Black Hotel Owners Reclaim a Gentrified Space in Venice Beach
Written by Site Hub on June 11, 2024
The Redline Hotel, founded by Kamau Coleman and Michael Clinton, is a new boutique hotel in Venice Beach that honors the area’s rich history and showcases Black entrepreneurial success. Venice Beach is iconic in American pop culture, often portrayed with white bikini-clad girls and buff dudes, but it has a significant history of Black contributions to its vibrant artistic community. Coleman and Clinton aim to highlight this history and inspire future generations through their innovative hotel concept.
The hotel’s name, Redline, references the discriminatory practice of redlining, which prevented Black people from buying homes in certain neighborhoods. Venice Beach, once a “slum by the sea,” has gentrified into a trendy area with soaring rents. Redline features four apartment-style guest suites, each telling a piece of Venice’s history, from the early 1900s to the modern era. The hotel also includes an artist-in-residence program and a rooftop deck for events.
The founders invested over a million dollars in renovations to transform the building, originally owned by a Black man in the 1980s, into a cultural and economic beacon. With only 2% of hotel owners being Black, Coleman and Clinton hope to inspire others by demonstrating Black resilience and economic power. They emphasize the importance of representation and access to capital in achieving entrepreneurial success.
Source: BET
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