Courtney Stewart/Daily Bruin U.S. Olympic officials are
greeted by Joe and Josephine Bruin as they get off a bus in front
of the Los Angeles Tennis Center on Friday.
By Will Whitehorn
Daily Bruin Reporter
Members of the United States Olympic Committee visited UCLA last
week, one of the final stops in an eight-city tour of prospective
U.S. host candidates for the 2012 Olympic Games.
The tour, which began June 10 in Washington, D.C., concluded
Saturday after a tour of sports facilities in Long Beach. The
committee also visited potential suitor cities Baltimore, Dallas,
Houston, Cincinnati, Tampa, New York and San Francisco before
concluding its tour in Los Angeles.
The three-day tour of L.A. included stops on campus at the L.A.
Tennis Center, which would be the primary site for Olympic tennis,
and Pauley Pavilion, the gymnastics venue in 1984 and the alternate
site for volleyball matches after the Great Western Forum.
The committee also visited De Neve and Rieber dorm facilities.
Along with USC’s housing, UCLA dorms may serve as the Olympic
Village.
“I think we have good housing to offer, by Olympic
standards,” said David Simon, president of the Los Angeles
Olympic Bid Committee, also known as LA2012.
“Unless there’s a city that’s planning to
build a self-contained village, which is not cost-effective or
practical, this is a good arrangement. The housing that is on the
campus is pretty much within a half-mile radius (of the
venues).” Simon said.
John C. Argue, chair of LA2012, said he’d love to see UCLA
be part of the Olympics again.
“You’ve got a lot of improvements to the athletic
facilities, and in addition, (it would be) a lot of fun showcasing
UCLA to the world,” he said.
Los Angeles, which hosted the Olympics in 1932 and 1984 and
seeks to become the first three-time host of the games, has a
distinct economic advantage on their side in trying to re-acquire
the event, according to Carol Head, a consultant to LA2012.
“There has not been a whole lot of Olympic Games that have
turned a profit and returned money to the host city,” Head
said, adding that there have only been three games when that did
occur.
 Daily Bruin File Photo Athletes practice in Pauley
Pavilion, the site of the 1984 Olympic gymnastics competition, the
last time the games were held in L.A. “In 1984, L.A. returned
over $200 million to the city,” she said. “We have a
proven track record which those other cities, strong as they may
be, don’t have.”
On Aug. 23, the committee surveyed several sites in Orange
County, including Anaheim’s Arrowhead Pond Arena, possible
home for basketball, and Edison Field, where softball would be
held. The next day, the committee visited Staples Center, Los
Angeles Coliseum and USC.
The Los Angeles offer lags behind several of the other
cities’ offers in terms of financial and political support
from the city, said Rich Perelman, technical director of LA2012 and
author of the L.A. bid.
But this lack of support is not necessarily a negative
reflection of the bid, Perelman said.
“The city of Los Angeles, based on the way we do things
here, is not going to guarantee the games, just as they did not in
1984,” he said.
Perelman said that while other cities have city or state backing
for any deficits or liabilities that may occur, L.A. would depend
on private corporations and individuals to finance the games.
Jan Fambro, the committee’s media contact, said Los
Angeles hasn’t spent much money because most of its venues
are already built.
“When (other cities) propose a venue, they’ve got to
give architectural renderings, they’ve got to do models,
they’ve got to pay an architect, and that’s all very
expensive. That really raised the cost of some of the (other)
bids,” Fambro said.
The list of candidates for the games is scheduled to be cut to
three of four cities by December, with the official decision made
next fall.
The U.S. entry will then compete against the international
entries until fall 2005, when the International Olympic Committee
will make its ultimate selection.