The Los Angeles City Council agreed Wednesday to form a committee to oversee the city's participation in a bid to host the 2024 Summer Olympics.
The Ad Hoc Committee on the 2024 Summer Olympics will hold its first meeting Friday morning to discuss a agreement that is needed as the first step for the United States Olympics Committee to submit Los Angeles as its bid city. The agreement would serve as a commitment by city leaders that they will pursue the games in the event that the USOC chooses Los Angeles as the nation's bid city.
The USOC must submit its chosen bid city to the International Olympics Committee by Sept. 15.
The newly formed, seven-member panel that will be reviewing the agreement is chaired by council President Herb Wesson, with Councilman Gil Cedillo as vice chair. The other members are Councilmen Bob Blumenfield, Joe Buscaino, Paul Krekorian, Mitch O'Farrell and Curren Price.
"Of course, all of the (council) members here are excited about this possibility, but make this fact clear, we have a fiduciary responsibility and a responsibility to this city," Wesson said. "And we will do our job -- we will vet this until we are satisfied with this. Today is the beginning of that process."
If backed by the panel, the agreement would go to the City Council for a vote as early as next week. But Wesson said he wants to give his colleagues time to review a 200-page draft bid book released Tuesday by LA24, the nonprofit agency leading the Los Angeles bid.
"We may not be prepared on Friday. We may need another meeting. We will do whatever is necessary to do the best for the city that each and every one of us love," Wesson said.
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The bid book includes an August update of the budget submitted to the USOC in December and details how the Olympics might be run in Los Angeles. The book includes a preliminary blueprint for about 30 venues, including a cluster of sites in and around downtown Los Angeles, and others in Hollywood and Griffith Park, the San Fernando Valley, South Bay and along the coast.
The bid packet calls for the Olympics Village to be next to the Los Angeles River in Lincoln Heights -- in a Union Pacific rail yard known as the "Piggyback Yard" -- and for the Olympics Stadium to be at a newly renovated Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
The cost of hosting the 2024 Olympics in Los Angeles would be be $4.6 billion, with projected revenue of $4.8 billion and a profit of $161 million going to the nonprofit, according to LA24 officials.
The budget anticipates that the International Olympics Committee will contribute $1.5 billion or 31 percent of the revenue, with domestic sponsorships and ticket revenue making up the other two-thirds.
Los Angeles became a potential frontrunner for a U.S. site after the USOC and Boston 2024 jointly ended the campaign to host the Olympics in Boston.
Los Angeles hosted the 1932 and 1984 Olympic Games.
