A Village Grows, a Community Shrinks

“No, I won’t give you my name — are you crazy?” Rosie Mughadam said. “I won’t get involved in this. I don’t want any part. There’s no story here, there’s nothing anyone can do anymore.”

Then she hung up the phone.

I talked with Mughadam last year regarding this story, but she said she doesn’t remember that. She refused to give me her name last week when I asked her to confirm it was her with whom I was speaking, but that didn’t matter. I know her name; I remember her voice. 

When she talks about her old hair salon, she trembles with emotions she says she has worked hard to suppress. Such is the reality of a failed business owner. 

But in Mughadam’s case, not everything was under her control. She opened her hair salon, A Touch of Class, over 40 years ago in the heart of the University Village, just across the street from the University of Southern California campus. She says she enjoyed the fruits of a diverse customer base, tending to about an equal ratio of students and local residents on any given day.

Her business was successful, and she built her career as a member of the USC community. But two years ago, Mughadam begrudgingly said goodbye to her old shop, watching in silence as construction teams razed the entire village, leaving her and fellow business owners with nowhere to turn.

Now, as a new village rises, Mughadam is left full of questions and void of answers.


***


Max Nikias stood at a podium basking in the South Central sunlight and soaking in praise in September 2014 as he unveiled what he dubbed “the biggest thing USC has ever done and probably ever will do.” As president of USC, Nikias has overseen a period of immense growth throughout the university, with new facilities and staggering donations rising steadily and student admissions rates falling rapidly. 

But his most impactful project to date is the USC Village, a $750 million complex located adjacent to the University Park Campus along Jefferson Boulevard and Hoover Street. With a hard hat, a shovel, and a pinstriped suit, Nikias broke ground on the largest urban development project in the history of South Los Angeles.

Set to open next fall, the new village will replace the old, with the prior’s only remnants being faded memories of a once bustling commercial hub, eventually degraded into what USC officials call a “dilapidated shopping center full of failing businesses.”

Those formerly failing businesses will be supplanted with high-end retail shops, including Trader Joe’s, City Target, Starbucks, CVS Pharmacy, and Bank of America. Craig Keys, USC Associate Senior Vice President of Civic Engagement, has been one of the spearheads in the university’s mission to upgrade the village. 

“So many businesses in the village were struggling – failing, really – and the area just wasn’t providing the types of amenities the market was demanding, both in terms of the local community and the students,” Keys said.

But with small, family-owned businesses being uprooted in favor of less affordable, higher scale retail options, many are questioning the demographic the university is working to attract with the development.

“The school keeps saying they want to do this for the community, but they barely give a penny to us,” Mughadam said. “They just want to take the [old] community out of here. They don’t give a damn.” 

Spurned by heavy investment in new construction on USC’s campus, South L.A. has experienced rapid gentrification over the past 10 years. The University Park neighborhood has long been an area dominated by Latinos, but as USC becomes an increasingly attractive urban area, affluent whites seem to be pushing out the Latino population in troves.

In only a decade, the white population has risen almost 10 percent, while the Latino population has diminished nearly 12 percent. These numbers seem to be no coincidence, given the construction of high-end, amenity-laden apartment complexes in the area during that time period, such as the Lorenzo and West 27th Apartments.

With the new village seeming to manifest itself more and more as USC’s best imitation of Westwood, the question becomes when, not if, the university’s growth will force lower class residents and business owners out of the neighborhood for good.

However, even as this inevitable reality becomes increasingly clear, USC continues to defend its progress and its mission in building the new village.

“[The old village businesses] have to be responsible for their own business decisions,” Keys said. “No one has a crystal ball, but it’s on them to make the decisions that will best aid their company.”

To that, Mughadam was blunt.

“No,” she said. “No, USC made our business decisions for us and now we’re all going to go out of business. It’s all bullshit.”


***


Two men smoke cigarettes, flick the butts toward shuttered windows and boarded doors. They return to their car in the otherwise empty parking lot of a modest, if not run-down, shopping center on Vermont Avenue, about six blocks north of USC’s campus. On the ground floor, a neon sign flickers: Quik-Pix Photo Shop. 

Akm Alam stands in the back corner of his store, shuffling papers absentmindedly as I walk through the door. The place is small, maybe 200 square feet in total. The air inside is thick and musty, stale without proper circulation.

A small fan sits idly in the middle of the room, and I wonder why Alam wouldn’t turn it on – the air sags beneath the overhead light. A box of disassembled disposable cameras sits on the main counter of the shop. Rolls of film negatives hang from a rack along the back wall. 

An old Xerox machine whirrs incessantly, expending its energy as if simply to prevent from overheating. A digital camera sits on top, rattling away as the printer spits out two copies of a passport photo for Alam’s only customer of the day.

He doesn’t seem to mind the noise. The 58-year-old business owner appears preoccupied, lost in his thoughts as he navigates the necessary mundanity of keeping his shop afloat. 

He opened Quik-Pix in the heart of the old University Village in 1981, and he kept it in the same location for over 30 years before being forced out in 2014 once construction began on the new project. Alam benefitted from a successful business, achieving his version of the American Dream as an immigrant from Bangladesh. He says the shop provided him with enough financial stability to buy a home and three cars, and send his kids to college. 

Alam had several employees at his old location and grew a vast client base of USC students and faculty, along with a steady stream of local South Central residents. But since the move, he says his shop sits empty, stagnant save the whirring, ticking and dust-collecting of his old equipment. 

Quik-Pix is on life-support, and Alam knows it.

“USC let us die. I feel that because they had no interest in letting us stay [in the new village],” he said. “They were just okay letting us go. I was there 33 years, but they didn’t care.”

A picture frame sits on a shelf high upon the wall by the register, proudly displaying an old stock photo of the Obama family looking young and sprightly, glowing with optimism after President Obama was inaugurated in 2009. The symbolism was unavoidable: the excitement of the family, a look back at better times. 

Now, as Obama finishes the final lap of his presidency, so too does Alam with his business. The going was good for him for quite a long time, but USC eventually phased all the shops out of the old village. 

The university is not inaccurate in labeling the old grounds as dilapidated and failing, but Alam feels the school allowed it to get to that point intentionally to justify the redevelopment. The issue then becomes what the old businesses can actually do about the transition at this point. For Alam, he doesn’t see much hope for his own shop, or any of the others. He estimates he will have to close his doors for good by the end of next year.

“I was angry in the beginning, but you know, USC is a big place, very big place, you cannot fight it,” Alam said. “We are like a drop in the ocean. Not in a bucket, in an ocean.”


***


Keys is adamant in his defense of the university’s expansion, describing the village as a beacon of shared growth for everyone in the area, as opposed to a catalyst for gentrification, as many people brand it.

“I don’t accept that characterization, but I understand why people feel that,” Keys said. “They see what’s happening in the community and don’t see themselves included in that.”

“I think people overestimate the university’s role in these changes. We’re simply caught up in a cycle of national and regional trends, along with everyone else.”

He stressed USC’s efforts in helping the outgoing businesses, citing aid packages it offered each business owner, including cash benefits, access to local real estate agents and legal services. 

Keys said these factors eased the transitions for the old businesses, providing them with safety nets to keep themselves running in a new location. 

 “We even gave some businesses two years of free rent before closing the old village down,” he said. “We recognized it was best for those shops to be there until the end, so we offered a lot of forgiveness for people… We did our best.”

But to focus solely on the displaced businesses would be to undermine the greater mission of the project, as well as the university’s current mission at large.

“USC plays an active role as an anchor institution in the community by applying its capital to community needs,” Keys said. “I can pretty much guarantee you that no piece of property [the size of the village] will go undeveloped in that alley from downtown to the school.”  

“We’re doing this to advance the non-profit mission of higher education and research; we’re not doing this to make money.”

Keys’s point is two-fold: Figueroa Corridor, or the stretch of land from downtown to USC along Figueroa Street, has developed rapidly over the past 15 years, and the university has, in fact, worked to incorporate the community in its expansion plans. 

In the lead-up to breaking ground on the village, as well as throughout the construction process, USC has held monthly meetings with the community to inform on progress and allow a platform for locals to voice their concerns. Keys specifically pointed toward the school’s efforts in mitigating noise and dust in the area, as well as optimizing traffic flow to best accommodate residents. 

He also touted the school’s ability to pivot from its original plans in response to the feedback it received throughout the process, particularly homing in on the university’s expansion of student housing within the village. Keys says many people were concerned about the gentrification effects the project would create in the area, continuing to drive out the low-income, minority population of South Central.

USC believes that the 2,700 students who will live in the village will ease the pressure on off-campus housing prices, effectively driving the prices down by taking the more affluent student population out of local apartments and houses. The school also believes that by including retail options such as CVS Pharmacy and City Target, stores Keys dubbed “not very expensive at all,” the university will create a mixed-income commercial center that will attract people from all sectors of the economic spectrum in L.A.

But many in the community think USC is blowing smoke with such rhetoric. When I brought up this point with Alam, he let out a howl of laughter, mocking the idea; Mughadam sneered. Keys’s words hold no weight in this forum.

David Robinson works with Strategic Actions for a Just Economy, a community organization working toward creating an equal-opportunity environment in South Central. SAJE was placed on an advisory group during the project’s early stages, and Robinson attended many meetings held by USC in an attempt to make the community’s voice heard.

His account of the proceedings differs greatly from that of Keys, claiming that “every bit of criticism or positive suggestion on how to improve the plan has been brushed aside.”

But the conversation just seems to spin in circles, with each side holding firm to its position, essentially disregarding the opposing school of thought whenever possible.

Keys claims that “not all development is gentrification,” and “just because there are more affluent aspects of the project, doesn’t mean that it’s exclusive to people with more disposable income.”

Chris Tilly, a professor of urban planning at UCLA, is quick to fire back, saying gentrification is an unavoidable byproduct of development in low-income areas, and USC would do well to acknowledge the village as such.

“There was a way to incorporate the community as well, and USC has chosen not to do that,” he said in a 2015 interview. “Those who are most active in the surrounding community believe the university is not being a good neighbor.”

The divide then seems to lie within how each side defines the local community. Robinson, Alam, and Mughadam understandably categorize that group as themselves, along with their peers and neighbors, but Keys, through his muddled discourse, seems to have a different vision – one centered on the wealth of students and faculty, with the community falling in line, exactly who that community may include serving as an afterthought in the university’s overarching vision.


***

 

“I can’t talk to you,” Mughadam said. “They said I can’t talk to you. I don’t want any part of this. Please don’t call me anymore — I’m sorry.”

She hung up on me. Again.

Our conversations started amicably but quickly unraveled as I revealed my intention to write this story. Mughadam seems to be an inherently friendly person, but she swiftly turned suspicious – scared, even – to speak with me as a journalist.

Her fear stemmed not from my pen, notepad, or recorder, but from the people she considers her superiors, those with a disproportionate level of control over her future, even after her hair salon went out of business entirely. Mughadam got herself into this predicament during her transition out of the old village, coming to a contractual agreement with USC about her “aid package,” the same one Keys touted so highly as the university “doing its part” for the village’s prior inhabitants.

But Mughadam perceives Keys and his department not as the generous entity to which they ascribe themselves, but as the facilitators of her business’s demise. USC indeed provided her company with funding, real estate assistance, and legal guidance during the changeover period, but these benefits came with a catch – one that proved nearly catastrophic for Mughadam, Alam, and others.

Mughadam would not tell me about the kind of trouble in which she found herself with USC, but Alam was willing to share his story, which he says is similar to a lot of his colleagues from the old village.

After Alam moved his shop to Vermont St., a reporter with The Daily Trojan approached him with a story about his new location. Alam was accommodating, providing the student journalist with a lengthy interview about the move-out process and how he views his relationship with USC moving forward.

The Quik-Pix owner thought little of the interview in the following days, so he says he was shocked by the letter and phone calls he received from USC berating him for talking with the media about his move. The school cited a clause in the contract he signed prohibiting him from discussing the details of the village’s transition with the media in any capacity. 

USC threatened to strip him of the $17,500 (the maximum amount the school offered any business) for violating the stipulation in the agreement Alam says he was not privy to prior to his interview. Essentially, by accepting the university’s support in moving locations, the business owners subjected themselves to absolute censorship from telling their stories.

When asked about the nature of these clauses, Keys denied knowing anything about them, claiming he was not even aware they existed. However, it is questionable at best that the man in charge of civic engagement for the USC Village project would not be well-informed about the nuances of the contracts the university signed with the departing village businesses.

The question then becomes: If USC truly believes that its mission for the project is founded in accessibility and fairness to Angelenos of all socioeconomic backgrounds, and it truly did its best to accommodate the former village businesspeople, why would it feel the need to restrict those community leaders from speaking with the media?

The answer to that question is apparent, as the university continues in its insatiable quest for economic and academic growth. With one of the largest endowments in the country and an elite admissions rate, it appears that Nikias’s dream of elevating USC into the realm of the Ivy Leagues may yet be within reach at some point in the future. 

Exactly which sector of the community will reap the benefits of such successes remains to be seen, but the strength of the elite weighed against the will of the South Central community could not be better encapsulated than the words with which Alam parted with me.

“Nothing is permanent in this world, my friend,” he said. “Always remember that.”