LA City Officials Recommend Finishing Convention Center Expansion Before 2028 Olympics

Los Angeles city officials released a report recommending the city council complete the expansion of the convention center before the 2028 Summer Olympics.

The city has a partnership with AEG and Plenary Group to renovate and expand the Los Angeles Convention Center but reconsidered the project in the face of budget cuts in late 2023.

The recommendation to move ahead with the project comes with some potential hurdles: a completion date that falls before the 2028 Olympics and an anticipated price tag of $1.4B, according to Urbanize LA.

The chief legislative analyst and city administrative officer recommend a design-build process with the city financing construction, abandoning previous plans to work within a public-private partnership, something to which all involved parties agreed. "A [design-build] delivery model is a simplified agreement relative to a P3, and negotiations are expected to take less time," the report said. 

A key element of what comes next in the process is determining whether the expansion is actually feasible given all the changes and requirements, including that the convention center be useable and free of construction for the Olympic and Paralympic Games as early as March 2028. The convention center is planned as a venue for the Games, but that is dependent on the expansion project either being completed by mid-2027 or deferred until the Games are concluded in August 2028, a December 2023 report from the city had previously noted. 

"It still must be confirmed that an Expansion Project would be deliverable in time for the 2028 Games, at a cost feasible for City interests," the authors of the June 14 report wrote.

According to the plan, AEG, Plenary and the city would enter into an early works agreement and undertake a host of pre-development activities between July of this year and mid-February 2025, with the goal of determining whether or not the expansion can be done within the prescribed parameters.

"At any time, if the City were to determine at its sole discretion that the Expansion Project is not feasible due to cost, schedule, or any other considerations, the Term Sheet and, subsequently, the [early works agreement] could be terminated with all pre-development work and expenditures immediately halted," the June 14 report states. 

Full costs to the city are unknown, as they depend largely on the amount of debt the city will need to take on and when that debt is issued. Details will be "fully evaluated and reported to Council and the Mayor at a later date" at the same time as final recommendations regarding the project agreement would be presented, according to the June report. 

AEG's hotel expansion, which would have included a 37-story hotel tower, is no longer part of the project. It is expected to be completed when market conditions improve, according to Urbanize.