Some say don’t sweat the small stuff. 
Though sometimes you have to celebrate the small stuff.
After decades of false starts and baby steps forward, there are big movements at Marlton Square, a.k.a. Santa Barbara Plaza. Just over a year ago, Leimert Park Beat embarked on a crowd-sourced, crowd-funded investigationinto the status of this 20-acre eyesore. There was plenty of blame to pass around.
In August, we were there with Councilman Bernard Parks for the wrecking ball’s figurative first strike.
The demolition isn’t fast enough. And there are only hints of development ahead. But at least there’s something going on.
You can see it in these pictures taken by Rob Helfman of ShawDog.com, who lives on the hill above that bombed out shopping center. Helfman was there for the for the press conference in August. He's been taking photos of the progress nearly every day and supplied the photos in the slide show featured above.
"Hey, every day I look down the hill and see the (glacial) incremental progress from my windows," Helfman said. "I'll stop taking pictures until it's done (or I croak, whichever comes first)."
Several buildings along Martin Luther King Boulevard are no more (the legendary Jerry’s Flying Fox is still open!). The swap meet/El Shaddai church on the corner is almost gone.
As each decrepit wall falls down, something new rises in its place – hope.
Posted by Eddie North-Hager on 12/07/11
In the year since you helped produce this story, there have been lots of follow up stories by the mainstream media focusing on Santa Barbara Plaza, aka Marlton Square, the 20-acres of half empty stores waiting for the city's redevelopment plans to come to fruition.
Recently Councilman Bernard Parks announced that the demoliton would begin and the senior housing would be completed. That's one big step closer to a new development.
The blighted property was a big issue in the rescent election. The LA Times wrote two stories on Marlton square. And it was the second most popular story of 2010 on LeimertParkBeat.com. Nearly 1,300 people have watched the video.
To read the original story, click here - http://www.leimertparkbeat.com/profiles/blogs/redevelopment-hell-how-a-prime-1
Posted by Eddie North-Hager on 08/02/11Marlton Square wasn’t always the collection of decaying buildings and empty lots it is today. Bernard Parks talks about the history and gradual deterioration of the the shopping center.
Listen to District 8 Councilman Bernard Parks using the audio player above.
Posted by Emily Henry on 08/04/10
Smiling faces, couples holding hands, friends chatting on benches surrounded by shopping bags... the vision for the future of the Baldwin-Crenshaw Plaza is clear. The $30 million upgrade is already underway with the renovation of the Magic Johnson Theatre, which will re-open as a "state-of-the-art multiplex," according to Ken Lombard, president of mall owner Capri Urban Investors. Aesthetic improvements, such as lights and flooring, as well as a new dining area, will revitalize the mall. Office and apartment buildings will "help promote a tight-knit community setting" and encourage residents to stay close to home rather than spending their money and time elsewhere.
But across the street, on the northwest side of Marlton Avenue, the picture is very different.
Here, a dusty, empty lot is surrounded by abandoned buildings and decaying storefronts. Less than a stone's throw from the mall, Marlton Square has been long forgotten. All signs of life are now distant memories. A little more than twenty years ago, the area was home to hundreds of businesses that formed the center of a community. Redevelopment efforts since have failed out of the gate. The most recent, in the early 2000s, included a financially inviable investor named Chris Hammond and his company Capital Vision Equities. After initiating the process by building a senior housing complex, which is still unfinished and lies vacant on the corner, Hammond went bankrupt and disappeared from the scene. Today, Marlton Square remains a ghost town.
But it could be so much more.
While the city has lost millions of dollars in failed redevelopment contracts, the neighborhood has been blighted by neglect. All the while, Marlton Square's proximity to the mall makes it a prime contender to become, also, the "pride of a community."
Standing proudly on the steps of the Magic Johnson Theatre surrounded by glossy placards showing the mall redevelopment plans, Councilman Bernard Parks spoke briefly about the current situation with Marlton Square.
"Marlton is closer than its ever been in the last 20 years," he said.
Listen to the interview with Bernard Parks:
While hope is stirring for the abandoned area, Lombard explained his personal connection to the site. Once a contender for the redevelopment contact, along with the partnership of Magic Johnson, Lombard was pushed aside in favor of Hammond and his partner Jeff Lee. In the future, Lombard said he hopes that oversight of the project will fall once again into his hands.
"We have a tremendous amount of interest and want to do everything we can to help facilitate that development moving forward," said Lombard.
Listen to the interview with Ken Lombard:
Especially with the renovation of the Baldwin-Crenshaw Plaza around the corner, Marlton Square has the potential to become a community hub once again. But the decades of neglect will not be easy to reverse. Many questions remain as to why it has taken so long to redevelop Marlton Square, as well as the mystery surrounding Hammond's intentions and motives and the city's affiliation with the process.
In the mean time, bankruptcy proceedings with Hammond's company are realigning the ownership rights of Marlton Square. Perhaps, before another decade passes, the area will inspire its own vision, instead of remaining a landscape eyesore.
View this post on the South Los Angeles Report.
Posted by Emily Henry on 07/09/10
Hopefully it's more than a talking point. As we have begun to interview key players, we keep hearing "we are closer than ever to redevelopming Marlton Square." Hopefully something is going on behind the scenes.
If this is considered close, it means in the 20 years that this project has been underway that the city was never close to making this a success.
Capri Capital, which bought the adjacent Crenshaw Plaza a few years ago for $130 million, has made public overtures they are interested in leading the redevelopment of Marlon Square. But so far it appears they are just words.
I felt hope when I heard that the Urban Land Institute was focusing on Marlton Square, but it was just a classroom exercise for high school students.
At a recent meeting of Team Marlton at Adassa's in Leimert Park, community members reminisced about long-gone destinations: Mr. Angelos, a business owned by Wilt Chamberlain, Brown’s Fish Market.
Does anyone else remember the names of businesses, or business owners in Marlton Square/Santa Barbara Plaza?
Last week the team met to start laying out the framework for a very complicated project that will use multiple contributors and multiple editors to tell multiple stories that span 60 years.
Marlton Square's nearly 300 boarded up storefronts didn't happen overnight. The 20-acre parcel is next to the vibrant Baldwin Hills/Crenshaw Plaza. What happened? What actions were taken to stop the slide? What decisions were made?
The paper trail is the stone foundation of any good investigative story. So that's where we start.
The city and the county are helping as they have so far adopted an open door policy by putting on their websites searchable databasese for city council agendas, PDFs, agreements and parcell assement and ownership.
It's a good first step. Feel free to click, search and report what you find.
Searchable agenda - http://cityclerk.lacity.org/lacityclerkconnect/
Searchable assessor's map - http://assessormap.co.la.ca.us/mapping/viewer.asp
http://cityclerk.lacity.org/lacityclerkconnect/index.cfm?fa=ccfi.viewrecord&cfnumber=96-1463
http://www.crala.org/internet-site/Projects/Crenshaw/about.cfm
http://www.crala.org/internet-site/Projects/Crenshaw/crenshaw_map.cfm
http://cityclerk.lacity.org/lacityclerkconnect/index.cfm?fa=ccfi.viewrecord&cfnumber=01-2069-S1
Buckingham Senior Center - http://cityclerk.lacity.org/lacityclerkconnect/index.cfm?fa=ccfi.viewrecord&cfnumber=01-2069-S2
Marlton Square contact - http://cityclerk.lacity.org/lacityclerkconnect/index.cfm?fa=ccfi.viewrecord&cfnumber=01-2069
Marlton Square file history - http://cityclerk.lacity.org/lacityclerkconnect/index.cfm?fa=ccfi.viewrecord&cfnumber=01-2069-S1
There are 20 acres in the Crenshaw district in South Los Angeles that most people only know knows as a dump, as a shame. But once Marlton Square, aka Santa Barbara Plaza, held 300 stores, stores supported by the community. Banks, dry cleaners, tailors.
Let's try to imagine.
Seems like a lifetime ago because for most of us in the Crenshaw area the only memory is of Marlton Square in shambles.
It's hard to imagine how big this center was. One two-story office building has the buzzers for 32 offices still intact outside its gated and boarded up doors. All the businesses are gone.
Marlton Square was once a destination. Now it is in decay. Development could be just around the corner. Let's hope it is.
It is with this hope in mind that we have joined forces with Intersections South LA to tell the story of Marlton Square.
Intersections South LA is a community news web site dedicated to covering South Los Angeles led by journalism students from the USC Annenberg School for Communication. Director Willa Seidenberg, also director of Annenberg Radio News, has made the committment to dedicate time, students and expertise on the project.
We're excited to have them on board!
Posted by Eddie North-Hager on 06/01/10
