The Megaevents are Coming

We spoke with Alissa Walker, the editor of Torched, on how Los Angeles is prepping.

Remarkably, Los Angeles, a city infamous for its gridlock traffic, limited public transit, and a current budget deficit, is in the midst of preparing to host the 2026 World Cup, the 2027 Super Bowl, and, most notably, the 2028 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The city is pitching the events as great for tourism, great for the economy, great for the city. And local infrastructure projects have been accelerated in preparation — including rail and bus line expansions, an airport revamp, and the downtown convention center renovation. But, as our guest today might argue, many of these projects were already planned or desperately needed long before these megaevents were announced — and questions remain about whether investments made will actually serve residents after the cameras leave.

We spoke with Alissa Walker, LA-based journalist and creator of Torched, about the civic investments and policy decisions underway in preparation for the upcoming megaevents and what it all means for the locals.

This interview was conducted by Noelle Forougi for franknews, and condensed for clarity. You can also listen to the audio version of this interview here, at frankradio. Help keep frank independent, ad-free, and for everyone, by subscribing below.

Do you mind starting by introducing yourself?

I’m a journalist who’s been here for 25 years, and I’ve covered basically anything that you can imagine. Right now I’m writing a newsletter called Torched, which is about the policy decisions and infrastructural goals of LA’s megaevent era – which is kicking off, really, with the World Cup, Super Bowl, Olympics and Paralympics.

I talk about how the city is preparing, and also not preparing for these major changes. It’s almost like another industry they’re trying to build from the inside out – to make us the megaevent capital of the world.

The industry being the megaevent?

Yeah, being producing and hosting these megaevents. So far, I’m not sure we’re doing a good job.

What stands to be gained and what stands to be lost for a city in a moment like this? There was so much PR around the no cars Olympics, maybe a year or so ago. As an outsider, it felt like, “Oh, wait great momentum for LA to make these changes to public infrastructure and all these things.” So, I’m just curious to hear you speak about what’s possible and what can go wrong.

Well, that’s a perfect example.

We are building more transit than anywhere else in North America. Our investments are unprecedented, even if people might not believe that’s happening, LA is in the midst of this boom. It’s not really because of any megaevents, but it’s because we chose to tax ourselves and pay for all these things and have a very visionary metro agency that has done long range planning for how we can really start to get out of our cars.

And what’s interesting about that legacy is that a lot of it was built upon ‘84. People were so worried about traffic – specifically that athletes would get stuck in it – so they came up with all these ways to get people thinking differently about how they moved around the city. It was things like carpooling or even staggering the start of your work time. At the port, logistics were completely transformed—they were doing a lot of deliveries overnight, for example. People were moved around to all the venues on buses: you bought a ticket, then used it to hop on shuttles that took you where you needed to go. It all worked really, really well. All that stuff adds up to a lot of changes that we could have and should have kept after the games, but we chose not to.

Looking back on that, we know what we’re capable of, what we can do. But it does seem like a struggle to apply that to everyday life when it comes to the very simple things we need a lot of investment in. We need bus lanes on the street. We need bike lanes on the street. We need wider sidewalks. We need trees – we don’t have any shade. It’s very, very hot to walk from one place to another. We still have a really big problem with traffic deaths and reckless and dangerous driving that kills.

So that created such a great opportunity for us, but as for how it will actually unfold and what we’ll be left with afterwards, you have to get back to me in 2029.

Yeah, totally. That is an interesting point about how culturally we sometimes get these moments where we see what’s possible, but often lack will to sustain it. Does the question afterwards become whether the city think these things are worth continuing to pay for? Or what is the calculation going on there?

Well, we’re not paying for any of the Olympics and Paralympics stuff. LA 28 is a private nonprofit, they’re raising over $7 billion.

The big sell to us was that no taxpayer money would be used, but we are now investing in things like our convention center. Also at the airport – we’re making some good investments, but also some not as good investments. We have a people mover that’s severely delayed. And we’re still building wider roads to get into the airport itself for cars, which is contradictory. But all that is being paid for by our money.

And how does the fact that LA is in a budget deficit affecting any changes that are possible to make within the city right?

Yeah. I mean, we knew this was coming, and we made a lot of irresponsible budget decisions to the point where city services are so negatively impacted we can’t complete basic requests in a reasonable timeframe – streetlights, potholes, sidewalk repair, tree planting, 311 requests. These are all things that contribute to daily quality of life, but are also really important when a ton of visitors are supposed to be coming. So the big conflict right now is LA 28 and the city have to come to an agreement on who’s paying for what city services in 2028.

To back up a little bit, how did we get here, how did LA go broke and how do we get out of it?

Well, the big reforms with charter reform, I think, would solve a lot of those problems. Our charter hasn’t really been changed in 100 years. We still have the same number of council members that we have since 1924, which is 15, which is unreasonable by any measure.

Another big complaint that’s come up through charter reform, and something many people are trying to fix, is that we don’t have a capital infrastructure plan. We only budget one year at a time. Imagine any business, or any nonprofit or for-profit agency, planning just one year ahead and without a list of capital improvements to be made. How could you decide which to prioritize, and why? Should priorities be based on safety, liability, or climate reasons?

And then there’s obviously other issues when it comes to entire departments that have more money than certain other departments that aren’t really held to the same standards. I’m talking about the police department and their spending. They don’t have to rationalize their use of funds, while city forestry, for example, is struggling to get trees in the ground and cared for, and losing staff positions even as we give more and more money to the police department.

Yeah, on top of it all, it just feels sort of annoying. Like, give us trees! Trees feel like a thing everyone wants and that a city should be able to provide.

Right, and trees can actually solve a lot of problems when you look at crime. Well-tended public spaces, parks or rec centers or sports fields, these are things that actually do make a difference, not just for quality of life, but for keeping families safe.

But our parks department is basically broke at this point because we had a funding measure that is sunsetting this year. We will have to go to voters and ask them to vote for a Nov 2026 ballot measure to make sure that we have enough money to address over $2 billion in deferred maintenance for our parks. And that’s really just the beginning. To be able to operate and fully fund and fully maintain our parks, it’s many more billions of dollars that are needed.

Have you seen any data on how that lagging maintenance is impacting use of the parks themselves?

That’s the whole parks needs assessment that I just wrote about, that was done, that was completed. They have so many studies on why people drive to different parks that aren’t in the city of LA, or certain parks get overused – the ones that are taken care of, they get trampled by so many more people.

And when I hear that, and then I hear about the city’s 2.6 billion convention center expansion… How are we getting that money? Is that through the LA28 funds?

No, there’s no LA28 money coming for that.

That is a very expensive bond process, basically. So we’re borrowing money, and the debt service on that alone is $100 million a year. So if you think about it, we’re basically going to pay $100 million a year for 30 years. I believe the last renovation of the convention center was in the 90s. So, we just stopped paying for that, and now we’re just going to start paying it again.

The problem with the convention center expansion is that large conventions don’t really exist anymore. We could lure some here, but it’s never going to be like it was before. And even with our expansion, we’re still nowhere close to major cities like Las Vegas.

We’re caught in this thinking of, “Oh, if we just invest in this, we’ll be able to bring back these conventions and have all this great economic impact and downtown can be this thriving center for tourism.” But it might not pan out that way. We’re pouring all this money into just one project in a city where $100 million a year could go a long way. If you wanted to put that money into starting to fix the sidewalks, for example, that can end up saving us money in the long run.

Yeah, I think it was in your Frank Gehry piece, you wrote: “LA has no shortage of places to go now. We need places to be.” This feels like a really clear articulation of that point – a gamble on this convention center that might attract some people for some major events, but there are plenty of others who, day in and day out, would love to feel comfortable at their local park. It just feels like a weird decision-making orientation to me.

I like that line! I think it goes back to what I said at the top about trying to build a megaevent industry. I never really thought about megaevents or large events being an industry, right? It just seems like something all cities do – they host things, they have conventions, whatever. But LA is saying it wants to be really serious about this one thing.

Imagine putting all of that into one project in one place and just being like, “If we don’t do this, then the whole city is screwed.” And I’m just not sure that’s very wise for something like a convention center.

Yeah. I mean, I wouldn’t think so either. I guess to end on a hopeful…

<Laughs> Sorry.

No, no. I mean…. even just knowledge is helpful. Some of these things feel so obfuscated and confusing. When I hear you lay it out, changes feels more tangible.

But, I am curious to hear what you’re excited about or hopeful about…

Yeah, I think what we’re seeing that has been so cool is a lot of these grassroot organizing efforts have really tried to pull apart, what’s wrong here? And your question earlier was so good. Why are we broke? How did we get here? Why do we only have 15 council members when New York and Chicago have over 50?

We have to really think carefully about building the city that we want for the next 100 years. Everything right now is being discussed in the context of these events, as we are put on the world stage. But what we really need to think about is: how do our communities function now? How can they work better? We can absorb these big events. We can make a bunch of money. We can get people excited about what’s going on here. But then when the visitors are gone, what are we doing to take care of each other and make sure that we have the city that we want?