L.A. tosses $4.5 billion 2024 Olympic play while Toronto stays quiet
Those expecting to throw the name in Toronto to the ring for 2024 Summer Games finally have a La playbook to analyze.
Los Angeles’ mayor has summarized how he intends to win the 2024 Summer Olympic Games with a $4.5-billion play, while Mayor John Tory stays quiet on whether Toronto will compete for sponsor city standing.
The comprehensive L.A. strategy released Tuesday both sets the stage for a possible Toronto bid and places the bar for any guarantees city, provincial and national leaders may be willing to make.
After working behind the scenes to ensure support, L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti’s strategy contains both a renovated $800 million, 80,000-seat arena and a $1 billion athlete’s village.
Meanwhile, Tory has been working to answer questions in regards to a possible Toronto bid before choosing whether to sign a letter of interest, due Sept. 15.
On Tuesday, the mayor’s office said Tory isn’t yet able to create that call.
“We are actually in the procedure for examining the way the Games went, gathering info on the Olympic bid procedure and consulting members of council, the business community, the people and both levels of government.”
While Toronto will now be months on the other side of the task that’s gone into an L.A. bid if the city chooses to compete, personal digital assistants will also have the advantage of scrutinizing the American rival’s assurances before making their own.
The town also intends to turn a soccer stadium that was new, planned for completion into a temporary, 20,000-seat aquatics center at an added price of $100 million.
Get into a Toronto outlook, those site prices alone are simply above the $2.6 billion needed to finance all the essential state-of-good-repair prices for Toronto Community Housing over the next 10 years.
And Toronto, should it choose to compete, would be looking to build a fresh arena that is long-term or temporary.
During an early-2000s play for the 2008 Summer Games, Toronto tossed a new, seat – 100,000 arena and an athlete’s village in the Port Lands, which is still considered still be the table for an 2024 play. Those prices in present dollars are not clear.
Those looking at the readiness to offer in Toronto have said it’s essential that several of the Pan Am sites that were recently built can be repurposed, including a $56-million velodrome in Milton and a $205-million aquatics center in Scarborough. Those sites will be a 30- to 50-minute drive in the Port Lands.
The strategy also encourages a more than 14-kilometre metro line extension, increased railroad system with more than 30 stations that are new and almost 200 kilometres of new HOV lanes to be constructed ahead of the Games, in the following ten years.
Toronto transit, meanwhile, is definitely delayed by politics at city council — that’s still without definite strategies to get a less than 10-kilometre Scarborough metro or a downtown help line, as strategies for Tory’s 22-stop, heavy-railway SmartTrack pitch stay in preliminary planning phases, without any details yet on provincial strategies for high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes.
While discussions between Toronto as well as other levels of government continue behind the scenes, using a bid committee yet to emerge, L.A.’s Garcetti is encouraging widespread cooperation.
“The political leaders of Town, County and Area stands in lockstep support of bringing the 2024 Games to La,” the bid novel reads.
For Toronto’s 2008 bid and the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, provincial authorities assumed responsibility.
It is not known what the government of obligation Premier Kathleen Wynne is prepared to generate. A letter of interest, step one, must be signed solely by Tory to get the procedure formally underway.
