Clock is ticking as LA Olympics organizers plan massive spending spree to retool venues

Ask Reynold Hoover, head of L.A.’s Olympic organizing efforts, how long until the Games begin, and the retired army general won’t hesitate: “687 days,” he told me last week. That’s until the opening ceremonies on July 14, 2028. 

“At 5 p.m.,” he added, for good measure.

There’s a lot to do between now and then, though these Olympics are unlike most in one important respect: Los Angeles already has the venues needed to put on the Olympics and Paralympics, which will take place primarily across Southern California and utilize the region’s vast sporting infrastructure. That means Los Angeles won’t need a stadium construction boom when it hosts the Games for the third time.

But just because Southern California has Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, SoFi Stadium in Inglewood and dozens of other places to play ball, run track and swim, that doesn’t mean it’s as simple as opening the doors and letting in athletes and fans.

Many of those facilities need to be retooled for the games, and on tight deadlines. The coliseum, for instance, years ago removed the track around the field, so Olympic organizers are planning to build a $100-million platform that will cover the field and the first 14 rows of seats to allow the stadium to be used for track and field.

SoFi, meanwhile, will be home to swimming, which makes sense since it can handle big crowds, but represents a challenge, too, since it doesn’t have any swimming pools. They’ll be built above ground in the center of the facility.

And those construction projects will be pushed by the clock that’s running all the time in Hoover’s head. At the coliseum, work can’t begin until college football is done for the year. At SoFi, which will be known as “2028 Stadium” for the Games, the pools can’t go in until after the 2027 Super Bowl is played in February.

What that means is that organizers are stockpiling money and preparing to spend it fast. The money is flowing in, and ticket sales are breaking records. Spending it will prove the more difficult issue. Of all the money being raised and spent for the 2028 Olympics, 90% of it will be doled out over the last 18 months, Hoover said.

Hoover and John Harper, chief operating officer for LA28, discussed the Olympics last week, even as Los Angeles was still basking in the success of the World Cup. Those matches went off without a hitch: Tens of thousands of fans funneled in and out of SoFi, and the regional transit network accommodated a noticeable bump in ridership. In terms of security, officials reported just two arrests — both for public intoxication.

Politics intervened, at times. The United States denied entry visas to Iran’s head coach and some team staff members. They re-established training camp from Arizona to Tijuana and shuttled back to Mexico after their matches in the U.S. It left some bad feelings but did not interfere with play directly. 

The World Cup is a gigantic undertaking, and this year’s events were scattered across the United States, Mexico and Canada. An estimated 6.8 million fans traveled to venues in all three countries, and Americans warmed to soccer as never before. It was, as Harper put it, a testament to the “unifying power of sport,” as communities across the country, including in Los Angeles, enjoyed events together at watch parties and other gatherings.

Still, it pales next to the Olympics in terms of the planning, transportation and security challenges.

For Los Angeles, the World Cup meant hosting eight soccer games and coordinating the accompanying logistics. The Olympics, by contrast, consist of hundreds of events stretched across 14 days, all laid atop a web of national and international sports entities and media. The Paralympics, which begin soon after the Olympics end, feature another 12 days of competitions in 23 sports.

More than 13 million visitors are expected to come to Southern California for the Games, and the Southern California Association of Governments has estimated that the Olympics will generate as much as $18 billion for the state’s economy — almost $12 billion of that to Los Angeles County alone. 

That translates into real jobs: the workers who build swimming pools and track platforms, the coffee shops that serve workers and executives, the dry cleaners who clean their clothes, not to mention full hotels and restaurants and a bustling hospitality industry after years of pain inflicted by disasters, tariffs and travelers souring on the United States.

Behind all of this, of course, lurk issues of politics. L.A.’s Summer Olympics bid began in 2014, when Eric Garcetti was the mayor and Donald Trump was still a washed up New York real estate developer. Much has changed: The Olympics will take place as Trump closes out his presidency, and under a different California governor. Either Mayor Karen Bass or Mayor Nithya Raman will preside for the city.

Those are officials who don’t think much of each other. The struggles between Los Angeles and Washington have defined much of Bass’s term so far as mayor, with ICE agents conducting their pantomime raids and L.A. police officers caught between protecting residents from ICE and ICE from demonstrators. It’s been a messy relationship, one that Olympics organizers make every effort to avoid.

“I learned a long time ago, as a general … the importance of relationships across the spectrum,” Hoover said. “It doesn’t matter who the mayor is or who the president is or who’s controlling the Congress.”

The Trump administration has ponied up $1 billion for security, and is weighing requests for extra transportation money. State and local governments are chipping in time and money to build a transportation network capable of minimizing car travel and, perhaps, demonstrating the capacity of mass transit in Los Angeles. The federal government has given the event special security status, bringing the law enforcement efforts under the banner of Secret Service, a useful tool in coordinating that part of the work.

It seems unlikely that Mayor Bass and President Trump will ever enjoy each other’s company, but that’s not the measure of success. The mayor, whether Bass or her successor, stands to reap the economic rewards of the Games, which also offer an international platform for Trump’s insatiable ego. So there’s something in it for everyone.

In the meantime, the clock ticks. Hoover and Harper have effectively built a Fortune 500 company in downtown Los Angeles, and they are poised to shovel billions of dollars into the economy to get venues and infrastructure ready for when the literal torch is lit.

As of Thursday, it’s 680 days away. And counting.