The home’s owner declined to sell, so a giant concrete wall was built around one tiny house: ‘The construction noise is really bad,’ says the tenant, who misses her neighbors, and a shady tree
INGLEWOOD, Calif. — 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.