L.A. Olympic Bid Might Put Us on the Right Track

The list of things that traditionally certify a city as “major league” in sports is short: a big-league baseball or football franchise.

But what does it take to be “world class”? There the options boil down to one thing: hosting the Olympics.

“And I think we have a good chance,” Barry Sanders told me.

This Barry Sanders (not to be confused with the ex-Detroit Lion running back) is chairman of the Southern California Committee for the Olympic Games, which earlier this month

announced that Los Angeles intends to bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics. The announcement evoked sunny memories of the 1984 Los Angeles Games, a huge financial success and a boost for regional self-esteem. The suggestion was that a new bid could recapture the old glow.

Sanders is a lean, energetic man whose work attire runs to bow ties and whose enthusiasm is palpable. His first act upon greeting me at his downtown law office was to affix an “LA 2016” pin, bearing silhouettes of palm trees, to my lapel. Then he conceded that the road to a successful bid was long. The U.S. Olympic Committee first has to decide whether to field any candidate; if it does, it must anoint an official choice by 2007. A two-year slugfest among cities all over the world will follow. L.A.’s last bid, for the 2012 Games, lost in the domestic round to New York, which ultimately lost to London.

Caveats dispensed with, Sanders gets to the nub of L.A.’s appeal as an Olympic host: Almost all the necessary venues already exist, down to a velodrome for bicycle racing. Most have been built since 1984.

This is a plus because the Games’ reputation as a deficit-breeding monster stems from the tendency of host cities to build facilities from scratch. This leads to tight construction deadlines, cost overruns, cavernously underutilized arenas after the circus leaves town and red ink. The hangover in Athens from the 2004 Games is $13 billion.

That still leaves the question of what the Games can offer L.A.

Southern California’s difficult relationship with the National Football League shows that this region already regards itself as sufficiently major league to be unmoved by the chance to host big-time sports at our own expense. Sanders believes the Olympics may be the only event that can penetrate such jadedness. Moreover, he contends that even the experience of bidding for the Games can help forge a community spirit.

“This town needs a first-tier event to bring people together,” he told me. “I do not consider the Olympics a panacea for all problems, but they’re a big net plus, and they give us the opportunity to build other plusses upon them.”

That said, it’s worth considering the legacy of the 1984 Games. For a time, L.A. basked in the glory of their success. The Games came off like clockwork and raked in a $232.5-million surplus. Of that, $94 million was donated to the Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles, which continues to support youth sports programs throughout Southern California.

But only eight years later came the 1992 riots, which suggested that a sizable portion of the populace had felt excluded from the glow. Afflicted by economic setbacks, a major earthquake, mudslides and fires, Los Angeles arguably has become more insecure and fragmented over time, not less. The spirit of the Games and the region’s self-image as the forward-looking metropolis of the 21st century, if it ever existed in reality, seems now to be a quaint, sepia-toned memory.

Meanwhile, the economics of the Games have changed -- due largely to the triumph of LA 1984 itself. In that bygone era, paid sponsorships and even television rights were generally within the jurisdiction of the local organizing committee. Under the leadership of Peter Ueberroth (currently chairman of the U.S. Olympic Committee), the L.A. committee squeezed the sponsorship concept until it squealed.

The International Olympic Committee, thus awakened to the financial potential of corporate branding, now makes the deals for broadcast rights and all major sponsorships. Then it dictates how much of the pot the locals will receive. So it’s unlikely that a local Olympic committee will ever again reap the profit that Los Angeles pocketed.

Sanders maintains that the next L.A. Games, like the last, can be staged without dipping into the public purse, although he also acknowledges that a privately sponsored Olympics is “a double-edged sword.” The public regards the pecuniary motives of private enterprises involved in public events with suspicion; it isn’t lost on anybody that one vice chairman of Sanders’ committee is Timothy Leiweke, the chief executive of Anschutz Entertainment Group, which developed the Staples and Home Depot centers, venues that would presumably host numerous events at an L.A. Olympics. (Not, as they say, that there’s anything wrong with that.)

Perhaps it would be worthwhile to cut Sanders and his committee some slack. A botched Olympics can saddle a community with decades of debt, but a successful one can mark a turning point. The run-up to the 1984 Olympics included such long-overdue public improvements as the modernization of LAX. The dithering ever since then over the next round of airport improvements may reflect the absence of a similar event-driven deadline.

Would it be terrible if the prospect of another Olympics gave voters and public officials the pretext they needed to get this work done, along with so much else that has been languishing on various public agendas? Who knows -- maybe a concerted, communal run at the 2016 Olympics would help turn Los Angeles into the city of the 21st century at last.

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Golden State appears every Monday and Thursday. You can reach Michael Hiltzik at golden.state@latimes.com and read his previous columns at latimes.com/hiltzik.