What interests me about this change is that I’ve enjoyed a bird’s-eye view of it, while approaching Los Angeles International Airport on commercial passenger planes. Whether or not, few alive today remember when only baseball was more popular than horse racing in the U.S.
Perhaps this was the day Seabiscuit won his inaugural Gold Cup. Note the parking lot: immense and almost completely filled with cars. The picture above (via this Martin Turnbull story) is an aerial view of the racetrack in 1938, shortly after it opened. Wikipedia says the park-Ĭonsists of over 8.5 million square feet (790,000 m 2) that will be used for office space and condominiums, a 12-screen Cinepolis movie theater, ballrooms, outdoor spaces for community programming, retail, a fitness center, a luxury hotel, a brewery, up-scale restaurants and an open-air shopping and entertainment complex. There’s also more to come in the surrounding vastness of Hollywood Park, named after the racetrack. In its place is SoFi Stadium, the 77,000-seat home of Los Angeles’ two pro football teams and much else, including the 6,000-seat YouTube Theater.
