For the first time in 20 years, Los Angeles will be home to an NFL football team, as the Rams leaving St. Louis to return back to Los Angeles, which was their home from 1946 to 1994.
The retired jersey numbers of Rams legends such as Deacon Jones, Jackie Slater, Jack Youngblood, Bob Waterfield, Merlin Olsen, and Eric Dickerson can finally hang in the city in which they played their glory years.
The move came as a result of 30 of the 32 NFL owners voting in favor of the plan for the Rams to build a stadium at Hollywood Park in Inglewood. Rams owner Stan Kroenke owns land at the site, and will privately fund the project.
“Today, with the NFL returning home, Los Angeles cements itself as the epicenter of the sports world,” Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said in a statement. “We cannot wait to welcome the Rams, and perhaps others soon, as they join a storied lineup of professional franchises, collegiate powerhouses and sports media companies.”
Garcette alluded to the San Diego Chargers and Oakland Raiders when he said “perhaps others soon.” Those teams created a partnership to build a stadium in Carson, but the NFL owners decided to go with the Inglewood plan. The mayor of San Diego said that the city would continue to negotiate with the Chargers for a new stadium. But the Chargers have a year-long option to join the Rams in Inglewood. If the team declines to do so, the Raiders will have an option to move back to the Los Angeles area.
The Rams will share the Coliseum with USC until the $1.8 billion stadium, which is set to open in 2019, is completed in Inglewood. With at least one NFL team, the new stadium will also bring future Super Bowls, and it can be used for the NCAA men’s basketball Final Four games, as well as other major sporting events.
The development at Hollywood Park is already underway. The proposed 75,000-seat stadium will be accompanied by a 6,000-seat performance arts venue, 800,000 square feet of retail space, 790,000 square feet of commercial space, 2,500 residential units, and 25 acres of park space. Hollywood Park would be transformed into a sports and entertainment district.
The retail space will be modeled after some of the popular venues in the Los Angeles area.
“Open air, similar to The Grove, or Third Street Promenade, where you have a pedestrian street that runs through the spine of the development,” said Gerard McCallum, project manager for the Hollywood Park Land Company. “It’s not like a closed-in mall by any stretch of the imagination.”
There will be a 300-room boutique-style hotel, and the performing arts center will bring more entertainment acts to Inglewood—that’s “pretty much anything from concerts to theater shows,” McCallum said. “Obviously it will be a smaller venue than the Forum, that sits right next to it. The Forum will have bigger shows, and seat anywhere from 9,000 to 18,000. This performance arts venue will have smaller shows, from (audiences of) 6,000 down to 1,500 seats.”
Hollywood Park would be turned into a small city because residential property will be onsite.
“Both single-family homes will line the existing homes that are adjacent to the site,” McCallum said. “There’s the Renaissance Property and the 11th Avenue homes that are adjacent to the site. Right next to that will be single-family homes, and then from there it will be mixed used type of property ranging from single-family condominiums to town homes, as well as apartments.”
McCullums said the developments will also be a family- and community- friendly environment.
“The park space, one portion of it will be a lake, with surrounding pathways for jogging,” McCallum said. “The other portions of the park will have fountains and things geared toward kids, and there will be some open play fields.”
The racetrack was not a part of the plans, but the casino is.
“The casino is still in operation,” McCallum said. “It is a separate parcel from the Hollywood Park development. A new building will be built just adjacent to where the existing casino is. It’s actually going to front Century Boulevard. That construction will begin in June,” noted McCullum
“The casino is one of the largest tax drivers in City of Inglewood, so we’ve agreed to keep that operating during the construction period. When the new (casino) is up, 12:01 midnight, everybody will walk over to the new building and the other building will shut down, and then we will commence demolishing the old building.”
This development was not dependent on the NFL retuning to the Southland, and it would have been completed even if the football stadium was not built.
“We are currently under construction on the other portion of it.” McCallum said. “This project was actually entitled, with a full environmental impact report completed in 2009, and that project started construction in March of last year. We’ve already moved to the point where we’re doing the infrastructure, which is the sewer lines being put in place, street widening, and utilities.”
One of the major concerns that Inglewood residents have with the developments at Hollywood Park is the traffic that will be created as the area swells with spectators. The developers of this project have done traffic reports, and getting cars in and out of the area smoothly has been a priority. This issue was actually addressed more than 80 years ago, when Hollywood Park was initially built.
“If you look at Hollywood Park, built in the 1930s, as well as the Forum, built in the 1960s, and you look around the existing track, you see a lot of wide streets,” McCallum said. “(Those include) Prairie Avenue, Century Boulevard, and Manchester Avenue. That’s primarily because the city, years ago, built in an infrastructure to handle quite of a large number of people coming into the city. As late as the late 1990s, between the Lakers playoff games and the track running up to 80,000 people, the area was able to accommodate that.”
Even with the wide streets surrounding the area, the city’s traffic system needed to be addressed, because it has not been updated to be compatible with the intelligent traffic system that has been installed throughout the county, McCullum noted.
“A part of this development will enhance a lot of those traffic signals to interface with the county’s systems,” McCallum said. “The intelligent traffic system will be added to city’s existing system.”
While the area is expected to see a lot more traffic during the week because of all of the developments at Hollywood Park, the bulk of the traffic will come during NFL games, which may not be as big of an issue as people think it will be, agrees McCullum.
“NFL games are on Sundays, which is the least traffic impact day compared to the other days,” McCallum said. “So there will be a lot of traffic capacity for a lot less stress on Sundays.”
Also factor in that an NFL team only plays eight regular season home games a year.
Parking also does not appear to be an issue. There will be parking onsite, and within a mile and a half of the stadium, there will be more than 44,000 parking spaces.
Fans riding the Metro will also relieve some of the traffic. There will be shuttles that pick up fans from two Metro stations, which is similar to the systems put in place for Dodger Stadium and the Rose Bowl. For Dodger games, fans can park at Union Station and take the shuttle for free over to the stadium, which is cheaper, and decreases the traffic.
