LA City Council Eases Building Process For 'No-Build' Olympics

The Los Angeles City Council voted Tuesday to ease the process for facilities that may need to be built for the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games. 

The ordinance would allow some temporary projects deemed necessary for the Games to skip zoning and city approval and allow some permanent projects to be exempted from zoning regulations, if the projects are individually approved by the council.

What exactly could be built under the new guidelines remains unclear. The Games have been touted as a "no-build" Olympics, but the ordinance seems to pave the way for construction. 

"Many elements and activities of the 2028 Games will require building and developments, including but not limited to the buildout or improvements to temporary and permanent venues, training facilities, security perimeters, broadcast and media centers, transit infrastructure, live sites and fan zones, and associated structures," Councilmember Traci Park wrote in a motion in support of the action.

An amendment from Councilmember Nithya Raman ensured that the planning department would have to create clear criteria that temporary projects would need to meet to be made permanent following the events. 

The ordinance has been in the works for about a year, and not all types of projects qualify.

Most of the concerns voiced by council members revolved around the potential for temporary signage, especially digital signs, to go up and then become permanent.

The amended ordinance would also provide for the creation of quarterly reports of applications for temporary projects by district so that council members could review them and avoid being surprised by new structures cropping up in their jurisdictions. The timeline for approvals for these projects would be 14 days. 

“It puts the onus on us to get ourselves organized and really make it easy for people to put up these structures and everything that's going to need to go into the Games,” Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky said. 

LA28, the organization orchestrating the event in Los Angeles, hired Sandy Throop, a former asset manager at Barings, as its head of real estate acquisitions.

His LinkedIn profile lists among his duties leading "end-to-end real estate strategy across the entire 2028 LA Olympic & Paralympic Games footprint, driving acquisition, leasing, and activation plans," as well as negotiating and closing "complex multi-site lease agreements."

Representatives for LA28 and Throop haven't responded to multiple requests for comment. 

The Olympics and the potential costs of the Games that might fall on LA taxpayers are still being debated as the city and LA28 hammer out an agreement that will determine how much the “no-cost” Olympics will actually cost the public.

The agreement had an October 2025 deadline to be finalized, but discussions are ongoing, according to Torched LA, a mega-events-focused publication. The Games are slated to come to venues in Los Angeles and surrounding cities in July 2028.

"Los Angeles faces multiple fiscal hazards that many current leaders negotiating this and other Olympics agreements, will not be around to face," civil rights attorney Connie Rice wrote in a letter to Mayor Karen Bass and other city leaders last fall. "The City cannot afford an additional $1.5 billion hit in 2028 because city officials inadequately protected taxpayers in 2025."

The city is projecting a $1B budget shortfall, Olympics costs notwithstanding.