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Darryl Holter, Shammas Group: Cleaning Up the Corridor
The Formation of The Figueroa Corridor Partnership

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Category: Darryl Holter Los Angeles, Darryl Holter Shammas Group, Figueroa Corridor Partnership

DARRYL HOLTER TOOK LEAVE FROM HIS POSITION AS AN ASSOCIATE
darryl holter shammas group

Darryl Holter Shammas Group CEO

Professor at UCLA to help the family business after the L.A. riots of 1993. It was a grim time for both the Shammas Group businesses and the Figueroa Corridor where they were: Car sales were down, crime was up, and businesses were leaving the area. But in 1996, Holter and father-in-law Nick Shammas and Holter that with the USC President, Steven B. Sample told Shammas and Darryl Holter that some USC alumni felt uneasy about sending their kids to the university because of the neighborhood, and that some Trustees were advocating relocating the campus to another part of the country. Holter recalls his response. “I told him, ‘We’re in the same boat. I have a letter on my desk from General Motors that say, based on their studies of the average income in the areas around Felix Chevrolet, we should close the store and move it to the suburbs.”


Darryl Holter began to think about organizing the property owners and the businesses.


Former academic that he was, Holter took out a red pen that he once used to grad exams, and started looking at Figueroa’s security reports. He circled the arrests and reports – in any given day, there were car burglaries, graffiti, broken windows, gang activity, and drug deals – and began to think about organizing the property owners and the businesses.

“I went in to see Nick, and I said, ‘This is a problem. Why would anyone want to come down here to buy a car?


Darryl Holter started work forming BID in 1996.


Holter thought he could use skills he had developed as a former faculty and union organizer to rally the businesses and the property owners around a plan of revitalization. Shammas and Sample were supportive, and in 1997, Holter began to organize the Figueroa Business Improvement District.