When in 1984 Los Angeles hosted the Olympic Summer Games, Sue Steinberg lived in Van Nuys and remembered her neighbors renting out their homes to visitors from around the world.
Tourists and sports teams flocked to the Rose Bowl and Memorial Coliseum for opening and closing ceremonies. Packed buses whisked passengers to stadiums, pools and sports venues.
“It was a wonderful experience,” said Steinberg who has lived in Van Nuys for nearly 40 years. “The city was beautiful, with the banners all up and down the streets. They cleaned up the city. People were pleasantly surprised.”
But while Los Angeles was enjoying the global spotlight, not a single venue in the San Fernando Valley was chosen to host 1984 Olympics events.
Steinberg is among residents who today feel divided over the upcoming LA 2028 Summer Olympics, and are asking whether the Valley should host Olympics sports events this time.
An artist’s rendering of the proposed Olympic Equestrian jumping venue, part of the Valley Sports Park complex. (Photo courtesy of LA 2028)
The discussion is not new. In the 1980s, organizers who proposed four events, including rowing and track-cycling in the Sepulveda Basin conveniently near the 405 and 101 freeways, ran into strong opposition from residents and environmentalists.
Emotions escalated, and Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee President Peter Ueberroth, who lived in Encino, said someone threw poisoned meat onto his lawn. His two dogs ate the meat and died. Ueberroth said the incident happened after a rally held by Valley activists who had publicly shared the home addresses of Ueberroth and Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley.
“Maybe it was a coincidence, but within an hour, somebody threw arsenic-laced meat over my fence,” Ueberroth told the Daily News years later.
Opposition to Olympics events in the Sepulveda Basin halted the proposals, with residents and environmentalists citing concerns over traffic, pollution and construction.
Now, decades later, it seems that public opinion might be shifting.
A survey conducted in July by the office of Congressman Brad Sherman, whose 32nd Congressional District stretches from San Fernando Valley to the Simi Hills in Ventura County, got 342 responses, about 64% of which supported bringing Olympics events to the Valley and 20% opposed. Another survey by Sherman’s office in September found that of 410 responses about 47% backed hosting the Games in the Valley and 14% were opposed.
Sue Steinberg at Lake Balboa Wednesday, September 20, 2023. Steinberg experienced the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles and looks forward to the 2028 games being held here. (Photo by David Crane, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)
The LA28 Olympic website recently posted renderings of a temporary sports park in the Sepulveda Basin Recreation Area that would host equestrian, shooting, and canoe events during the games. The complete list of events hosted in L.A. has not been issued, according to a spokeswoman with the Los Angeles Bureau of Engineering.
There’s a difference, Steinberg said, between hosting the Olympics in 1984 and 2028.
“There’s one word that makes everybody nervous and that’s ‘traffic,’” she said.
Van Nuys Airport has been witnessing an increase in private jets after the Santa Monica Airport reduced jet traffic and charter operations in 2017. Steinberg is worried that the Games will make the air congestion even worse.
“The main problem is traffic in the air and on the ground,” she said. “This is something they really have to address.”
Melanie Winter, director of the non-profit The River Project, has since the 1990s been advocating for better management of watershed lands and revitalization of rivers.
She feels the Valley’s open spaces have not been given enough attention and investment, “But then suddenly, ‘Oh, but the Olympics, let’s throw a lot of money at it.’ That’s going to be for people who don’t live here and it’s going to be for short-term benefits.”
Winter says Valley communities have been asking for investments in the Sepulveda Basin “for a long, long time and a list is long: more staffing, more oversight, fixing things. … (But) you spend decades trying to attract funds to your community for your cherished recreation area, and you don’t see those funds coming to the Valley.”
Encino resident Patricia Bates said she wasn’t against the city hosting the Olympics in the Sepulveda Basin as long as organizers leave the wildlife alone.
“What I would not want to see happen is a bunch of resources thrown doing something cosmetic that’s not going to provide lasting benefit, not just for wildlife, but for people,” she said.
An artist’s rendering of the proposed venue for Olympic dressage competition, part of the Valley Sports Park. The Santa Monica mountains would serve as the backdrop. (Photo courtesy of LA 2028)
Soon after Eric Garcetti was sworn in as Los Angeles mayor in 2017, Stuart Waldman, president of the Valley Industry Commerce Association, sent a letter urging Garcetti to push for the Olympics to come to the region.
“We didn’t have a lot of opposition,” said Waldman, who served on the LA 2028 Olympic Bid Committee Board. “Every person we ever talked to was supportive of having the Olympics and having the Olympics in the Valley.”
He added that “the Sepulveda Basin is an area that’s been talked about to host some of the games and some of the events and I’m definitely hopeful that that will happen.”
Public opinion has shifted toward bringing Olympics events to the Valley, Waldman said, because the Valley’s demographics have changed.
“We are a majority-minority community,” he said. “We are welcoming to people and we’ve grown considerably. And I think that the people who live in the Valley now understand that bringing the world into the Valley is beneficial for all of us.”