Less Than 1,000 Days to Go: LA’s Olympic Promise and our Civic Reality

Cole: I was on the city council the first time in ’84 during the Olympics, and then, during my term as mayor, we hosted the World Cup at the Rose Bowl and the Super Bowl. So big events are something I’ve had a lot of experience with. I was also Deputy Mayor in L.A. when we were preparing the bid for 2024, and I’ve spent the last ten years since we won the bid trying to get Southern California's attention to capitalize on the potential. My own perspective is that we have largely squandered that opportunity. We’ll talk about what's going well, but mostly we’re going to talk about what good can still happen. We’re under 1,000 days. We’re going to structure the conversation first by talking about what other cities have done, including L.A. in 1984, and then we’ll talk about what’s actually moving forward. 

We’re getting a brand-new airport out of it, really. LAX—it’s been painful, yes—but we’re taking a third-rate airport and making it into a first-class airport by the time the Olympics are here. We also have some major rail projects that should meet the deadline. Beyond that, there are some things in motion. We’ll talk about where we are now, and then we’re going to spend most of the time on what we should be doing in the next 900-and-some days—not just as a city (“the mayor should do this”), but what you should do as citizens [...] 

I think we’ll frame our discussion by starting with Rodrigo, because of his long history and immediate involvement with past Olympics. What did other cities do right to leave a lasting legacy? Including, perhaps, some of the dark sides that made that more difficult or more of a mixed outcome. 

Soares: So, this is a hard question, because every day I learn something—a new definition of “legacy.” When I first worked the Games in Rio, to me, legacy was the built environment. We transformed a part of town that was a growth vector of the city, and did it in a way that wasn’t just looking at the Games, but looking 10, 15, 20 years after. That, to me, was legacy.

Then I came to L.A. and learned about the legacies of the ’84 Games and the ’84 Foundation—and knowing that Serena Williams went through that program and was successful—it reshaped what “legacy” meant to me. It doesn’t have to be necessarily the built environment. But it’s great when it is the built environment, right? It’s great when we get new transportation options and look to the neglected parts of town, investing there.

I think that was a great legacy from London, which created the Olympic Park on the east side of the city—a part of London that was kind of forgotten. Rio, following immediately after that, tried to learn from those experiences, had a similar plan, but one thing that’s really hard to plan for is something I don’t fully grasp: macroeconomics. London is deemed a success story, but they were lucky that the 2008 crisis happened. When they bid for the projects and procurement, they got the best product because no one was buying at the cheapest price. So the Games were incredible. By the time Rio happened, Brazil was on the brink of surpassing the UK in GDP, and they were bidding for all their procurement at the highest possible level.

Then the crash came. It hit Brazil a little later—not in 2008, but really in 2014. There were really good ideas that will take time to materialize in Brazil because of that environment; the city found itself following the Games. I’m still hopeful that a lot of those programs will occur. The park itself was designed to then become a neighborhood, but it’s still kind of in the same situation as in 2016—it hosts events, but real neighborhoods haven’t been built yet, just because of the financial crisis that hit my country. Then, the Olympic movement found themselves in a situation where L.A. was bidding that no one wanted the Games. Host cities were dropping out. By the time the 2024 bidding process was about to finish, they were left only with Paris and L.A. And they were smart about it—they said, “Okay, Paris, you take 2024. L.A., do you want to take 2028?” Part of that discussion, and how it came about, was an advancement of funds so that L.A. could start working on its legacy early with the PlayLA program. They got about $160 million in advance from the IOC to institute that program early, and again, the organizing committee has a very narrow scope on what their tasks are to deliver. But I think that is a great program that’s in place today—and hopefully, it can inspire us to think of different programs for the future.

Smith: Well, I think it’s helpful to think not just about the Olympics per se, but about other major events that have left an imprint on cities. And everybody here who’s an architect or a planner knows about the World’s Columbian Exposition—you know, Chicago, New York, all of these great cities—and how, well, what would Chicago be without that? It was an excuse for the city to try bold experiments in design, and it shaped an entire hundred-year legacy. When I think about what we can be, I think we’ve frankly missed the chance to do this here, this time for L.A…

Bernstein: My answer might be a little different, but the most recent example—the Olympics and Paralympics were in Paris, right? And Paris is quite a bit different from L.A. They have a very mature transportation network—it’s been around for, you know, a century or so, or longer—but they still managed to finish some projects in time. Even Paris was like, “Hey, we’ve got a deadline—let’s not squander it,” right?

There’s something about a date-certain event that just can spur action, or at least, hopefully. From the transportation standpoint, I think we’re interested in trying to leave a legacy that’s not just going to be for the period of the Games, but that’s going to continue to serve the people of this region for decades to come. We’re not going to become Paris or London overnight, but we’re looking to invest in infrastructure that’s going to meaningfully change people’s lives. And, you know, I might be biased, but I think being able to get from downtown to Westwood in a half hour at any time of day is pretty amazing, as someone who is a UCLA alum. But those are some of the things on my mind.

The other thing I’ll mention—as others have alluded to—part of the bid, or part of our approach to these Games, is that it’s a “no-build Games.” Meaning we’re not building a bunch of new stadiums. The reason L.A. can bid for these big events is that we already have so many facilities here. They might need to be reconfigured to put different events in different venues, but we have them.

[...]

Stevenson: Since I’m the eternal optimist, I’ll say one of the big differences we have is that we’ve got a robust collegiate system out here. So we have a lot of facilities that are already built. In ’84, we proved that we didn’t have to build a bunch of new venues—and if they were built, they were later utilized by the community, by colleges. That’s one really important difference between what we already have infrastructure-wise and what other cities have had to do. Yes, some of those will have to be reconfigured. There will be a swimming pool in SoFi, but aquatics is incredibly popular, and now we’ll have the capacity to have 38,000 people watch in person.

What I do hope is that those fan zones become a big part of it. That’s already popular in entertainment, sports, and entertainment zones. We’ve already started to build that infrastructure, where you have viewing parties that aren’t just gatherings in a warehouse, but actually designed spaces. For those who don’t know, in Hollywood Park, you can actually watch games in a much more 360-degree kind of environment than you normally would. That’s already built—that’s infrastructure here in L.A. 

Cole: L.A. in ’84, for those who are younger in the room, was an international coming-out party for Los Angeles. The city had spent the previous three decades proving that it could rank with Chicago and New York, and 1984 was our debut as a city that could rank with Tokyo, London, Berlin, and Paris…we proved we were a world city, with world-class amenities, strengths, and assets. In that sense, it was extraordinarily successful at changing people’s view of Los Angeles from a provincial place that wasn’t really a city to a city that belonged on the world stage. Deborah Sussman, an absolutely brilliant designer of the graphics program…hung 2,000 banners across every major street in Los Angeles, and suddenly this “forty suburbs in search of a city” was united by one colorful, unified sense that this is a place. Los Angeles, in that sense, wasn’t just an economic success, which it clearly was, but it was also a civic pride success. That’s a little obscure now, because eight years later, the Rodney King riots cast a long shadow, and people realized that perhaps L.A. wasn’t facing up to some of the problems we’d ignored while patting ourselves on the back. The success of ’84 isn’t remembered as vividly as it was at the time. 

How many of you read Torched? Torched is by journalist Alissa Walker, who regularly covers the Olympics. You can tell by her title that she’s something of a skeptic, but she had this to say about the promise of one fan zone per city council district—260,000 people per district. Now, it does say “at least,” but that’s what’s currently being planned: 15 activations. That number is clearly derived from Paris, which had one official celebration per arrondissement, 180 total across France….

The Paris of today is not just a product of the Olympics. Mayor Hidalgo has transformed the core of Paris from an auto-choked, noisy, polluted central district into one of the most extraordinary places on the planet. Paris was always a great city to visit; now it’s truly extraordinary. Place-making, bicycling, and even electric scooters have transformed the center of Paris, and it all came together in time for this last Olympics. We’re going to shift now to what’s going on now…

Of course, the long-delayed subway to UCLA, that’s where it was supposed to go in the first place, and had Congressman Henry Waxman not stopped it, we’d have had it 30 years ago. But finally, we’ll get it in time for the Olympics. The Festival Trail is a 50-mile-long effort to link the venues with non-auto routes, so people can bike and walk to virtually every venue except the one in Oklahoma City. That’s a grassroots effort coming from people who said, “We need to roll up our sleeves and make a difference.”

Metro is betting big, both to avoid embarrassment and to seize opportunity and legacy. We’ll start with you, Daniel.

Bernstein: Many of you are probably familiar with the pretty transformative tax measures that were enacted over the last decade, decade and a half—Measure R, Measure M. If you’re not, basically, it’s a small sales tax that goes toward funding transportation improvements across the county, and it’s really building out essentially the most ambitious transportation program that’s happening anywhere. 

1984. Does anyone know how many miles of rail system we had in L.A. at that time? Zero. It was in that period after the original streetcar system had ceased operation, but before our modern system began operating in 1990. So it was a completely different place from a transportation standpoint. There were also far fewer people here, and there was no Google Maps back then. So if people were told, “Stay home,” they might actually listen. You couldn’t just go online and check, “Hey, is the 101 green?” “Oh, okay, no one’s on it, I’ll just drive.” They were living in a different world than we are now….We’re trying to build a transportation program that matches not only the world we live in now, but the one we’re moving toward, the type of region and city we want to be. One that’s increasingly dense, increasingly walkable, and where people want alternatives to driving their own cars. A couple of the exciting projects have already opened.  [...] 

Yes, we’re not where we ideally would have been. Ideally, all of those would be done, but we’re getting to a place where we’ll have a really excellent rail system. Of course, we know rail alone isn’t the whole picture. A lot of the Olympic venues aren’t well served by train. You can’t take a train to the Rose Bowl. You can’t quite take one to some of the farther venues. We’re planning a program of Park-and-Ride shuttles and additional bus services to provide mobility because there won’t be parking available at the venues. Those areas are to be used for fan zones and security, so they’ll be off-limits to regular parking…

Soares: It’s funny you mentioned the rail system. A few years back, I was putting together a presentation comparing 1984 with where we’d be in 2028. I pulled up the Metro map as a PDF and started deleting lines to recreate the 1984 map. And at one point, I realized, okay, there’s nothing …but on that point about transportation, in Olympic planning, you typically have some test events maybe a year ahead of time. You want to test your logistics—like, you’re putting a couple of swimming pools in Inglewood, and the first day of swimming is seven days after the opening ceremony. I see the Olympics as a test event for where the city wants to be. Let’s use the Games in 2028 to test different things—different ways of reaching venues—and learn from it.

[...] I’ll wrap up with this: in the nine years I’ve been here, I’ve lived all over, and I feel like every place I’ve lived, I only go to the neighborhoods around it. 

Smith: I’d love to begin with an observation, a sad story, and then a happy story…all in 30 seconds or less. The observation is, sort of as I alluded to earlier, that for me, the most exciting thing about the Games is the chance for L.A. to look at itself in a new way. This is something we get glimpses of in other moments. I mean, my wife and I went to the “No Kings” art protest in Studio City, and I couldn’t believe how cool Ventura Boulevard was. This is a place where we live, and yet we experienced it in a completely new way. Every time there’s a CicLAvia, we experience the city in a new way. We discover things we weren’t expecting. The Olympics are 100% a chance to do that—to rediscover L.A.

Now, the sad story is that so much of the fine-grain urban fabric we love won’t be discovered, because it’s disappearing. I’m talking about small restaurants, small businesses, little retail shops. I was speaking with the head of Plan Check for the L.A. County Health Department the other day, and he told me he was expecting a stack of applications as high as the ceiling—bars, restaurants, hotels—renovating and opening in anticipation of the Olympics. He was around in ’84, and he said that’s what happened back then. But right now? He said his desk is empty. And that’s a huge concern, because not only are we losing what we have—we’re not getting new things either.

Now, the happy story. One of the reasons it’s so difficult to operate a restaurant in L.A. or in California is all the things you have to do—the hurdles you have to jump. Speaking of the Olympics, the red tape you have to navigate just to do the most basic things is unthinkable. If you go to any other world city, it’s vastly easier to open a small restaurant. These are the hospitality establishments that visitors fall in love with, and locals too….

The Governor just signed AB 592 a few weeks ago, and I think it’s going to make a huge difference. Architects in the room will especially appreciate this. It allows kitchens to be directly open to the outside for the first time since the 1980s. Tommy’s Burger, for example, couldn’t legally be built today, because you’re not allowed to have a kitchen open directly to the air. It’s one of the reasons all new restaurants look kind of the same, with a big dining room and the kitchen in the back. Starting in January, to quote my friend Eddie Navarette, you could have a sushi bar in a tiny little storefront where you could, in theory, high-five the sushi chef—if you both wash your hands before and after, and that’s huge.

Stevenson: I’m just excited because now I can get nachos hot instead of in packages. If you’ve ever been to Dodger Stadium, you get everything prepackaged. I’m not sure about high-fiving the chef, but I’ll take fresh food! There are so many things we’ve talked about in so many ways. One thing I’m really interested in is changing the legacy of how we get to our facilities. I don’t know if anyone’s been to a concert at BMO Stadium—I can go from Santa Monica all the way there, and then I can leave without finding my car or waiting in lines. There’s a real change happening in people’s attitudes. Something intangible. 

In other countries, people say, “Oh yeah, of course we take the Metro. Why wouldn’t we?” We grew up as a car-loving city, but we’ve outgrown that motif. It doesn’t work anymore. I don’t want to keep planning for two and a half people per car in massive parking lots for big venues. No one wants to go to a parking lot. They want to go to the facility, to the fan zones, to the activations. They don’t want to walk out of an amazing experience just to search for their car. I think we’re seeing a real mentality shift. I think this will be a great experiment, but I also want it to be a lasting one. 

Smith: The Festival Trail is basically a transit line for people who walk, bike, and use all these other modes. It’s a chance to start building housing and other uses around the person rather than around the car. And I think it’s enough of a commitment of space that it’s almost like building to a street or to a transit line, it’s building to a real place, and that’s a super exciting opportunity.

Stevenson: To that point you’re talking about, the City of Irvine has actually done something like that. Some of their residential areas have huge bike paths that are part of their design—actually written into the reason for their planning. And they even have little bike repair areas where you can fix a flat. It’s really cool, and it’s right next to the Great Park, for those who live in Irvine. This is a novel concept: actually building bike infrastructure into communities.

Cole: BOD—Bike-Oriented Development. I’m going to reverse Mott’s pattern and tell a happy story and a sad story. The happy story is Seoul, Korea, daylighted a creek in the center of the city by tearing down a freeway and opening up, between tall buildings, an absolutely extraordinary public space. Then there’s the Los Angeles River. Lots of vision, lots of dreams, lots of plans… very little progress. The ability to do big things doesn’t seem to be on the agenda.

Having just retired as Chief Deputy Controller for the City of L.A., the reality is, our city government is broken. We can’t fix our streets, repair our sidewalks, and can’t even fix our fire trucks. The zoo is closing exhibits, while Animal Services has animals stacked up in the hallways at the shelters. We’ve cut 3,200 jobs in the last two budget years, which are critical jobs for delivering services, and we have to put on the Olympics in less than 1,000 days.

Someone mentioned “clean and safe,” and we’re actually seeing deterioration of both. The resources simply aren’t there to turn that around in the next three years. So, in that sense, we’re a little bit on our own. The cavalry is not coming to rescue us, and that’s the third part of our discussion today: in the face of these sobering realities, how can we maximize…

[...] If it hasn’t broken ground now, it’s not going to happen. What can we do to capitalize on this opportunity? 

Smith: Without directly answering your question, I just want to lend weight to it. If you think about the most transformative urban interventions of the past three decades, almost all have been low-capital improvisations. I’m talking about Janette Sadik-Khan’s Summer Streets in New York City, the pedestrianization of downtown Montreal, CicLAvia here in L.A., Paris’s street programs, too. We don’t, in a sense, need to wait for permission. It’s kind of a Wizard of Oz situation—we already have our brain, we already have our courage. We just have to use them…

Soares: Also not answering your question—and maybe not “grassroots”—but, you know, we like to say it’s a “no-build Games.” It’s not entirely true. We’re going to build temporary infrastructure. We’re going to have to put up five temporary swimming pools. There’s a lot that needs to be done temporarily to host the Games. How can we capitalize on that? What do we do with those five pools afterward? 

They’re modular. You can take them down, then give them to different communities, say, “Hey, you can install this pool in a park, or use it to renovate a pool that’s been closed for years.” How can the community engage with the organizing committee in planning these Games—highlighting opportunities, raising their hands, saying, “What are we doing with this?” [...]

Bernstein: I’ll take a crack at actually answering the question, after a small detour, of course. Adding to your point about it being a mostly no-build Games. Remember, in this country, it’s also privately funded. The government isn’t bankrolling it; they’re not putting up massive public money. That’s different from how it works elsewhere. We have to be more scrappy; think modular, temporary, but still transformative.

On the transportation side, one thing we’re focused on is heat and shade. Moving large crowds in the middle of summer, we don’t want people getting heatstroke waiting in line for a bus or train. But we can’t plant trees everywhere—not enough time or space. We’re designing temporary shade structures—things that can be fabricated quickly but installed permanently afterward. [...]

That’s my pitch: get your TAP card—virtual or physical. Soon, you’ll be able to tap your credit card directly, too. But get out there. Try it. See your city differently. Bus lanes? Yes, we’re continuing to roll those out. Vermont Avenue’s one. There are others. During the Games, there’ll be what’s called the Games Route Network. That came from Atlanta..or maybe Sydney, where a bunch of athletes once got stuck in traffic and were late to their event. Never again. The plan is to have exclusive lanes on major corridors connecting key sites…I’ll say this, I’m not promising anything, but if we’re going to the trouble of putting down paint and signs, maybe some of those lanes can stick around afterward. That’s definitely the hope, to turn short-term Games infrastructure into long-term transit improvements.

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Cole: Because I don’t want to end on a dark note, I’m going to introduce a dark note now: It’s imaginable, given what’s going on in our country, and the recent comments from the Secretary of Homeland Security about the Super Bowl, that Los Angeles could host an Olympics surrounded by ICE agents on every corner. The U.S. Army with tanks and armored vehicles—if not a king or emperor presiding over “Make the Olympics Great Again.” Homeless people swept up and held “somewhere else” until further notice.  Given what’s unfolding in our country, it’s not implausible to imagine an Olympics that looks more like Mexico 1968, when 800 students were slaughtered two days before the Games for peacefully protesting. I’m certainly not hoping or betting on it, but Los Angeles is not going to be down for that kind of Olympics. There’s a deep community pride in making sure these Games are truly about international brotherhood and sisterhood, not just flag-waving and chanting “USA, USA.” 

Let’s talk about what the real estate industry can do to capitalize on this opportunity. How do we improve the public realm and lay the groundwork for a better Los Angeles?

Smith: I’d like to start with open-air kitchens! As you said, we’ve got a thousand days. That’s not a lot. So the question is: what can we do with what we already have? I think the Festival Trail and projects like it offer an opportunity to experiment. We have new laws like AB 2097 that let us build housing and other uses without parking. 

But I don’t yet know any developer, or any bank, willing to really take that leap, except in subsidized cases. The Festival Trail might be the perfect place to try that as a big experiment for L.A., and beyond that, the most impactful thing we can do right now is to fill our ground-floor spaces with active uses that open to the street, that enrich our communities, and to do it fast.

Soares: I’ve had the opportunity to attend a few iterations of the Games, and as an architect working on venue planning, my greatest memories aren’t of the venues. Even after years of work, I don’t remember where I sat—but I do remember who I was with, and we didn’t drive to anything. The only place I rent a car anymore is here.

One great element that’s been growing in each edition of the Games is the NOC Houses, or the National Olympic Committee houses. New Zealand just signed a deal with Culver City, for example. You go to an event, then you get an invite to the Italy House, or the Team GB House. They bring their chefs, their culture…it’s amazing…L.A. could show the world that it’s the second capital of so many different cultures, and that’s a story worth telling.