Seeing Opportunity in South L.A.
Los Angeles is booming, and the economic renaissance stretches from the tony Westside enclaves to the basin beyond. Employment is up. Crime is down. There is money to be made in nearly every neighborhood, including the old, dense low-income areas often ignored by commercial developers. The eye of at least one is on South-Central L.A.
Chris Hammond and his Capital Vision Equities development firm is focused close-in. He is betting on crowds of South-Central customers who now have few choices for convenient shopping.
Hammond and some other prescient developers are part of the “infill” development movement, which seeks to establish new buildings in established urban areas and refurbish existing structures. They see new opportunities: Build it and they will come.
Hammond broke ground Tuesday on the largest commercial development to be built in the South-Central area in more than a decade, Chesterfield Square, a $75-million shopping center at the corner of Western Avenue and Slauson Boulevard, not far from the epicenter of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, and within a three-mile range of 500,000 potential customers.
This isn’t social work for Hammond and his investment partners, NFL football star Keyshawn Johnson, a native Angeleno, and Brentwood-based developer Katell Properties. They’re looking for revenue. The team also includes nonprofit economic development corporations based at major area churches: Ward AME, West Angelus and Greater Bethany. The project is expected to produce some 600 jobs, many for local residents.
Chesterfield Square is privately financed, unlike the public-private partnerships that have developed smaller projects in the area, and it will stand out because of its size. The complex will be located on a 22-acre site with plenty of room for corporate retailers and services. Home Depot, Food4Less and McDonald’s have already signed leases.
If successful, Chesterfield Square and future retail complexes in the area can prove the point that developers need not follow customers out to distant affluent neighborhoods.
