raising the money, and they didn't care,” Sance said. “Your money is Black like you and we don't want it. That's how I feel… because who turns down philanthropy money?”
Sance, Cole and other Downtown Crenshaw members travelled to Chicago in May and protested at the Chicago residence of Timothy Ellsworth, a managing director at DWS, where Sance said the group was able to get the attention of his wife outside their home. When the wife demanded to know why the protesters were outside her door, the group shouted back, “We want your husband,” according to Sance.
“I stepped over the plants and everything to get to the window,” Sance said. “And then we proceeded to all give her our story and let her know why we were there.”
On Aug. 25, 2021, the property was officially sold to the Harridge Development Group. Downtown Crenshaw claimed they were given no notice of the final transaction until it was completed.
DWS offered no clear explanation for its decision — the group announced the developer was chosen through a “fair and open sales process based upon a number of factors including both purchase price as well as development expertise."
“I’m so devastated, I don’t want to talk to anyone,” Sance said. “Who else has been able to put so much pressure on large development companies like CIM [Group] and LIVWRK and make them back down?”
The CEO of Harridge Development Group — the company awarded the sale of the property — told the Los Angeles Times he plans to convert the mall into a more modern shopping center that also includes housing units and office space within the next seven years. Of the 961 housing units approved by the city for the mall in 2018, 10% will be designated for affordable housing, the developer said in the interview. Downtown Crenshaw Rising proposed a “mixed-income housing” model that would use revenue from its market-rate units to support affordable housing units, though the specific number of units designated for each were not publicly stated.
On the day of the announcement, Downtown Crenshaw Rising’s website stated the group would continue to challenge the decision as the transaction is reviewed by oversight bodies.
However, as of Dec. 2021, Downtown Crenshaw Rising has yet to alert the public of any specific actions the group is taking to halt the sale, paving the way for the Harridge Development Group to successfully acquire the mall by the end of the year. According to Sance, meetings within the organization have slowed, with many of its members left confused on the pending direction of the coalition.
Despite falling short of obtaining the property, Downtown Crenshaw Rising garnered public support for their cause. In an interview with Knock LA, Los Angeles City Councilman Marqueece Harris-Dawson, the representative for the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza’s region, said he hopes Downtown Crenshaw Rising continues to find other developments on which to concentrate their efforts.
“I was really proud of the Downtown Crenshaw crew,” Harris-Dawson said. “They basically took an idea and turned it into a real offer in a short amount of time… it was improbable from the beginning, and they made a lot more progress than I think any of us thought that they could make.”
Facing the Future of Crenshaw Mall
Following the tumultuous year and half in finalizing the fate of the historic mall, Baldwin Hills and Crenshaw residents are preparing for its all but certain ownership by the outside developer.
“I wish Downtown Crenshaw had been able to get the mall… I was rooting for them,” Fields said. “But when it came down to it and it wasn’t coming to fruition, we’ve got to deal with the devil we know.”
Local businesses inside the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza have come to accept the change, hoping the new owners will reinvigorate the status the mall once had in the community.
Malik Muhammed, the owner of Malik Books, has operated his bookstore in Crenshaw Mall since 1990. Muhammad, who is Black, said small business owners inside the mall have no valid options outside of being optimistic for the future and cooperating with the new owners to generate greater attraction to the shopping center.
“Nobody here can change the fact that it's under new management,” Muhammed said. “This is a hub for culture, for families, for businesses, and the new ownership understands that.”
David Schwartzman, the CEO of the Harridge Development Group, began to introduce himself to non-chain businesses inside the mall in the past month, according to business owners in the shopping center. James Brumfield, another Black business owner in the mall who sells unique and exotic menswear, said he’s enjoyed his encounters with Schwartzman thus far and believes the shopping center is better served by developers with a proven history of large-scale redevelopments.
“If [Schwartzman] has a roadblock, he has someone he can go to for assistance,” Brumfield said. “I don't think Downtown Crenshaw had that.”
For Sance, the mall’s change in ownership entails a grim forecast for the future of her neighborhood. Sance said she believes it’s inevitable for residents to be bought out by outside developers to replace them with wealthier, upper class residents.
“I can't afford to move outside of my community, nor do I want to,” Sance said.
LISC deputy director Rodriguez said in order to appease the concerns of Downtown Crenshaw Rising members and other residents, the redevelopment of the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza will require careful coordination moving forward.
“When you come in to totally transform a giant property like the mall, it's important to have equitable outcomes baked into your overall development strategy,” Rodriguez said. “It takes a lot of time. It takes trust. It takes resources and good faith on all of the partners. And as we can see with what's happening with the Crenshaw Mall, it’s hard to do.”
The Empowerment Congress West Area Neighborhood Development Council is communicating with the Harridge Development Group to prioritize local entrepreneurs and businesses as they plan the mall’s redevelopment, Fields said. After discussions with ECWA, the mall’s developers have pledged to introduce a community benefits package in the near future. This includes rent relief for the local businesses currently in the mall as well as a $1 million direct investment into local entrepreneurs.
“Our hope is this can be one hand feeding the other,” Fields said, “where the money is not just dripping out of the community, but there's also money being put back into the community.”