Consider it official. In a foregone conclusion, the Summer Olympics are returning to the United State for the first time since 1996.
Wednesday, the International Olympic Committee awarded the 2024 Summer Olympics to Paris and 2028 Olympics to Los Angeles. The two cities had previously reached an agreement to split the bids after battling one another for the 2024 Games. That also means the 2028 Paralympics will also take place in Los Angeles immediately following.
It's official! The 2028 Olympics & Paralympics are coming to L.A. Can’t wait to welcome the world back to our City of Angels! #FollowTheSun pic.twitter.com/nSCjIvWhXm
— Mayor Karen Bass (@MayorOfLA) September 13, 2017
Los Angeles previously hosted the Summer Games in 1984 and 1932. Both LA and Paris join London as the only three-time hosts.
Unlike previous hosts like Rio de Janeiro and Athens, Los Angeles has a leg up due to a string of athletic facilities either currently built or already in the process of being built. That, plus the additional years allotted due to the early announcement, gives the city plenty of time and opportunity to get themselves squared away by the time 2028 rolls around.
LA’s bid actually involves multiple cities and regions surrounding the city and county with a focus on Downtown Los Angeles, The San Fernando Valley, South Bay, and Long Beach. Most Olympics events are planned to take place in and around DTLA, including the opening ceremonies at LA Memorial Coliseum and the closing ceremonies in Exposition Park where the city’s original Olympic flame will be once-more extinguished.
Olympic athletes will stay in the Olympic and Paralympic Village at UCLA in nearby Westwood.
The upcoming Inglewood stadium that will be home to both the NFL’s Rams and Chargers will also play a pivotal role in the Olympics. Pushing the bid back to 2028 gives it some breathing room as the stadium was recently delayed until 2020.
Long Beach is already starting to do some accounting for what’s coming and has announced that the 50-year-old pier, a key waterfront component to the bid, needs to be entirely replaced at a cost somewhere between $25-$35 million.
Perhaps most pressing of all, having a decade of lead-time should give Los Angeles plenty of time to try and figure out how to get the millions of visitors around town without everyone sitting in traffic all day. Who knows, perhaps Elon Musk’s tunnels will be operational by then.
