This week kicks off a multi-episode mini-series at SGV Connect focusing on the LA 2028 Olympic/Paralympic games and what the events can mean for San Gabriel Valley Communities.
This first episode features an interview with Alissa Walker, co-host of the L.A. Podcast and editor of Torched. When not hanging out with celebrities and appearing on Netflix specials, Walker has become the go-to source of information about the upcoming games.
The 2028 games will feature four venues in the San Gabriel Valley. Pasadena will host the soccer finals at the Rose Bowl, the Santa Anita Racetrack will host equestrian and dressage, the Pomona Fairgrounds will host the cricket tournament, and shotgun events will be held at the Shotgun Center in El Monte.
Walker reports that San Gabriel cities are well positioned to host these attractions, as the venues all host major events (outside of the Shotgun Center) and know how to do so without causing headaches for neighboring communities. She is also excited for the possibilities that could occur with cities hosting official and unofficial events to bolster their profile and their coffers. It also allows for city and regional officials to think about creative ways to use the games to improve their transportation options in the short- and long-term.
Streetsblog’s San Gabriel Valley coverage is supported by Foothill Transit, offering car-free travel throughout the San Gabriel Valley with connections to the A Line Stations across the Foothills and Commuter Express lines traveling into the heart of downtown L.A. To plan your trip, visit Foothill Transit. “Foothill Transit. Going Good Places.
Sign-up for our SGV Connect Newsletter, coming to your inbox on Fridays, and catch past episodes of SGV Connect and #DamienTalks on LibSyn, iTunes, or Overcast.
Damien Newton - As mentioned in the pre show, I'm recording with podcast royalty today.
Alissa Walker - Who is it? Who's gonna be on? Oh, me.
Damien - , the LA Pod is the only podcast that I download and listen to when I run.
Alissa - So you listen to it more than me.
Damien - I almost never listen to this podcast unless it's one that Chris is doing completely on his own. So I understand what you're saying there.
Alissa - It's not that I don't want to listen to it. It's just, , I've already listened to it.
Damien - I relate. No, it's a great podcast. I was saying to you before we started recording that I ran into your co host in the grocery store this morning, and he referred to you as a unicorn. Because you're so much on top of things that when you guys are sending story ideas back and forth, he never finds an article on the story before you do.
Alissa - Oh, I don't know if that's true. You're talking about Mike Bonin, my cohost, because I think Mike is actually pretty good at that stuff too, though.
Damien - Yeah, he's pretty on top of things. When he was my city council member, both as a reporter and as a constituent, I never found him unprepared for a question, even if we were trying to catch him off guard at a neighborhood meeting.
Alissa - Ohhhh, you were out there yelling at him about bike bike lanes. You were yelling. Well, that's what I said to him on the most recent podcast that I felt like he did in 2010 when I went on the John Mulaney show, having people yelling at me about bike lanes. I was like, now I finally understand what it feels like, Mike.
Damien - Yeah, that was wild. They put me on the neighborhood council after they approved that project. So I got in. Everyone that Googled me knew who I was, so I just got to listen to people screaming at me about that. And honestly, I had had no input at all on it. Joe was the Streetsblog editor. I had nothing to do with it.
Moving on,we're talking about the Olympics, because in addition to being the podcast royalty, you're also the editor and writer of Torched, a subscription newsletter that's covering the Olympics and Los Angeles. It is a must read. Torched is where we go if we need to find something out about the Olympics, which is why we're here today, because the Olympics are theoretically and hopefully coming in 2028.
Alissa - Yeah, what will they be like now? We're not sure,
Damien - Right? It's been a long time. It feels like it's been at least four or five decades since it was approved, two or three years ago.
Alissa - More than that. It's been a while, 2017, that's a long time. And think of what, think of what Paris accomplished in that time compared to us.
Damien - Oh, that's a hint. I think about the tone of this podcast.
Some San Gabriel Valley cities are in line to host Olympic events. Some have been announced. Some are, quote, unquote, in the works. Having done some writing that I do for Santa Monica Next, I know that it's not necessarily a slam dunk for a city to host an Olympic Games, just be a smaller part of the game.
So we wanted to talk a little bit about what these cities can be looking forward to, what they might want to be considering on their own, and all sorts of other various issues. If there's any breaking news, you would probably know it ahead of me. That being said, that usually takes us four or five days to get a podcast up, so it probably won't be breaking anymore. But anyway, that's the longest intro we've ever done. Welcome Alissa.
Alissa - Thank you so much. I'm so glad to be here.
Damien - So let's start talking. Last I checked there were two or three San Gabriel Valley cities that were hosting events, shooting and horse events. What can you tell us about what's going on with the San Gabriel Valley and the Olympics?
Alissa - Yeah, and you missed one: cricket. Well, I mean, does the Pasadena Rose Bowl also count as San Gabriel Valley?
Damien - I mean, it's in... We always debate this, because geographically it is, but Chris always argues that it's culturally a very different city than the rest of the SGV.
Alissa - All right. Well, you can, you can try to lump it in, maybe if needed.
Most people know about the Rose Bowl. The Rose Bowl is going to be used as soccer finals. And it's going to be the third time that the Rose Bowl has hosted Olympics events. They hosted events in all three Olympics, which is kind of cool, but the bigger announcements are definitely this last batch of announcements.
The LA 28 did them in phased delivery. First, we got the big Oklahoma City events. Some things are going there.
And then we got kind of a revised version of a few more events. And then this last dump was the rest of the venues, including, I believe, all three announcements that you just talked about. So the ones for your listeners to track will be equestrian events at Santa Anita, cricket at the Fairplex and shotgun shooting in Whittier Narrows.
It's not just about the venues that are being officially hosted by LA 28 as I'm sure , there's all these plans for, like fan festivals and viewing parties and cultural events. There's a whole Cultural Olympiad that goes on top of everything else, plus all the Paralympic events as well. None of those venues have been announced officially.
For example, Pico Rivera has already voted to have a fan festival in their city, just as part of what's going on. Because as you're moving from one venue to another, you might want to stop in Pico Rivera and have a drink or watch whatever sport is on the big screen. So there's going to be a lot more stuff happening. These are just the latest, like official announcements.
Damien - One of the things that we covered with Santa Monica was that the Olympics have sort of a contract they sign with the cities that are doing these events that outline a lot of what you can and can't do. And obviously, Santa Monica is in a different situation, because they're already a tourist hub, and they're so close to LA. They're doing things like planning bus routes to get people from the hotels…but they said no to beach volleyball, so that they didn't have to abide by all the Olympics rules, thinking that they would get a better deal otherwise.
Is this something that smaller cities in the San Gabriel Valley that maybe don't have a large beach right next to them, maybe aren't considered as touristy as Santa Monica should be, should be thinking about? With all the rules they're going to have to follo worth it or is it just having an event going to be good enough to make this a financially good decision for a smaller city?
Alissa - The thing about beach volleyball is it can be played anywhere. In Paris, they played it just in front of the Eiffel Tower, if you remember. The matches weren't anywhere near a beach. It wasn't even done by the Seine. You really could have put it anywhere.
The thing about Santa Monica's specific situation is they hired a firm to do this economic analysis of how they would benefit from the games or if they decided not to host anything. And I think the conclusion they came away with was that it was probably going to be a better deal for them for many reasons. They might have had to close the pier for the entire summer, or a large part of the summer to the public. It just didn't make sense for them. They could make more money by just being Santa Monica for the summer and then hosting some of these other little interventions that I was talking about.
A really big opportunity for them are these things called hospitality houses. In Paris, there were like 30 of them all over the city.
Every country that's bringing athletes there would set up in some kind of public or private building and have these viewing parties or VIP events. But a lot of stuff that was open to the public and you could go hang out.
So they've been approached by a lot of countries to host those. So if you've got a few hospitality houses, and you have your own viewing stuff on the pier and then on the beach…you're pretty much set.
But most of the deals that you're talking about signing are not public. You haven't been able to really go through them.
Long Beach's, for example, is online. It's public. You can look at it and it describes this thing called “Clean Zones,” a square mile around every venue.
That means you're delivering like a blank slate: there's no advertising, there's no signage. There's very specific rules about trash pickup, and all these other things that have to happen. No street vendors, it seems like. You are making a big trade off when you make a deal with LA 28.
But for a place like Long Beach who really wants to be put on the map through this and has, to their credit, done a lot of work to prepare…they have this thing called Elevate 28 which is a huge capital program leading up to 2028. They're doing things such as improving infrastructure, not just for the games, but also fixing sidewalks, adding to their cycle ways, and improving parks. Improving fire stations, libraries, all sorts of great things that'll have legacy impacts afterwards.
Can every city prepare for it that way? Probably not, and maybe not even the city of LA. But for a place like Pomona, to be able to put something at the Fairplex, it's probably not going to be that big of a deal to like the residents of Pomona. The Fairplex is very large and kind of self contained, and does these things all the time.
Damien - I don't have a great grasp of all the geography of where the venues are, but the event centers aren't located in the middle of town like it would have been for Santa Monica.
Alissa - The Zone would have encompassed all of downtown Santa Monica. So…what do you do in that situation?
Damien - It would have been really intrusive. And yeah, the race tracks and the Fairplex…
Alissa - They've got parking lots, just giant parking lots, yeah?
Damien - Which raises a different point, though. There was the promise of the car free Olympics, and I don't know how you do that for the Fairplex.
Alissa - They're having the new station opening right there. It'll be open.
Damien - I'm sorry, yeah, the other one.
Alissa - Yeah, Santa, Anita,
The A line gets pretty close, and they'll do shuttles. You can walk there if you're determined, it's not the worst thing in the world to walk from that station.
For Pomona, it's really exciting. I rode out there for the LA County Fair last year, and got to look at the station. I'm sure your viewers or your listeners are really excited about this too, but you've got a really cool, brand new station that's going to be opening later this year. It'll basically be right across the street. You got to walk through the parking lot, but you also have two different Metro link options as well that aren't that far away either.
Santa Anita…it's not that hard to get there from the A line. They'll have shuttles.
But the other thing that'll be really cool is there's these festival zones around all the venues. So you won't be walking through like a mile of parking lot. You'll probably be walking through a very cool fan experience with other things to do. And they want people to come and hang out and be in the environment, even if they're not necessarily ticket holders to that event. And on days where they don't have the event that day, they'll, it'll still be set up as a cool place to go.
Damien - So this is not going to be as not going to be as, let's say, onerous for the existing residents, as some of the more urban Olympics events venues might be. We've covered the transportation. Is there any other sort of surprises that the cities might be thinking about, or the residents might be bracing themselves for. You're making it sound like a pretty good deal for Pomona and Santa Anita.
Alissa - Yeah. These places are used to doing this scale of events all the time. The one funny one will be the Whittier Narrows shooting range. I guess you could, you can get pretty close. You can get pretty close. They'll be shuttle buses and stuff. But it's not the end of the world.
Damien - Crowds at past Olympics…you have the shooters’ family. I mean, it’s not like it’s just 20 people in a room (with guns!), but it’s also not 20,000 fans.
Alissa - It's not that far from the A Line station. And, like, they will have little shuttles to get people that last like a little bit. I wouldn't worry too much about the traffic impacts.
These others are large venues that are used to absorbing large amounts of visitors. And I don't think it'll be spectacularly different. Some of these things are happening at the same time in different parts of the valley at the same time so that’s a little different.
The one thing I am super concerned about, and the reason that the LA County Fair is being held in the spring, it actually just ended, instead of in the summer, is the heat.
The Fairplex made this big decision to move the fair out of the summer months and into, our May Gray veil of outside my window right now, it's perfectly misty and foggy outside, because they were so worried about not just attendees, but also their workers, having very adverse effects from some of the worst heat and also air quality of those summer months.
So, sticking a bunch of people in the hottest parts of LA County in July and August is not advised. I was thinking that they were going to pivot towards more coastal choices. I understand why they picked the venues that they did, and I think I'm glad overall that they're more transit adjacent, and they're more…they're in LA. They're not in Oklahoma City. But I'm very, very worried about the heat. And you don't hear too much about their plans for that yet?
Damien - Well, I mean, two years, maybe we won't have heat anymore,
Alissa - Yeah, maybe it'll all be reversed,
Damien - They got some time. I hear the government's very interested in reversing climate change.
Alissa - They are very. They're going to take swift action and give money to help cities cope with it. It's their top priority.
Damien - All right. Well, we are. We're starting to push 20 minutes, which for our dual podcast, is about how much we aim for. But you had mentioned in our pre-show that you had fun things to cover. Or are there more fun things to come?
Alissa - One thing that’s exciting is how groups like Active SGV can really get everyone thinking about how to move around differently, not just for the games, but in real life.
The games offer this tremendous opportunity. And of course, we also have the World Cup coming up next summer. Even though all the action is going to be at Sofi, you will see fan festivals and viewing parties too. There's going to be things popping up around the area next summer as well.
You've probably heard much about the car free games. The promises of the car free games have really started to walk those back from the top officials. There's a story in The New York Times that I was quoted in today as we're recording this, and they're basically saying, like, "Oh, we didn't really mean it. We didn't really mean car free."
Damien - Aspirational! I haven't read the article yet. But I always love when government officials tell me "something was aspirational."
Alissa - Yeah, I mean, but it's good, it's a good aspiration. I'm still gonna keep saying it, but now they say “transit first,” but now they're even walking that back even more.
I think, because they're concerned they won't be able to get the 2000 extra buses to be able to move people around. Have things like Park and Ride, similar to what the Hollywood Bowl does, to get people on kind of these regional, dedicated bus networks that can move people from one place to another. But in the meantime, we've got to really be thinking about just the very, very small scale. How do we get from one place to another? And things like E bikes, and things like really good dedicated bike infrastructure.
Active SGV is leading the way out there, really getting this stuff in the ground, but also getting people to think differently about how they move. You have some really cool kind of grassroots ideas that aren't official, things like the festival trail, this 50 mile car free Greenway type concept that's going to connect some of the venues. Now, we've got venues that are a little bit further away. How can you plug into that network from the Arroyo and get all the way to the Fairplex?
People will be wanting to do those types of things, to move around during this time safely, even in the heat of the summer, of course, let's have a lot of hydration zones.
I would really like to challenge everyone to think about alternatives. Can we get something like a month-long e-bike rental for LA County residents to get cars off the road? You don't want there to be traffic, right? So can we start to think of some solutions that shift people's behavior, as we saw in 84. A lot of people rode the bus to get to the Olympic events. It was a huge success. And a lot of people who hadn't taken transit before, took it during those weeks. So I think we could, we could really look to the San Gabriel Valley to be a leader in this.
Damien - Well, that's a great wrap up. Anyone that's been listening to it for a while knows that there's actually a lot of really cool things going on in the San Gabriel Valley. And you outlined a lot of them there too.
When you were talking about E bikes and how the cities have been reacting to them…I'm still going to call it the Gold Line…the Gold Line coming through. But thinking about this major event coming as a way to accelerate that transformation that we've been seeing going on is a very optimistic way to look at it.
Alissa - And we don't need federal money to do it for the most part. So we don't have to rely on those jokers.
Damien - I get the feeling that it's not coming.
Alissa - I don't know why. I didn't know why.
Damien - All right, well, anyway, thank you so much. We've got two more years till the Olympics, so we might try to check in with you again on this podcast. We generally don't do sports, but here we are.
Alissa - You've actually got three so don't worry, three years. (Damien: Oh, yeah, right, it's 2025) but let's pretend just so we can get all this stuff done last year you're going to be very busy.
Damien - You'll be on CNN and NBC. Where were you last week?
Alissa - Netflix, Netflix.
Damien - Thank you so much for spending time with us today, and we always look forward to getting to see you. And I'm gonna use the picture of you with “smart” written over your head that other Streetsblogs plugged in.
Alissa - Perfect. All right, thank you. Applause.
