C e l e b r a t i n g 2 6 Ye a r s o f Service in Inglewood, Airport area Communities
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EYE ON THE CITY Rams
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September 10-16, 2020 VOL. 35, No. 37
By Kenneth Miller, Publisher
Approximately 25-years and three months to that day the City of Inglewood was to become home to the Raiders and Rams, Inglewood now stands on the cusp of becoming the sports and entertainment capitol of the world. The memory is still vivid when Hollywood Park publicist Jack Disney had informed me in confidence that a deal between Hollywood Park and Raiders owner Al Davis had died on the date it was to be announced. Bottom line was, the late Al Davis didn’t want to share a new stadium with the neighboring Rams who had been playing in Orange County. Inglewood had already been promised two Super Bowls and the whole nine, but what Inglewood didn’t have 25-years ago was Rams owner E.
& Lakers
“Rams quarterback impacts kids through education” See Page 6
Stanley Kroenke and forward thinking Inglewood Mayor James T. Butts. Unlike Davis 25 years, Kroenke was willing bankroll the project, but it wasn’t going to be just any stadium, it was going to be something that would blow the lid off the world, and it has done just that. The savvy Butts, while intrigued by the possibility of rejuvenation of Inglewood, which had been plagued by high unemployment, crime and the decaying Hollywood Park racetrack, he was not going to mortgage the future of the city to get it done. Mayor Butts who shrank unemployment in Inglewood from more than 17 percent to a record low of 4.7 percent, met Kroenke in 2013 in what was supposed to be a 15-minute meeting at City Hall that stretched out
to more than two hours. A Citizen Initiative was created and more than 22,000 signatures collected. The City Council could have decided to place the measure on the ballot or sign it into law, but instead approved it into law. Three years later in 2016, the NFL votes to approve the Rams relocating to the Southern California region and also approved the Chargers to move from San Diego to the where it was born in Los Angeles in 1960. Now, Inglewood a city where the Ku Klux Klan ran rampant from 1922-1937, that birthed and nourished Hollywood Park for 75 years, opened the Forum in 1967 and housed the Lakers and Kings until 1999 is on an orbit of its own. SoFi Stadium is the most significant architectural achievement in the history
Special Edition
of the world, it dwarfs the evolution of The Rose Bowl, Coliseum and another local venue. During a virtual ribbon-cutting ceremony this week at SoFi Stadium, marking the start of its inaugural year. The ceremony included Rams Owner/ Chairman and SoFi Stadium and Hollywood Park developer Kroenke, Chargers Owner/Chairman Dean Spanos and the City of Inglewood’s Mayor James T. Butts, with a video message from NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. Inglewood resident and NFL Network’s Steve Wyche as master of ceremonies “We are in the team business, and you can’t get to a moment like today without a great team. I would like to thank the 17,000 people who have worked on this Continued on page 2
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