Our collaborative effort builds off community-centered development strategies successfully implemented and proven in Black neighborhoods throughout the country that were led by the people at the table here.
Market Creek Plaza (San Diego)
Backed by the Jacobs Foundation, the 50-acre Market Creek Plaza development is a national model for community ownership from start to finish.
Learn MoreDudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (Boston)
Responding to decades of neglect, residents came together to implement a national model for community-centered planning and organizing in the Roxbury community of Boston. Paul Yelder, the first executive director of the area’s community land trust Dudley Neighbors, Inc. is a Leimert Park resident is one of Downtown Crenshaw technical advisors.
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Rolland Curtis Gardens (South L.A.)
Rolland Curtis Garden is an inspiring example of a community organizing to take back the land from a powerful developer who sought to displace residents. Malcolm Harris, a Chesterfield Square resident and organizer during that campaign is one of the Downtown Crenshaw technical advisors.
Learn MoreThe Cleveland Model (Cleveland, OH)
In Cleveland, Ohio anchor institutions (hospitals and universities), the government and non-profit organizations are coming together to implement a new model of large-scale worker-owned and community-benefiting businesses.
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We have done this before, and we will do it here!
Downtown Crenshaw is a legacy-defining collaborative project and call for unity and self-determination.
On April 29, 2020, the day that the story broke in the news, community-centered developers and civic organization leaders in the community surrounding the Crenshaw Mall began to question how it was possible that the economic anchor of Black Los Angeles could be lost to an outside force like CIM Group. Then someone made a suggestion: “Let’s buy the mall, and redevelop it ourselves!”
What began with a few phone calls is growing into the most positively transformative process and project in the history of the Crenshaw community. This is a historic coming together of community-based and focused experts with over 200 collective years of experience in finance, acquisition, and real estate development, collaboratively working with civic leaders and organizers to identify strategies to quickly acquire the Crenshaw Mall and make it a true community-centered development with local ownership at every step of the process.
People-driven. Community-focused.
We will own the change. And our neighbors will be here to enjoy it.
Join the Effort
"If you want to go far, go together."
— African Proverb
