The $360 million effort to turn Exposition Park’s largest parking lots into green space won’t be completed in time for the 2028 Olympics.
State leaders announced the multi-million dollar investment into the park in 2024, planning to prep the park for an Olympic close-up by replacing the warren of asphalt lots on Expo Park’s southern edge with an underground lot and green park land.
Now park officials say the 6-acre project now won’t break ground until 2028, after the Olympic torch is extinguished.
Expo Park and the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum will be a centerpiece of L.A.’s Olympic image in the summer of 2028. But for residents of the surrounding South L.A. neighborhoods, the park and its facilities help fill a serious need for recreation and green space.
Andrea Ambriz, general manager of the state-run park, said the park hasn’t had an investment of this kind since the 1984 Olympic Games, but that the inspiration and funding for the park project go beyond the 2028 games.
“Whatever we do now is intended in full to support the community. It’s not just for these games,” Ambriz said.
Ambriz said park officials hit pause on project planning after realizing it would not be completed before the Olympics.
State leaders are still angling to get at least some of the park freshened up in time for the Olympics, with officials announcing in January that Gov. Gavin Newsom planned to earmark $96.5 million in proposed funds for renovations in the park.
The funding, according to the governor’s proposed budget, will be used for “critical deferred maintenance” to meet code compliance and accessibility requirements.
Ambriz said the lion’s share of the money will go to rehabbing roadways, sidewalks and ramps throughout the park to ensure safe pedestrian and vehicle access.
“This is a part of what we know we need,” Ambriz said. “It is a really significant downpayment from the state.”
How will the park affect the neighborhood?
John Noyola is a 42-year resident of the Exposition Park neighborhood who sits on the North Area Neighborhood Development Council. For him, any major overhaul of the park still feels like an abstract concept.
He’s seen news reports about the proposed changes, but heard little more.
“It hasn’t really affected us or the community,” Noyola said.
The 150-year-old Expo Park has one of the densest collections of cultural institutions in Los Angeles, said Esther Margulies, a professor of landscape architecture just across the street from the park at USC.
Four museums, including the under-construction Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, will soon share the park with the BMO Stadium and the Coliseum.
Margulies said Grand Park, in downtown Los Angeles, has begun to fill a role as a “living room for the city” in recent years, but that Expo Park is falling short of its potential.
“People should see Expo Park as a place to begin their journey of visiting Southern California and Los Angeles,” Margulies said. “This is where you should come and there should be this energy of, like, ‘Wow!’”
Changing Expo Park, Margulies said, starts with building a space that serves its community.
In its current design, the park’s best-kept green spaces sit behind the fences of its museums, Margulies said, and large asphalt expanses act as heat sinks. Major events often come at the community’s expense.
“There’s tailgating, day drinking in the park,” Margulies said. “People don’t come to the park on those days.”
Noyola, the Expo Park resident, said his family and others in the community frequent the park recreation center, pools and fields near the intersection of Vermont Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. He worries that construction could block parking or other access to the park spaces that are available.
He remains wary of the unintended consequences of a park remodel, especially after watching traffic spike in Inglewood when SoFi Stadium and the Intuit Dome were built.
“It would be nice,” Noyola said of the remodel. “Looking at the greater vision of LA 28, it’s needed. But at what cost?”
