"Stadiums can catalyze rejuvenation and capitalize on larger potential for their communities. Thanks to the vision of bold developers, they have become an extension of public realm and culturally connect within the communities that they are built." Los Angeles Times

The Los Angeles suburb of Inglewood, a city anxiously in need of neighborhood parks, was also the site of a decommissioned racetrack named Hollywood Park. The land it occupied is being redeveloped as a master-planned community that will include more than 25 acres of public parks and open space to partially address the city's needs.

Already finished is the gleaming new, high-tech SoFi Stadium, home to the Los Angeles Rams and Chargers of the National Football League, and the anchor of the new 298-acre mixed-use campus, which maintained the moniker "Hollywood Park."

Knitting tightly together with the surrounding neighborhood, the design of this once-in-a-lifetime redevelopment leverages larger potentials: providing an enormous impact in the community that will greatly benefit from the infusion of energy and the economic boost. In the center of this new development is Lake Park; a jewel of the open spaces represented onsite.

The Necessity of Collaboration
The creation of the reimagined Hollywood Park was conceived with deep engagement from a broad coalition of community members, the owners, the city's Economic & Community Development Department and the design team, including landscape architectural firm Studio-MLA, all working hand in hand.

"Our involvement started long before the stadium was even a program on the project," says Kush Parekh lead designer on the project for Studio-MLA. "The land was purchased by developer Wilson Meany to turn into a mixed-use development; a really great opportunity to create urban infill. We started helping initially to solicit community input. That's where we found the need of the city of Inglewood for neighborhood parks and open space."

It was the driving force that Studio-MLA stayed true to even once the stadium became part of the plan, according to Parekh who adds, "It really made us think about how to strategize what a stadium should be - break the paradigm of a traditional stadium."

An enthusiastic mayor and an ownership team with a tremendous creative spirit for sports and for community further amplified the design team's motivation and imagination to push boundaries.

 
Design Intent
Going beyond the typical transformation that comes from a redevelopment, SoFi Stadium and the adjacent Lake Park break the paradigm of stadium design by capitalizing on Southern California's great weather, moving many activities that would typically have been inside to the outdoors for use by the community when the stadium is not in use.

The result is a 365-day-per-year destination that gives visitors access to gardens, parks, plazas, natural habitat, sports and family activities. Most importantly, surrounding residents now have new places in their city to connect and make memories. Entirely privately financed, SoFi Stadium mutually benefits public well-being and social values.

Keeping It Green
The landscape spaces of SoFi Stadium and the adjacent Lake Park are designed for ecosystems and water.

Limits to ecological restoration-due to climate change, impermeability, heat island, and air/water quality issues-led to solutions beyond conventional boundaries, including the 6-acre constructed lake that collects stormwater runoff, filtering pollutants through natural wetlands for site irrigation.

The novel water recycling system also serves as a community amenity, inspired by the original racetrack's water feature, and reaffirmed by wide community input as a preferred landscape attraction.

As part of meeting the over-arching goal that emphasized environmental impact and resilience, these three areas were targeted.

Plantings
"When you are dealing with a site this large, it's really tough to think about having only native plants," Parekh explains. "We started looking at this bigger construct of the Mediterranean biome. From one side of the stadium to the other, there is very stark differences between the plants."

Employing the biome's wide arrays of plantings and shrubs suited to hot, dry summers and frost-free winters, the project includes highly diverse, low-maintenance plant ecologies with 5,000 trees, from desert palms to mountain evergreens.
The specified trees included native species such as California Sycamores (Platanus racaemosa), Coast Live Oaks (Quercus agrifolia) and Englemann Oak (Quercus englemannii).

A wide array of non-native species were incorporated such as Mulga (Acacia aneura), Shoestring Acacia (Acacia stenophylla), Bitter Aloe (Aloe ferox), Strawberry Tree (Arbutus 'Marina'), Flame Tree (Brachychiton acerifolius), Queensland Bottle Tree (Brachychiton rupestris), Camphor Tree (Cinnamomum camphora), Rainbow Eucalyptus (Eucalyptus deglupta), Australian Coral Tree (Erythrina sykesii), Afghan Pine (Pinus eldarica) and African Sumac (Rhus lancea).

Native shrubs included Dwarf Coyote Bush, Island Snapdragon, Mound San Bruno Coffeeberry, and Giant Chain Fern.
Amongst the non-native shrubs planted were Small Cape Rush, Silver Torch, Dwarf Variegated Mirror Plant, Toothless Desert Spoon, Little Rev Flax Lilly, Silver Falls Dichondra, Coastal Gem Grevillea, Red Yucca, Dwarf Mat Rush, Variegated Dwarf Mat Rush, Soft Caress Mahonia, Dwarf Myrtle, Collingwood Ingram Rosemary, Coral Fountain, and a variety of agaves and chalksticks.

Water
SoFi Stadium's parks and open spaces are performative landscape features collecting, treating, and reusing about 75% of total stormwater. This includes the upper and lower lake separated by cascading waterfalls (accounting for around 16 million gallons of water), rolling arroyos, bioswales and underground cisterns.

Studio-MLA calls it the first such lake to successfully mix stormwater with reclaimed water, and the first-ever filtration system cleaning water before reuse. The filtered water is used as an irrigation source for the rest of the landscaped areas.

Working with the West Basin Municipal Water District, the water savings add up to about 26 million gallons per year, which equals the amount of drinking water for the region according to SoFi Stadium.

Materials
Some of the concrete used a special granite aggregate instead of cement, which is responsible for 90% of the embodied carbon of concrete. The aggregate was imported by ship from British Columbia but even when transportation emissions are included, the end result was a significant savings of embodied carbon.

Trademark Concrete, J&M Concrete and Shaw & Sons Concrete were used as hardscape installers. QCP Concrete provided some of the precast concrete architectural amenities and furniture like planters, benches, waste containers, and tables. Dark gray, light gray and beige 6"x12", 12"x24" 12"x36", and 12"x48" pavers were used here. Some of the provided Cresta stone and Steelhead stone boulders were used as benches. Lumber for the decking is black locust.

SoFi Stadium and the adjacent Lake Park were hailed as "revolutionary" by the Los Angeles Times, and designed to be a true community amenity for the people of Inglewood and the region.