Business

On a Crenshaw Boulevard corner, old gives way to new, but it stays in the family

Published

1 year ago

December 5, 2024

On a Crenshaw Boulevard corner, old gives way to new, but it stays in the family

The corner lot on Crenshaw Boulevard and 54th Street looks like any other construction site. Inside the chain-link fence encircling the property, an excavator last week was moving a pile of rubble — the last remains of an old building that had been demolished to make room for something new.

But the mundane scene belied an unusual story in Los Angeles real estate: Instead of selling it, a Black family with deep roots in South L.A. chose to hold on to a property they’ve owned for decades and develop it themselves into a $24-million apartment and retail building.

They’ll mark their progress with a formal groundbreaking ceremony Thursday, a rare instance of a local, minority property owner participating in the redevelopment of their neighborhood, which had long been overlooked by conventional developers. In keeping a seat at the table, they are bucking the norms for how development in L.A. typically is done, in which owners sell to outside developers looking to capitalize on the rising fortunes of once-neglected historic neighborhoods.

But even with a train stop for Metro’s new light rail K line nearby, funding for the project was hard to come by. It took years of effort before siblings Jamial Clark and Bridgette Reed, who inherited the property from their parents, could start turning their mother’s former hair salon and wig shop property into a six-story building with 48 apartments and perhaps a small grocery store in the first-floor retail space.

The grind, they said, has been worth it. Their parents, Henry and Lucretia Clark, scraped together money in 1995 to buy the building and the siblings didn’t want to let go of it. Perhaps, they said, they will provide a road map to others who own properties in evolving neighborhoods near the many new transit lines being built and planned by Metro.

Co-developer Kacy Keys, left, and Clark family members Bridgette Reed and brother Jamial Clark at the site.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

“There are a lot of Black-owned properties up and down Crenshaw,” Reed said. “We just want to encourage other families to do the same thing and not sell out to these developers who are coming in and actually pricing us out of our own communities.”

Key to getting their project underway was teaming with developer Kacy Keys, who has spent nearly three decades building commercial projects including apartments, offices and stores. She heads Praxis Development Group, which will have an equity stake in the project, which is named Clark on 54th.

“We were responsible for playing the developer role,” Keys said of her company, such as getting city construction approvals, overseeing the design, hiring contractors and finding financing. The Clarks “agreed to contribute their land into a joint venture with us.”

Both Praxis and the Clarks had to put up cash for the last few years to make sure the project didn’t falter, which was worrying, Jamial Clark said.

An apartment building will be built at Crenshaw Boulevard and 54th Street in Los Angeles near the Metro K line.

“I invested over $100,000 of my money just to keep things going,” he said, “and to keep bills paid and the mortgage paid,” but he and his sister didn’t want to let go of the property their parents toiled over and where they spent many hours of their young lives.

“Selling was never going to be an option, even though we got to a point where we had to think about it” as rising interest rates and inflation drove the potential cost of the project so high it looked out of reach, Clark said.

The pair attended nearby 54th Street Elementary School and after classes they walked to their mother’s salon, where they pitched in answering the phone.

“It was like our second home,” Clark said, a place with a nurturing vibe that encouraged customers to linger and chat.

“Mom was old-school press-and-curl,” he said, referring to a popular hairstyle in the 1990s. “My mom was taking out those weaves and regrowing their hair.”

The salon had a private area where women with thinning hair could get scalp treatments that included massages from their late beautician sister Carla Taylor and oils formulated by their mother.

“It was almost like a counseling session,” he said. “The ladies would stay after they got their hair done and order lunch.”

Members of the Clark family have owned the property for decades.

On Saturdays their mom played such “old” music as the Temptations, Al Green and the Whispers, he said. “The ladies would just love to come and sit.”

Her tenants in the building included the wig shop with a celebrity clientele, a shoe repair shop, a frame shop and a social services provider, all of which relocated in the neighborhood, he said.

Some neighbors were apprehensive about the plan to knock down a building infused with emotions and memories for so many, but Clark saw an opportunity to be part of potential economic changes coming to the area. In West Adams, another historically black community, development of new apartments, restaurants and shops was already taking place on Adams Boulevard.

“I was like, ‘Wow, Crenshaw should be comparable to that, at least.’”

In the 1920s and 1930s, Central Avenue was the center of L.A.’s black community. Later, the center shifted to the Crenshaw Corridor, particularly between Adams and Slauson Avenue, said real estate developer Philip Hart, who is familiar with the plans for Clark at 54th but not involved in the project.

Lately, the multibillion-dollar public investments in Metro’s Crenshaw line and the Expo line that intersects it “have had a ripple effect in terms of the communities they serve becoming desirable,” Hart said.

That economic shift puts pressure on local residents, he said. “Can they continue to pay their rent or their property taxes? The question of gentrification and displacement has become a very important question in the Crenshaw District over the past 10 years or so.”

If redevelopment doesn’t bring with it affordable housing and good-paying jobs, residents will be priced out of their neighborhoods and join a long-running exodus to Palmdale, Lancaster and the Inland Empire, where the cost of living is cheaper, he said.

The Crenshaw community, Hart said, “should retain its historic African American cultural cachet.”

Keys and the Clarks hope their project will play a small part in keeping the neighborhood intact. The building will include 10 units considered “deeply affordable” because they are reserved for tenants earning 50% of the median income in the area when they become available in late 2026.

The apartments will be bigger than average, including two- and three-bedroom units to accommodate families, said Keys, who is working on the project with her partner Charles Wise.

Work has begun on a new 48-unit apartment building near the Metro K line.

One of the biggest challenges to getting the project underway was finding financing. A building that size typically would be funded with a loan or two, but Keys had to assemble a complicated package from seven entities including philanthropic nonprofits after approaching about 100 financing sources.

“Even though I’ve built over a billion dollars’ worth of projects over the course of my career, this was my first time as a small woman-led business that I was raising money on my own,” Keys said. “It was incredibly challenging.”

Praxis put up more than $200,000 of its own funds and worked without compensation to prove that partnering with legacy landowners to create new housing can work, she said.

Among the financiers was MSquared, a women-owned real estate development and investment firm that will retain an equity share, as will New York investment and development firm Six Peak Capital.

The need to securing financing from multiple sources dragged out the process, but the effort was worth it, Hart said.

“What they’ve done was challenging, but they’ve done it and they’re having a groundbreaking,” he said. “That’s a good thing.”

Business

In a first for the country, voters in Monterey Park ban data centers

Published

9 hours ago

June 3, 2026

Press Room

In a first for the country, voters in Monterey Park ban data centers

Residents of Monterey Park voted overwhelmingly to ban data centers on election day, making the San Gabriel Valley city the first in the nation to do so by public vote.

As of Wednesday, 86% of votes were in favor of Measure NDC, the city ban, according to the Los Angeles County registrar-recorder/county clerk.

Other cities and towns have passed moratoriums on data centers, as a wave of opposition sweeps the country. But the Monterey Park vote can only be overturned by another ballot measure, making it the most permanent data center ban in a jurisdiction.

Monterey Park’s City Council had already banned data centers by ordinance, after a proposed 247,000-square-foot data center met an outpouring of public anger and concern. The developer withdrew that plan.

That facility would have been less than 500 feet away from the nearest home, and would have used three times the electricity of the entire 60,000-person city. Residents said it would have caused noise and air pollution and driven up electricity rates.

“This ensures long-lasting protections for current and future generations,” Amy Wong, co-founder of the group San Gabriel Valley Progressive Action, said of the vote. “It means that future city councils cannot overturn a data center ban, even if data center developers wanted to spend money to fund pro-data center candidates.”

The measure had no formal opposition. The developer of the proposed facility, investment firm HMC StratCap, said it wouldn’t engage in the ballot fight when it withdrew in March.

The Data Center Coalition, an industry trade group, expressed disappointment in the vote.

“It sends a signal that the area is closed for business, both for data centers and for other significant economic development projects,” state policy director Khara Boender said.

“It deprives local residents of the opportunity to compete for jobs and investment, while also causing the area to relinquish substantial long-term economic investment, high-wage jobs, and critical tax revenue to neighboring areas or other states.”

SGV Progressive Action worked with hyperlocal groups including No Data Center Monterey Park to rally support for the measure.

The group is now focused on stopping data center proposals in the City of Industry and fighting a move by City of Industry, Santa Fe Springs, Vernon and City of Commerce to welcome data centers and other industry with fast-tracked permitting and tax incentives.

City of Industry, in the San Gabriel Valley, and Vernon, south of downtown L.A., are primarily industrial areas, each with around 300 permanent residents. They are employment centers, and tens of thousands of workers commute in daily.

There has been little vocal opposition to data centers among the few residents of these cities. Wong said the protest is primarily coming from the surrounding neighborhoods.

“If a data center gets built in City of Industry, residents across the region would bear the brunt of pollution and increased utility costs,” Wong said, noting that it is surrounded by 16 other cities and unincorporated communities.

Data center proposals have been limited in California compared to Virginia, Texas, Georgia, Illinois and Arizona, which sit at the center of a recent boom in hyperscaler facilities to power artificial intelligence.

California has the third-most data centers in the country, with 300, but high electricity rates, expensive land and regulatory hurdles mean that fewer, and smaller, facilities are currently planned than in other hotspots.

That doesn’t mean opposition hasn’t been fierce. In Coachella and Imperial County, residents are showing up in droves to protest local proposals.

In the San Gabriel Valley, Montebello, El Monte and Baldwin Park have all enacted temporary moratoriums, and Alhambra recently banned data centers as part of a zoning code update.

Wong said she hoped the ballot measure vote would galvanize the opposition. “The vote is a testament to the people power of our region,” she said. “Our region is worth protecting, and we won’t let data centers determine our future.”

Business

Rent-hike ban to protect fire victims ends despite gouging concerns

Published

19 hours ago

June 3, 2026

Press Room

Rent-hike ban to protect fire victims ends despite gouging concerns

A rule intended to prevent rent gouging in the wake of the Eaton and Palisades fires has lapsed in Los Angeles County, possibly exposing some renters to hikes.

The executive order that blocked rent increases was issued by Gov. Gavin Newsom amid the devastating wildfires last year. Under the order, landlords couldn’t increase rents by more than 10% above their prefire levels.

The rule, which was supposed to be temporary and was repeatedly extended, ended Friday after a vote to extend it again failed to garner enough votes. Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, whose district includes Pacific Palisades, sounded the alarm in a motion to extend price protections that failed to pass at the Board of Supervisors’ May 19 meeting.

“These price gouging protections continue to be necessary as construction and rebuilding continue, and as thousands of people remain displaced,” the motion said. “Families which signed short-term leases could face drastic price increases of 50% or more without further price gouging protection.”

Los Angeles County is home to more than 1 million rental properties, though not all of them needed protection from the new rule. There are already stricter rent increase caps for many residences, depending on the location, type and age of the building. Despite the rent control in the region, the people of Los Angeles pay among the highest rents in the country.

It is uncertain whether renters will face rapidly rising rents now that the protection has lapsed. But some real estate experts and policymakers said there was no need for the temporary rule that was part of the governor’s state of emergency.

Supervisors Kathryn Barger, Janice Hahn and Holly Mitchell abstained from voting on the motion to extend the protection, while Supervisors Hilda Solis and Horvath supported it.

“I abstained because I did not see sufficient evidence to justify extending this emergency ordinance, nor did I see evidence to eliminate it entirely,” Hahn said.

Barger’s office said she supported allowing the protections to sunset while waiting to see whether new information emerged.

“Market data already shows countywide rents are only about 2% above pre-emergency levels and rental inventory has grown,” Barger representative Helen E. Chavez Garcia said. “The Supervisor is also mindful of the burden these ongoing protections place on small property owners throughout the county.”

Mitchell did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

There haven’t been steep rent hikes in neighborhoods within three miles of the Palisades fire, according to a Times analysis of data from Zillow, the property listing company.

In ZIP Codes within three miles of the Palisades fire, rent increased 4.8% from December 2024 to April 2025. In areas around the Eaton fire, which destroyed swaths of Altadena, rent jumped 5.2% in the same period.

In L.A. County, ZIP Codes farther from the fires saw only about a 2% increase.

A landlords representative, Jesus Rojas of the Apartment Owners Assn. of Greater Los Angeles, told the supervisors during public comment at the meeting that the county’s rent-gouging rules have “long outlived the emergency they were intended to address” and are now being “wrongfully used to harm thousands of rental housing providers throughout the county.”

“There is no proof that multifamily rental housing providers are hugely increasing rents for impacted homeowners,” Rojas said.

Indeed, there are strong signs that the property market in the Los Angeles area has at last begun to cool.

L.A. metro-area rent prices recently fell to a four-year low, with the median rent slipping to $2,167 in December.

Meanwhile, condominium sales had their slowest start of the year in decades. Condo sales in Los Angeles have plummeted to a 20-year low, with fewer than 2,000 units sold in January and February — the worst start to the year since 2005.

Newsom defended the price-gouging protections shortly after they went into effect.

“In the days following the Los Angeles firestorms, we worked quickly to protect Los Angeles survivors from any form of exploitation,” he said in February 2025. “The state has the tools in place to not only block price gouging during this emergency, but also to prosecute bad actors.”

The Los Angeles County Department of Consumer and Business Affairs said it received more than 2,000 complaints after the fires, alleging that retailers and landlords were taking advantage of people put in hardship by their losses, and sent out more than 2,000 cease-and-desist letters to businesses and landlords for alleged price gouging, said Morine Merritt, who oversees department investigations into consumer and real estate fraud.

“Close to 90% of the complaints that we received involved allegations of rent increases,” Merritt said in an interview. Now that the fire-related protections have expired, existing laws and “regular market conditions determine price increases for goods and services, including rents,” she said.

Crackdowns on fire-related rent gouging have been rare, said Chelsea Kirk of the activist organization the Rent Brigade, which analyzed L.A. County’s rental market in the year after the fires. It reported 18,360 potential examples of price gouging in listings but said that few lawsuits had been filed by authorities so far.

Last week, Rent Brigade announced what it said was the first private civil lawsuit brought by a family that claimed to be rent-gouged in the aftermath of the wildfires. Plaintiffs Randall and Candy Renick, whose Altadena home was damaged, said they were charged nearly three times the maximum permitted rate for nearly 10 months. They seek restitution of $96,000 plus civil penalties and attorneys’ fees.

The rental market has probably stabilized since the fires, Kirk said, but other families may still be “locked into illegal rents” that they agreed to pay when they were in a rush to find housing after they were displaced.

Business

Read Nick Bilton’s Letter to Scott Pelley

Published

1 day ago

June 3, 2026

Press Room

Read Nick Bilton’s Letter to Scott Pelley

Dear Mr. Pelley:

I meant what I said in my letter last week to the 60 Minutes team: joining 60 Minutes is the honor of my career and I am grateful to be working alongside the people who have contributed to the most important television journalism brand this country has ever produced. While I’m new to 60 Minutes, I’ve devoted my career to investigative journalism and storytelling. I started this job excited to collaborate and to benefit from the wisdom and experience of the 60 Minutes veterans, with you among them. For that reason, one of the first things I did in my new role was call you to talk and invite you to dinner. It is a profound disappointment that you rejected that overture and chose ambush instead. Yesterday, you hijacked my first meeting with staff to disparage me, my qualifications, and my intentions with remarkable incivility and contempt. I welcome a diversity of viewpoints and respectful debate among the team, but this was nothing of the sort. Yesterday’s performative display of hostility enacted in front of the staff instead of in a civil, private conversation-demonstrated that you have no interest in contributing to the future success of the show, or approaching my new tenure with a mind open to collaboration and progress. I am here to deliver first-in-class news programming, not to make headlines about newsroom drama. I am eager to work alongside those who share this goal.

Despite yesterday’s misconduct, I had hoped that in sitting down with you today we could find a path forward together. You made clear that you are not interested in such a path.

Your antipathy to the future of the show has come through loud and clear. And I have heard you. I therefore write on behalf of CBS News, Inc. (“CBS”) to inform you that your employment with CBS is terminated for cause effective immediately. Enclosed is your formal termination letter.

Sincerely,

Nick Bilton

Executive Producer, 60 Minutes