Teresa Martinez has been living at 10226 S. Prairie Ave. for more than two decades. It’s a humble 795-square-foot home sitting on a 4,217-square-foot lot she struggles to navigate with a walker. The 70-year-old retiree lives alone with her two-year-old Husky, Blue, who runs to the locked chain-link fence at the end of the empty driveaway whenever there is a loud sound.
Blue has been getting plenty of exercise on that small patch of concrete because of the constant cacophony only steps away from Martinez’s front door. Construction started on the $2 billion, 915,000-square foot Intuit Dome — the LA Clippers’ new arena beginning next season — in 2022, and although the developers secured most of the surrounding properties in the arena footprint, Martinez’s house was the lone holdout. Now her home has been engulfed by the massive sports/entertainment complex, separated from the arena by a giant concrete wall.
Martinez frequently yells for Blue to come back inside their beige home, which is clad in stucco with security bars covering most of the windows. “The construction noise is really bad,” she told The Messenger in Spanish. “I have tried talking to them but they ignore me. The trucks were making a lot of noise and the whole house was shaking and I’ve lost power on and off many times and it destroyed two of my TVs.”
She isn’t the one who decided not to sell the house — that would be the homeowner, a longtime friend of hers who asked not to be identified. “I wasn’t interested in selling, and they had enough space to get the arena done,” he told The Messenger. “I didn’t want to sell and I don’t think they need it anymore anyway.”
Last week, the NBA announced the 2026 NBA All-Star Game would take place at the Intuit Dome. It’s the latest major sporting event to come to Inglewood. Just across the street sits SoFi Stadium, the $5 billion home of the Los Angeles Rams and Los Angeles Chargers, which opened in 2020 and will host the 2026 FIFA World Cup, 2027 Super Bowl and 2028 Summer Olympics.
Meanwhile, the tall gray wall now divides the Intuit Dome from a church, preschool, apartment, housing complex and the rest of the community it is being shoehorned into. The wall is straight until it gets to Martinez’s house. Then it veers up and to the left to create room for her home.
The original plans, back when it was known as the “Inglewood Basketball and Entertainment Center Project,” called for the wall to be straight and for the home’s lot to be included in the footprint of the arena. A Clippers spokesperson told The Messenger this week “there are no properties remaining within the footprint of Intuit Dome.” Still, the plans for the arena clearly changed after construction began and the owner declined to sell.
McJumbos
reminds me of Up
OilPristine448
Fuc ‘em clip gang or don’t bang
jchavez9723
Ballmer should just give them an offer they can’t refuse
wanttobedone
I live up in Seattle but I went down to check out the Intuit dome when I was in LA. I saw this myself. It was crazy!
5 Comments
Teresa Martinez has been living at 10226 S. Prairie Ave. for more than two decades. It’s a humble 795-square-foot home sitting on a 4,217-square-foot lot she struggles to navigate with a walker. The 70-year-old retiree lives alone with her two-year-old Husky, Blue, who runs to the locked chain-link fence at the end of the empty driveaway whenever there is a loud sound.
Blue has been getting plenty of exercise on that small patch of concrete because of the constant cacophony only steps away from Martinez’s front door. Construction started on the $2 billion, 915,000-square foot Intuit Dome — the LA Clippers’ new arena beginning next season — in 2022, and although the developers secured most of the surrounding properties in the arena footprint, Martinez’s house was the lone holdout. Now her home has been engulfed by the massive sports/entertainment complex, separated from the arena by a giant concrete wall.
Martinez frequently yells for Blue to come back inside their beige home, which is clad in stucco with security bars covering most of the windows. “The construction noise is really bad,” she told The Messenger in Spanish. “I have tried talking to them but they ignore me. The trucks were making a lot of noise and the whole house was shaking and I’ve lost power on and off many times and it destroyed two of my TVs.”
She isn’t the one who decided not to sell the house — that would be the homeowner, a longtime friend of hers who asked not to be identified. “I wasn’t interested in selling, and they had enough space to get the arena done,” he told The Messenger. “I didn’t want to sell and I don’t think they need it anymore anyway.”
Last week, the NBA announced the 2026 NBA All-Star Game would take place at the Intuit Dome. It’s the latest major sporting event to come to Inglewood. Just across the street sits SoFi Stadium, the $5 billion home of the Los Angeles Rams and Los Angeles Chargers, which opened in 2020 and will host the 2026 FIFA World Cup, 2027 Super Bowl and 2028 Summer Olympics.
Meanwhile, the tall gray wall now divides the Intuit Dome from a church, preschool, apartment, housing complex and the rest of the community it is being shoehorned into. The wall is straight until it gets to Martinez’s house. Then it veers up and to the left to create room for her home.
The original plans, back when it was known as the “Inglewood Basketball and Entertainment Center Project,” called for the wall to be straight and for the home’s lot to be included in the footprint of the arena. A Clippers spokesperson told The Messenger this week “there are no properties remaining within the footprint of Intuit Dome.” Still, the plans for the arena clearly changed after construction began and the owner declined to sell.
reminds me of Up
Fuc ‘em clip gang or don’t bang
Ballmer should just give them an offer they can’t refuse
I live up in Seattle but I went down to check out the Intuit dome when I was in LA. I saw this myself. It was crazy!