by Mark McDermott
In a little less than three years, Los Angeles will be at the epicenter of the world’s attention as the Games of the XXXIV Olympiad descend upon the city and the region. Fifteen thousand athletes will compete in LA28, as the Olympics are being called, and millions of visitors are expected in Los Angeles and surrounding areas. Manhattan Beach will be among those cities.
The City Council last week began preparing for both the Olympics and next year’s FIFA World Cup, which, though not as large as LA28, will still impact Manhattan Beach. City staff, led by Civic Engagement Manager Alexandria Latragna, presented a report to Council that included several options, including hiring a consultant to examine public safety implications of the events, and raised the possibility of allowing short-term rentals outside of the City’s coastal zone, which would require a temporary lift of the short-term rental ban, extended hours for local businesses, and possibly live “watch parties” in Manhattan Beach.
Latranga said these Olympics are expected to be far bigger than the last LA Olympics, in 1984.
“There’s anticipated 10 to 15 million tickets sold across 800 events, and there’s 3 million unique attendees to those games, as well as an $18 billion economic output,” Latranga said. “And I just wanted to also provide a little bit of perspective, because LA has been here before in 1984, and there were a mere 5 million tickets sold for those games. In comparison, we’re anticipating three times that amount being sold for the 2028 games. Also in 1984 there were 221 events and 6,800 athletes. There was only one event in Inglewood, for basketball at the Forum. In 2028 there’s going to be 800 events with 15,000 athletes. So it’s a much bigger scale. In addition, there’s been a 20 percent population increase, on average, in LA County…The Olympics is the equivalent of holding Seven Super Bowls per day for 16 days. These are big events.”
The Olympics will take place July 16 to 30 in 2028, and will be followed by the LA28 Paralympic Games from August 15 to 27, which is estimated to have the impact of two Super Bowls per day for 12 days. The 2026 FIFA World Cup will feature eight matches, beginning with the U.S. Men’s team’s opening match on June 12, and ending on July 10 with a quarterfinal match.
Many of the venues will be close to Manhattan Beach, and of course the nearby airport will be a locus of activity. Latranga displayed a map that showed the proximity of events.
“LAX is four miles from here, and we are seven miles from the Intuit and SoFi Stadiums, where many Paralympic and Olympic games will be played, as well as the FIFA World Cup,” Latranga said. “And then we are 14 miles from the Olympic Village and less than 20 miles from many of the other game venues. This map illustrates why preparation really matters to us. These events will impact Manhattan Beach, whether we plan for them or not.”
Latranga said that the City’s Olympics/FIFA World Cup Subcommittee, which includes department heads and councilpersons Amy Howorth and Nina Tarnay, arrived at three main objectives regarding the oncoming events: project, prepare, and participate.
“All of our conversations and our discussions have revolved around these three pillars,” she said. “For us it’s to protect our residents and our visitors, prepare our community and infrastructure, and participate in these historic moments.”
The discussion of protection mainly involved public safety, traffic, and parking, and was the least contentious of the objectives. The council unanimously agreed staff should commence with an assessment, likely with assistance from an outside consultant.
“Obviously in emergency preparedness, early preparation is critical, and 2026 is approaching very quickly,” Latranga said. “Within any sort of assessment, we would want to identify regional coordination and ways to communicate effectively with our regional partners. Hiring a consultant for that could help us get to that place, and creating updated evacuation and traffic management procedures would also be part of those recommendations and key initiatives.”
Preparation involved some policy decisions that were less agreed upon, particularly the possibilities of temporarily lifting the short-term rental ban and extending business hours. Latranga told the council that last year, in the Coastal Zone (where the City was legally forced to lift its ban), 175 licensed short-term rentals generated $1.5 million in transit occupancy taxes. She said staff could investigate lifting the ban in the rest of the city and possibly limiting the number of short-term rentals allowable.
“So this recommendation would really just be for us to explore it further and come back with a full look at this ordinance and the potential for this,” she said. “Of course, if we were to expand it, the revenue could help fund event related city services — public safety, sanitation and traffic or even code enforcement.”
A council majority — Mayor Pro Tem Joe Franklin, Councilperson Steve Charelian, and Mayor David Lesser — expressed skepticism that allowing more short-term rentals would be acceptable to the community. Each recalled the vehemence with which the community rose up against STRs eight years ago, which resulted in the City’s ban, which was lifted in the coastal zone (west of Valley Drive) only after the City repeatedly lost court battles and was found in violation of the Coastal Act.
“I am extremely cautious with this item, because of living through what we did with the community on this topic,” Charelian said. “Again, this goes back to protecting the community. You’re already gonna see a spike in [STR] revenue in the coastal zone…. I appreciate the fact that we’re helping them monetize. But this is bigger than that, right? It’s quality of life.”
Lesser suggested that rather than exploring the possibility of temporarily lifting the ban, the Council first conduct a survey of the community.
“We want to understand how we would actually do it, but having also lived through some of those early votes where we prohibited short term rounds, I remember many members of the community being really quite upset,” he said. “I want to be mindful of that….So I would suggest instead that we include this in some sort of survey.”
Howorth noted that she had vociferously opposed short-term rentals when the issue first arose in the city a decade ago, and still opposes them. But she suggested that it’s worth at least exploring if a temporary lift of the ban might make sense.
“The point is, there are already, according to someone on the Olympic Committee, 9,000 hotel nights in Manhattan Beach already booked for the hotels that we have, starting a couple weeks before and going all the way through the Paralympics,” she said. “It’s a men’s basketball team, but it’s also the LA 28 committee, it’s also sponsors, it’s other corporations, it’s family members, it’s media, it’s executives that have already booked…I’m really against allowing short term rentals all the time. I really am against that. But I also want our residents to have an opportunity to monetize their assets, to get out of town, and for the City to recoup some of that TOT and also control and enforce [short-term rental regulations].”
“I have neighbors who are very opposed to short rentals. I appreciate my neighborhood, and I appreciate having people who live in the neighborhood versus a rotation of people coming in and out. So I’m mindful of that, but I also know that this isn’t going to be normal times, and I want to make sure that we capture what our residents want for this particular occasion…And then also to make sure that we’re poised to capture the funds that could potentially be coming in to help pay for services.”
She agreed with Lesser’s idea that a survey of residents should occur before any other steps are taken.
“What I’m imploring is that we give direction to do a survey about short term rentals,” she said. “That we don’t dismiss it out of hand.”
Tarnay said that short-term rentals would likely occur throughout town regardless of the ban and that temporarily allowing them would help the City better regulate what occurs while providing needed funds.
“The TOT [Transit Occupancy Tax], this is how we pay for things,” she said. “We can do it in a mindful way, where we are regulating, we are controlling what’s going on versus not doing anything about it, and people hiding their rentals anyway, and bringing the crowds. We’ll have to deal with the crowds regardless. So this is a way that we can fund these efforts and emergency preparedness. Listen, we just had the wildfires not too long ago, and if that didn’t highlight that…the region may not be ready. But I want to make sure our city, Manhattan Beach, is ready, and that we give our departments the tools that they need to prepare and really help support our community.”
Franklin reiterated his opposition to short-term rentals but also supported a survey.
I’m sure there’s going to be an appetite for people that want to come in and live in our neighborhoods,” he said. “Just going back to the issues that we had before, visitors don’t make the very best neighbors.
“Go ahead and do the study, and let’s see what and we’ll see what people say.”
The council voted 4-1 to both include questions about STRs on an upcoming survey already commissioned by the pollster TrueNorth, and the commission an additional survey strictly about the idea of temporarily lifting the STR ban. Charelian voted in opposition.
The other controversial policy option was extension of business hours during the Olympics. Latranga said that City code already had a mechanism for extending hours by modifying conditional use permits, a practice that occurs on New Years Eve.
So staff is recommending exploring a similar exception for FIFA World Cup and Olympics events,” she said. “So these would be temporary modifications, potentially, with necessary parameters. So the potential changes would allow local businesses to maximize economic benefits, increase tax revenue during peak events, and provide for a more controlled approach with specific time limits.”
Franklin asked if this would be an all or nothing approach, or if the Council could just extend hours a few nights. “Or we are going to have 30 New Year’s Eve type nights in a row,” he said. Latranga said this would be entirely the council’s decision.
Franklin said issues of overcrowding already occur during summer in Manhattan Beach, which he described as “roiling,” and a possible public safety hazard due to crowded streets and sidewalks.
“People are looking for peaceful use of their properties, not having extra hundreds, if not thousands, of people crowding around restaurants,” he said. “…Try it for one night. Try for two nights, not 30 nights, okay? We love our restaurants and they’re still making up for Covid losses, but just in terms of quality of life in our fair city, I just can’t see this happening.”
Lesser also expressed skepticism.
“I want to be sensitive to those residents that may not want to participate in the Olympics yet want to continue with their living lives notwithstanding the impacts,” he said.
“It’s not every place every night, because I wouldn’t be in favor of that either,” Howorth said. “I do want to give our restaurants and maybe even shops an opportunity, a place for people to go — so they’re not just kind of on the sidewalk, right? — and a way for them to serve people. But I think that doesn’t mean everybody’s up until one in the morning for 60 days.”
“I live on the north side of town, and I would love to see our businesses there thrive and flourish as well, and give those businesses opportunities,” Tarnay said.
Lesser said he was not ready to vote on this policy consideration and it was tabled.
“I also love the excitement, the passion,” he said. “However, I still look at this with a base awareness that many residents are simply going to want to live their lives and maybe not participate as much, and I think we owe a duty to them to make sure that we are prepared as a City, that we protect and that we engage.”
Olympic participation items were likewise not decided upon, including the idea of hosting live watch parties, potentially at the pier, the beach, or Polliwog Park. The council did discuss at some length the opportunities that the City’s volleyball heritage might present. The staff report had suggested perhaps having past Olympians on banners on the pier, or elsewhere in the City, and engaging with teams that practice in Manhattan Beach to work with local kids. Jeff Conover, the recreation supervisor for the City’s Parks and Recreation Department, won a silver medal as a coach of Team USA’s women’s beach volleyball team in 2012. Council members picked his brain. The original Olympic beach volleyball venue was going to be Santa Monica beaches, but that city’s financial difficulties made it unfeasible, so Long Beach will now host beach volleyball. He told them Manhattan Beach could expect a large Olympic volleyball presence, both from Team USA and other countries.
“I’ve talked to a handful of other coaches, colleagues of the past,” he said. “After they qualify, they’re going to come out west, they’re going to start training here three weeks prior to this timeline. So they’re going to be in town. They’re going to fly, they’re going to look for a venue that’s closer to Olympic Village and things to do before they go down to Long Beach. So I expect a lot of teams will be coming to the South Bay. They’ll be in Hermosa, in Manhattan.”
He also said that many volleyball players would like to stay after the Olympics are over for the Six Man tourney.
“I think with the Manhattan Six Man being such a seminal event in the volleyball world, a lot of these people from other countries are going to come and realize, ‘Oh, I can make this pilgrimage event, this bucket list thing.’ They’re probably going to stay because they don’t have to get back out to the world tour back home right away. Certain teams, if they do really well, maybe they have to go back home to their country to do press and other things. But for the majority of teams, when they come out and they have a chance to potentially play in the Six Man or hang out in LA a little bit longer, I expect they’re going to stay and they do bring a large contingent.”
Long Beach’s courts are not well liked in the volleyball community, Conover said, due to their shallowness, which he described as “awful, awful, awful.” But he expects that many tons of sand will be poured onto those courts, and thus more like Manhattan Beach.
“We trained in Laguna Beach, which had one of the deeper sands at that time,” he said of 2012. “We split time between there and here in Manhattan. Traditionally, during the Olympic Games, they bring in a very deep sand, because it kind of neutralizes talent and whatever else. So we expect a lot of teams to be trained in those two locations.”
Overall, the discussion, which lasted two-and-a-half hours, left more questions unanswered than answered. It was an opening foray regarding issues that will like take many council meetings to bring more clearly into focus.
“I think it’s a historic event,” Tarnay said. “All of us will have memories of this. Our kids will have memories of this for years to come.I see this as an opportunity to really engage the community and get people prepared for what’s going to happen. Because people are coming. Regardless of whether we open our doors, our doors are open.”
Kelly Stroman, the executive director of the Downtown Business Association, urged the council to be proactive in making sure Manhattan Beach is able to embrace the Olympic experience.
“I’m here to raise the flag for businesses and overall what we can do for this city,” she said. “When the 1984 Olympics happened, the city, and life, was much different. The railroad tracks still came down the Greenbelt. We didn’t have cell phones. We used Thomas Guides for navigation. We used traveler checks to pay. There were a lot of differences between what took place in 1984 and what can take place now. Photos of our pier were Kodak moments that took a week or two or three to develop. Now, the reach is millions, and global. So I think it’s really incumbent upon us to make sure the world can travel to Manhattan Beach safely, can experience us and can celebrate us. And it’s a chance for our entire community to really shine and get involved and to inspire youth for generations to come. LA28 is projected to bring over 15 million visitors to our region, generating $18 billion.”
“The question isn’t if they’ll come, it’s how they will experience our city. What are we going to do that’s going to help them to experience our city and help drive business for our businesses? And I know just not talking about downtown Manhattan Beach tonight for the entire city, that’s a given. If we can secure 1 percent of total estimated visitor spending, that’s $180 million just for LA28. I think FIFA next summer is an on ramp to what can happen in LA 28. So I encourage you tonight to move forward with direction, to have staff in the city be able to prepare properly and to help our community shine now next year and in LA28.” ER
