LA 2028 leadership still beaming day after Olympic bid was approved in Peru

LOS ANGELES — As Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and Los Angeles 2028 chairman Casey Wasserman stood on the edge of a tarmac at Los Angeles International Airport, a long flight from Lima, Peru and an improbable victory behind them, the sun was setting on what is once again an Olympic city.

In a sense, the Olympic Games were returning home as well Thursday evening.

A day earlier the International Olympic Committee unanimously ratified the awarding of the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games to Los Angeles, the IOC turning to the city in crisis for a third time.

Los Angeles, Garcetti said, was “Bringing home (the Olympics) to where they need to be.”

Garcetti, Wasserman and Los Angeles City Council president Herb Wesson, who met the pair at LAX, promised to not only deliver a Games that would transform an Olympic movement that has been hounded by financial catastrophe, a string of corruption scandals and is struggling to connect with young viewers but an Olympics that would unite the city.

“The Olympic Games have always found fertile ground and a home and great support among Angelenos because we understand the power of the Games to unite us,” Garcetti said.

“In 1932 we became in many ways a global city and saved the Olympics in the midst of the Depression. In 1984 when we became a significant Olympic city and hosted the Olympics, created jobs and made a model that now lasts in the Olympic movement. In 2028 we’re going to do that again, become one of the most indispensable global cities, one that reaches for opportunities like the Olympic Games and simultaneously addresses the challenges that we have, to unite this city, to address poverty, our challenges with traffic and housing. We know by looking 11 years in the future we have the opportunity (to shape) what our city and our lives will be like and this gives us the opportunity to come together.

“A lot of cities quite frankly don’t want to bid for the Olympics but we know here the Olympics are not an impediment, they are a spark to our progress and always will be.”

Wasserman said both he and Los Angeles 2028 chief executive officer Gene Sykes would remain in their current positions through 2028.

“I think you’ll see tremendous if not complete continuity of the senior leadership of the entire team of the bid committee turning into the (organizing committee),” Wasserman said.

One of the organizing committee’s first orders of business was to deliver on a pledge to provide city officials with an insurance plan. As of Wednesday, LA 2028 has $50 million in place for liability insurance as well as insurance against a breach of the Host City Contract Los Angeles has signed with the IOC.

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“The promise we made to the city is complete today,” Wasserman said.

A memorandum of understanding between the city, Los Angeles 2028, the local organizing committee, and the USOC requires LA 2028 to establish an Allocated Contingency account of $270 million, up from $250 million under the MOU for the 2024 Games.

LA 2028 plans to set aside $487.6 million for contingencies.

LA 2028 will receive at least $2 billion from the IOC, up from $1.7 billion had the city hosted the 2024 Games and the largest pay out ever to an Olympic host city.

The IOC also agreed to provide LA 2028 a $180 million advance, to be paid out in 20 quarterly $9 million payments beginning Jan. 1, 2018. LA 2028 will use as much as $160 million to fund youth sports programs through Los Angeles Parks and Recreation starting next year.

As they stood on the LAX tarmac, Wasserman and Garcetti were still beaming from the previous day’s triumph.

“You can’t describe the feeling of having the president of the International Olympic Committee hand you the card that actually has your city and a year on it,” Garcetti said of the IOC’s joint award Wednesday of the 2028 Games and the 2024 Olympics to Paris. “That’s the moment when it felt real.”

The celebration, however, will be brief, Wasserman said.

“We’ll celebrate for the weekend,” he said “and we’ll get off to work on Monday.”