Gardena, California

The City of Gardena is a municipality with over 60,000 residents and an area of about 5.9 square miles. Gardena has two sister cities: Ichikawa, Chiba, Japan, a suburb of Tokyo; and Huatabampo, Sonora, Mexico, situated on the eastern shore of the Gulf of California.

Gardena is located in the South Bay region of Los Angeles County, about 12 miles south of Downtown Los Angeles. Gardena is a few miles east of the Pacific Ocean, near the coastal cities of Redondo Beach, Hermosa Beach, Manhattan Beach, and El Segundo. Between Gardena and these coastal cities are the communities of Lawndale, El Camino Village (Alondra Park), and Hawthorne. Gardena is south of the cities and neighborhoods of Inglewood, Lennox, West Athens and Westmont. Inland. across South Vermont Avenue, the street that describes Gardena’s eastern border, are Willowbrook, West Rancho Dominguez, and Carson. Alondra Park, a large regional park, and El Camino College, lie just outside of city limits.

Gardena’s largest employers include Memorial Hospital of Gardena, Hustler Casino, Southwest Offset Printing, United Parcel Service, and Crenshaw Lumber Co.

Gardena, California, like the cities of Bell Gardens, Hawaiian Gardens, and Commerce, is a city within Los Angeles County that permits gambling. Gardena has two cardrooms: Larry Flint’s Luck Lady Casino, and Hustler Casino. Cardrooms are not traditional casinos. Cardrooms are affected by numerous restrictions. For example, customers do not play against the house, and there are no slot machines or electronic gaming terminals. Cardrooms are a major industry in Gardena and help drive its economy. Hustler Casino is open 24 hours a day, every day of the year. One study found that California cardrooms have created over 32,000 direct and indirect jobs and generate over $100 million in local gaming taxes.

Memorial Hospital of Gardena has about 350 employees. There are about 3,100 hospital admissions and 46,000 emergency room visits annually. Memorial Hospital of Gardena offers expanded care to the community through a multi-specialty clinic, La Clinica de los Doctore.

Kindred Hospital South Bay is a long-term acute care hospital in Gardena, which has around 59 staffed beds. ScionHealth operates Kindred Hospital South Bay along with dozens of other facilities spread over 25 states.

HITCO Carbon Composites Inc., a global carbon composite company based in Germany, is among Gardena’s largest employers.

Gardena is home to a number of manufacturing companies, including Ark Lighting.

Gardena has excellent access to local freeways, including the San Diego Freeway (Interstate 405), the Artesia Freeway (State Route 91), the Harbor Freeway (Interstate 110), and the Glenn Anderson [Century] Freeway (Interstate 105). Unsurprisingly, Gardena is sometimes referred to as the “Freeway City.” Gardena’s business-friendly location is enhanced by its proximity to Los Angeles International Airport and the ocean ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Founded in 1940, Gardena Municipal Bus Lines, known as GTrans, provides bus service for the City of Gardena. Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) provides light rail train service to areas adjacent to Gardena through its C (Green) line service.

Approximately 49% of housing in Gardena is owner occupied.

Gardena is a General Law City controlled by relevant statutes of the State of California and laws, ordinances, and resolutions adopted by the City Council. Gardena has a mayor, a Mayor Pro Tem, and three Councilmembers. The County of Los Angeles Fire Department provides fire protection and emergency medical services to the City of Gardena. The Gardena Police Department provides police protection and law enforcement services to the City of Gardena and has about 145 employees. The County of Los Angeles Library provides library services to the City of Gardena. The Los Angeles Unified School District serves students living in the City of Gardena.

Spencer R. Thorpe started a small community in Gardena Valley in the 1880s. Area agriculture would benefit from the use of water from nearby Dominguez Slough, a marshy area replenished by periodic flooding, which had high groundwater levels. At one point the Gardena area, dubbed “Berryland,” was known as the berry-growing capital of Southern California. Incorporated in 1930, the City of Gardena combined the rural communities of Strawberry Park (where annual strawberry festivals took place), Moneta (a township centered along Western Avenue, which had a significant Japanese or Issei community in the years after a large group of Japanese moved from San Francisco to Southern California in about 1903), and Gardena. At the time of incorporation, Gardena had a population of about 3,000 and was mainly agricultural.

While California law generally prohibited all forms of gambling, California law (the state constitution of 1879 and a statute from 1891) did not specifically reference draw poker. Based on his belief that California law therefore did not prohibit draw poker, Ernest Primm opened a card club in Gardena in 1936, the Embassy Palace. In 1937, four men were arrested at the Embassy Palace for playing draw poker. Ernest Primm decided to use the arrests as a test case that California law did not prohibit draw poker. Ultimately, California Attorney General Ulysses S. Webb ruled that draw poker was legal so long as the club did not take a percentage of the winnings and the controlling local government approved the operation of cardrooms. Thus, players pay the house a fee to sit at the table based on each hand played or by time. The house does not take a cut of the winnings. As a result of this ruling, Gardena would eventually be home of six cardrooms. Until 1980, Gardena had a monopoly on cardrooms, because until that time no other city in Los Angeles County permitted cardrooms. In recent decades, competition from distant casinos on Native American lands, and cardrooms in Bell Gardens, Commerce, and Bell, led to a reduction in the number of cardrooms in Gardena. Several card games other than draw poker are now permitted in California cardrooms.

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