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The LA28 Olympic and Paralympic Games organizing committee has been headquartered at the 10900 Wilshire Boulevard building in the Westwood section of Los Angeles, leasing about 14,000 sq. ft. of space for its small but growing staff of about 180.
Although that space is leased through 31 December 2028, it was never going to be enough to house an organizing committee that will eventually have as many as 4,000 people working on the Olympic and Paralympic Games. The likely location for LA28 was in downtown Los Angeles and details became available on Monday.
Real estate site TheRealDeal.com reported that LA28 has leased 160,000 sq. ft. in the USC Tower in the South Park Center complex at 1150 South Olive Street. This is a famous tower toward the southern edge of downtown, designed by architect William Pereira & Associates and built in 1965.
It was originally the Occidental Life Building, built to house its computer operations, then was known for decades as the Transamerica Building, then the AT&T Center and now the USC Tower – since 2015 – after the university took 245,000 sq. ft. of space in the 581,630 sq. ft., 32-floor, 452 foot-high facility.
When it opened, it was the second-tallest building in Los Angeles and is still in the top 50.
Sources say the LA28 lease is for three years, starting this summer, and comprises five floors.
The lease is a significant boost for the downtown L.A. rental market, which had been lagging in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic. LA28 still owes about $4.1 million in remaining lease payments on the 10900 Wilshire space from 2025-28.
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This will not be the last lease for the LA28 organizers, if prior experience is any indicator.
The Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee for the 1984 Olympic Games opened in a suite at 10100 Santa Monica Boulevard in Century City in 1979, then moved to the UCLA Extension Building in Westwood from 1981-82 in about 30,000 sq. ft. across two floors.
The LAOOC built a new, three-story, 55,000 sq. ft. office building across the street on the southern edge of the UCLA campus, opening in mid-1982. But as the staff count passed 500, a much larger space was needed and in mid-1983, the LAOOC moved into a former Hughes Helicopter design facility in Marina del Rey.
The “Marina Center” as it was known, was a cavernous, 180,000 sq. ft. space that was built up to house the LAOOC staff through the Games, which 1,750 full-time employees and more than 100 consultants and staff from suppliers and vendors. (Today, it’s a Costco Wholesale store.)
At the same time, the LAOOC building at UCLA was used by the Olympic ceremonies staff and there were LAOOC staff working at separate facilities for ticketing, uniforms, design and “Look” warehousing, four staffing centers and nine remote ticketing facilities.
LA28 will have plenty of satellite facilities too, but it appears to have landed in its main headquarters space, in downtown Los Angeles.
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