the excitement is building for the 2028 Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles mayor Karen bass waving the Olympic flag as she brought it back from Paris after she arrived at LAX welcome back I'm Mark Brown I'm joavan L you're watching Eyewitness News at 5 live on ABC7 Hulu and wherever you stream the 2028 Olympics are less than four years away and there are a lot of questions about how the city will prepare a lot of venues are going to need some changes and there is the issue of course of LA's homelessness crisis eyewitness news reporter
Josh Haskell joining us live from the LA Memorial Coliseum with some answers to those questions Josh and Mark and Jovana for the 2028 games the LA Memorial Coliseum will become the first venue to host the opening ceremony and track and field for three Olympics organizers say the hardest part is the scale in Olympic Games is equivalent to putting on Seven Super Bowls a day for 17 straight days when Los Angeles mayor Karen bass received the Olympic flag during the Paris closing ceremony Sunday and the flag made its way to Los Angeles it was the clearest
sign yet that in less than 4 years July 14th 2028 it's our turn so how will Los Angeles pull off the 2028 Olympic and Paro Olympic games which will feature 36 Sports the most ever and welcome approximately 10,500 Olympians 6,000 Paro Olympians and thousands of visitors from around the world for 17 days this will will be the most important event in the world that billions of people will watch and it's incumbent upon us to make sure we as a city and we as a country are at our best we need our city to be so
much cleaner we obviously need to deal with homelessness I would love to see the graffiti changed into murals so I think about the world coming here and I think about the challenges in the business community and especially all smaller businesses that struggled with Co the Olympic events will take place across LA County which has an estimated homeless popul of over 70,000 people former Los Angeles city council member Mike bonnan is concerned La will follow Paris and move the homeless outside the city during the games Paris moved people into Bordeaux and to other cities around the
country here you know we're at Great risk of that same thing happening there's going to be intense pressure from some of the the Civic Elites and the folks behind la28 to just move everybody out of all of Los Angeles they're not going to want people uh internationally to actually see homelessness there is no chance no chance at all that uh the modernization of LAX would be done by 2028 if it weren't for the Olympics right so if we can do it for LAX we can certainly do it for homelessness we need to put our focus
on housing angelinos and I don't know what the numbers are in Paris but you can't hide 70,000 people our leaders see the games as a way to address those issues and leave a legacy that will will benefit Los Angeles for decades to come we are not changing our city to fit the Olympics the Olympics are changing to fit our city what that means is la28 is a Nob build Olympics existing facilities will be used to house the athletes and host competitions some temporary venues will be constructed but nothing from scratch and two events softball and
canoe slalom will take place more than 1,000 miles away in Oklahoma City what we're going to do down long we and take advantage of that front that most olympic cities don't have right I mean in Paris sailing is in Marseilles because that's the closest place to sail we have a 30-minute drive to sailing they have a 2-hour flight to sailing and so la is truly unique that way when you have to privately fund and the expectation is to at worst break even at a games you can't go build venues for a sport for two weeks
it's just is illogical and so it feels weird to move in event Oklahoma City I think for some people but when you realize it's a 2-hour plane flight just like Marseilles you have to think outside the box you take like can newe kayak to Oklahoma City or softball those are sports that people love there they may get lost in a place like La Sofi stadium in Englewood will host swimming able to hold 38,000 fans 20,000 more than the Paris games making it the largest swimming venue in Olympic history basketball will also take place in Englewood
at the brand new Intuit Dome gymnastics will be held at crypto.com Arena downtown and track and field will return to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum which will host its third Olympic Games skateboarding BMX freestyle and BMX racing events will be held in the suula Basin equestrian will take place in Tula and cycling and tennis in Carson to name a few some critics say a no build Olympics is good in theory but Paris also aimed to be a no build Olympics and their budget doubled the average Olympics goes over by 172% so if you look at
the estimates of what it would take to host the Olympics uh in Angeles I think the initial budget would was around 5 billion uh which you know history would tell us it would probably get up to 789 billion however a lot of those cost overruns are attributable to you know facility construction which in a no build Olympics you're not going to have it is at least in my opinion a step in the right direction toward a more sustainable uh and um socially conscious hosting of the games when the city of Los Angeles agreed to to
take on the Olympics we agreed that we would assume the cost everybody said there won't be any cost it's going to be no Bild we'll have sponsorships now we have seen since we approve this that a lot of the security decisions are going to be made uh by a sort of a multi-jurisdictional apparatus that really doesn't care about what Los Angeles's budgetary bottom line is I'm worried too I have to make sure that the games do not hurt us financially according to Casey werman chairman of La 2028 the Olympic host committee is right where it
needs to be financially we are in as strong position as an organizing committee has ever been four years before in Olympic Games financially um and that's subject to two things one we have the best sports economy in the world in the United States and we have benefited from that so we sit here today with more contracted Revenue than Paris will have in total and we haven't even thought about selling a ticket yet let alone sold a ticket and we're not done selling lots of other things haven't sold a t-shirt the city of La is not
giving us any money the state of California is not giving us any money our budget actually reimburses the city for all incremental expenses as opposed to a normal day in LA versus the Olympics and don't miss our report tomorrow where we will look at transportation and traffic for the games what the city and organizers plan to do also what they hope the legacy of the games will be and let's not forget where they plan to house all of those athletes Mark and javana Josh speaking of housing we know Paris built an Olympic Village what is
La planning well La is planning on housing all of the athletes on UCLA's campus in Westwood usually 16,000 students are housed there of course it will be over the summer and and they say that it is centrally located it is of course easy to secure and organizers also add it maintains their commitment to a no build Olympic Games hello I'm Mark Brown get more great ABC7 content by clicking the Subscribe button for our YouTube channel and download the ABC7 Angeles streaming app on Fire TV Android TV Apple TV and Roku to watch on your TV
