Los Angeles made big promises for the Olympics. Can it deliver by 2028?

Miami Herald

4 days ago

LOS ANGELES -- Los Angeles officials brimmed with confidence a decade ago as they urged the International Olympic Committee to make the city the first in the U.S. to host the Summer Olympics since 1996.
'Follow the sun,' they said in the official bid for the Games in 2015. Los Angeles promised terrific weather, a $1 billion Olympic Village to house athletes, a state-of-the-art transit system that would allow for a car-free Olympics and a ready-to-go network of stadiums and arenas.
But three years before the opening of the 2028 Summer Olympics, those ambitious promises have been scaled back, supplanted by obstacles that are threatening to undercut preparations for an event that would test this city's wits and resources even in the best of times.
Los Angeles is struggling to recover from the calamitous fires in January, and is girding for a shortage of workers and supplies just as preparations for the Games reach their height. The city government is confronting a projected deficit of nearly $1 billion, and the mayor is facing the threat of a tough reelection campaign.
The Trump administration has been antagonistic to this overwhelmingly Democratic city and state, raising concerns about whether the federal government will come through on all of the $4 billion in funding promised for Olympics security and transportation. Economists fear that a recession may be on the horizon that could, along with the Trump administration's immigration crackdown, dampen ticket sales from overseas visitors.
'I assume they are competent enough to pull it off -- we have the infrastructure built,' said Joel Kotkin, a fellow in urban studies at Chapman University in Orange County. 'But I can't for the life of me see why you would want to put your effort there. Given what the city and the region now face, why would you want to put more stress on it?'
The city's mayor, Karen Bass, and Casey Wasserman, chair of the Los Angeles Olympics organizing committee, said they were confident the Games would be a success and a needed boost for the city, as it recovers from the wounds of this past year. 'Our goal as an Olympics is to make LA a better city than it was before the Olympics,' Wasserman said.
Still, Bass acknowledged there were reasons for worry: that the fires might divert the attention of city officials from the Olympics; that President Donald Trump might cut off urgently needed funds; that the federal crackdown on immigration, along with the competition for workers, could create a last-minute crunch.
'I think it is appropriate to be concerned,' Bass said in an interview. 'It just presents us challenges that we have to overcome. But what I'm often reminded of is the condition of the city in 1984, in '83, when we were in a very, very serious recession, and the economic outlook was very, very bleak. And we were able to come out of it in a major way.'
The 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles were widely hailed as a triumph, in no small part because of Peter Ueberroth, the sports executive who was the chair of the Los Angeles Olympics, as well as Tom Bradley, who served as the mayor from 1973 to 1993. Ueberroth was named man of the year by Time magazine based on the success of that Olympics.
From the Super Bowl to the Oscars, Los Angeles has plenty of experience with high-profile spectacles. The city will also host World Cup matches in 2026 and the Super Bowl in 2027. City officials said those would amount to a practice run for the monthlong back-to-back Olympic and Paralympic Games.
The Summer Games will far exceed those other major events in scope, attendance and duration. The Games will cost close to $7 billion to stage, and are expected to draw more than 10,000 athletes and potentially millions of tourists, all of whom have to be housed, fed and moved to over 40 venues across the vast expanse of the Los Angeles region.
'The Olympics is hosting seven Super Bowls a day for 30 days,' Wasserman said.
The success of 1984 was invoked by Eric M. Garcetti, who was the city's mayor from 2013 to 2022, as he pitched the Olympics to the world while seeking to reassure many of his constituents that the Games would be a lift for Los Angeles' economy and global reputation.
But that vision presented by Garcetti and other city officials 10 years ago proved, in many cases, to be more ambitious than the final plan.
The $1 billion Olympic Village, which would have been turned into permanent housing, was abandoned because of its cost; the athletes will instead be housed at dormitories at the University of California, Los Angeles. The volleyball competition will take place at the Alamitos Beach in Long Beach, rather than on the beach at Santa Monica, famous for its pier and Ferris wheel. The Santa Monica city government, facing a projected five-year deficit, backed out.
Canoe slalom, originally envisioned to be played at Sepulveda Basin Recreation Area in Encino, a 30-minute drive from downtown Los Angeles, has been moved 1,300 miles away to Oklahoma City, where an established slalom canoe venue course is already in place.
And it has become clear that one of the central selling points of locating the Games in Los Angeles -- the events would be staged at existing venues without massive amounts of construction -- also means there will be little visible legacy of the 2028 Games.
'LA is not quite ready to be a mega-event capital and welcome all these people,' said Alissa Walker, editor of Torched, a newsletter examining the city's preparations for the Olympics. 'And what do we get out of it?'
In their original bid, Los Angeles officials -- aware of the city's reputation for traffic -- raised the idea of this being a car-free Olympics. Early plans pledged to have '100% of ticketed spectators travel to competition venues by public transport, walking or cycling.'
Now, Bass and Wasserman have played down the notion of a carless Olympics. 'What is meant by that is not that there will be no cars during the Olympics, but that if you want to go to a venue, take public transportation,' Bass said. 'It's going to be too difficult to support a car.'
Some of the transit improvements envisioned a decade ago have not been completed. Monica Rodriguez, a Los Angeles City Council member who traveled to Paris last year for the Olympics and who is a frequent critic of Bass, said the Olympics preparations have been 'a little behind.' As an example, she pointed to one unfinished part of the region's $120 billion rail expansion plan: the East San Fernando Light Rail.
Those transit projects that will be completed, including an electric train, or people mover, on a 2.25-mile track serving Los Angeles International Airport, will meet the Olympic deadline because the original 2024 date of the Games slipped to 2028. (Los Angeles originally bid for the 2024 Games; the IOC, in an unusual dual announcement, gave the 2024 Games to Paris and the 2028 Games to Los Angeles).
Jules Boykoff, a government and politics professor at Pacific University in Oregon who has written extensively about the Olympics, said that Los Angeles was facing a 'triple whammy' as host of these Games: the fires, the budget crisis and the 'Trump wild card factor.' Any one of those factors, he said, could complicate preparations for the Olympics.
'Every hour that City Hall staff puts toward the Olympics really doesn't go toward wildfire recovery,' Boykoff said.
Paul Krekorian, who is overseeing the city's role in preparing for the Olympics, said the fires would not distract from the city's efforts. He, too, noted that the nation was mired in the Great Depression leading up to the 1932 Olympics, which Los Angeles also hosted, and a recession before the 1984 Olympics.
'We're used to having to deal with challenges and succeeding despite that,' Krekorian said.
For Los Angeles officials who are struggling with the city's own financial problems, a key question is whether Wasserman's committee will meet its target of raising $7.1 billion in corporate sponsorships, contributions and ticket sales. Should it fall short, the city will be responsible for covering the first $270 million of any gap, with the state -- facing its own $12 billion deficit -- responsible for the next $270 million.
Wasserman said he had obtained commitments of $5.1 billion from benefactors and corporate sponsors and was confident that the rest of the $7.1 billion would come in ticket sales. Asked about the committee's fundraising efforts, Bass responded: 'We will be ready for the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games, and we expect that LA28 will be successful in its fundraising efforts.'
Her predecessor, Garcetti, said that he attended the 1984 Olympics at the age of 13 and watched Carl Lewis, the track and field star, deliver one of the best performances of his career. (He won four gold medals that year.)
Garcetti said he was as confident that the Summer Games would be a success as he was when he campaigned for them years ago. He predicted that Los Angeles would be able to use the stage of the Olympics to present a story of recovery.
'LA is the city of comeback stories,' Garcetti said. 'It's a script that writes and rewrites itself. Forget the Olympics. Whether it's earthquakes, riots, civil unrest, fires. The rising from the ashes -- quite literally this time -- is the story waiting to be told.'
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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