Organizers of the Los Angeles bid for the 2024 Olympic Games have released their proposed venue plans, including a brand-new soccer stadium that would house the swimming & diving events.
The L.A. Times reports that the new soccer stadium would sit right next to the L.A. Memorial Coliseum, which is proposed as the host venue for the opening and closing ceremonies along with the track and field events.
The stadium is already in the works, whether L.A. gets the Olympic bid or not. The city is set to get a new Major League Soccer franchise, and that team will get a new stadium, expected to be completed by 2020.
According to SBNation, the soccer stadium would be converted to a swimming facility starting about 10 months before the 2024 Olympics. The conversion to an aquatic facility and the building of a temporary pool within the stadium will cost around $100 million.
SBNation also reports that the soccer arena itself will be a $200 million venue.
The L.A. bid includes 5 different clusters of athletic facilities in order to cut down on costs by using already-established structures when possible. Swimming and diving would be in the main cluster, right in the downtown Los Angeles area. Water polo, meanwhile, would take place in the L.A. Tennis Center near UCLA. Open water swimming would take place out of Santa Monica Beach, also in the coastal cluster that includes the UCLA facilities.
You can see maps of each cluster on the L.A. Times website here.
Only in Los Angeles!!! 100 million dollars ANYWHERE else could build an AMAZING permanent facility. Los Angeles Department of Water and Power really sticks it to their customers. The city leaders are all kiss asses waiting for that photo opportunity. The city constantly wastes money and the residents are the ones who suffer.
“Only in Los Angeles” isn’t accurate, especially when you emphasized “ANYWHERE” and “AMAZING.” The London Aquatics Centre cost £269 million, which on today’s conversions is over $400 million.
Comparatively, this plan is a relative bargain. The two questions aren’t really about “why $100 million,” the two questions that someone has to ask themselves before becoming enraged about this is “do you believe that a 5,000 seat swimming venue is enough?” and “do Olympic organizers make it too hard to run a cost-effective Olympics with the requirements to have the pool there for X number of days to run test events?”
Jared, that fills in a blank but is also crazy. I don’t see an MLS franchise itself being worth $100 million. There are NHL franchises in the low nine figure valuations. I am also pretty sure the MLS franchise owner is not financing the stadium or will own it. There isn’t a single MLS franchise or NHL franchise that owns a stadium: they are all taxpayer or commercially owned and leased to sports franchises. I keep noting NHL because it is the fourth of four major professional leagues revenue wise, and because the MLS isn’t a fraction of it in terms of teams or league valuation.
A pool costs $2mm but use of a stadium for 10 months costs… Read more »
yes the fees to get a franchise in the MLS have increased a lot in the last few years
Quite honestly I don’t get why using the 1984 Olympic pool or using the new UCLA pool are bad options. Or Long Beach. I also wonder, Braden may know, temp pools have been used for the last couple Olympic Trials in Omaha. Did those pools cost $40 or $100 million? The figures centric to the pools themselves seem crazy. I get it that a soccer stadium costs $200 million.
Joel – there’s a little bit of an apples to apples deal going on. The pools themselves for Omaha I’ve seen estimated at about $2 million. Haven’t seen a real reliable figure for the buidlup of the deck around it, labor, etc. But….$100 million as a figure just to put a temporary pool in an existing stadium? That can’t possibly be right. If it were anywhere near that figure, it wouldn’t be feasible for USA Swimming to do it for Trials.
Based on the SBNation report, it looks like a large portion of the $100 million is a sort of rental fee paid to the local LA soccer franchise – because the soccer team would lose the use of its facility for about a full calendar year.
I read elsewhere they’re also proposing another $40million for a temporary water polo pool up near the UCLA campus. Good grief!
Back to the temporary swimming venue: the LA 84 pool is on right there next to the proposed sight. Couldn’t you update that, build temporary seating, save many millions, and have something to show for the millions you did spend when the 2 week show is over?
An Olympic or WC pool has to meet the FINA standards, which the USC and UCLA pools do not. Namely, the pool must be 10 lanes/25 meters wide. The USC and UCLA pools are 8 lanes/25 yards wide. I don’t think it would be as simple as knocking down a wall on one side. The difference is 7 feet of width. Other huge complications would be the re-lining of the pool bottom, to get the 10 lanes in, to remove the cross-wise lanes, and to reconfigure all the plumbing. They’d have to buy two new bulkheads, also designed for 10 lanes, at $150k or more per. Adding 7 feet of width also increases the volume that must be filtered, so… Read more »
$100 million for a TEMPORARY pool? Yowza! I know they want to provide the athletes and spectators a first-class experience, but you’d think that for that kind of jack, you could build something both suitable and permanent, especially since it doesn’t have to be all under roof.
Bloody brilliant use of what could be a trend in developing more multi-purpose of a large venues.
How could a temporary pool cost $100 million? A stadium costing $200 million seems realistic. A temporary pool venue at that cost seems crazy.
Why not Belmont in Long Beach?
Based on the SBNation report, it looks like a large portion of the $100 million is a sort of rental fee paid to the local LA soccer franchise – because the soccer team would lose the use of its facility for about a full calendar year.
Never thought of that. Good point, Jared.
I don’t think Belmont meets the new criteria, for either swimming OR diving, though I’m not sure about that. Plus the City of Long Beach has some politicians and their cronies who are leery of hosting international swimming after losing so much money even on the well-attended Trials in 2004. They’re up for using the pool for warmups, water polo, synchro, and LB’s Marine Stadium may also be still up to standard for the rowing and other boat events. The beach there is too polluted and waveless for Open Water, windsurfing etc, though.
So do what they did in kazan… “We don’t have a big enough aquatic center, so let put a pool in a woccer stadium cause were not using it right now.”
There’s very few places in the world that have a big enough aquatics center for the Olympics, or even Worlds. It’s not financially logical to maintain an aquatics arena of that size. Which means the options are to use a multi-sport stadium and put a pool in it, or build a permanent aquatic facility and put big temporary stands on it. Doesn’t seem to be a massive difference in cost when comparing temporary pool versus temporary stands, so decision comes down to whether there’s a need for another permanent aquatic facility of any size and if the location of that facility makes sense with the plan of the games. The answer to that question really comes down to perspective, I… Read more »