Olympic Effort Backed by New Plates

License plates designed to help finance the building of an Olympic Training Center near Chula Vista can be ordered now at a cost of $135 at any DMV office.

The plates, with a May delivery date, will be emblazoned with the United States Olympic Training Center logo and can be personalized.

Sales will go toward repaying a $15-million loan from the state’s general fund to the San Diego National Sport Training Foundation, the nonprofit foundation behind the center’s development. The loan will be given to the group in increments over three years.

The foundation will receive $100 from each sale, with $35 going to the Department of Motor Vehicles to cover administrative costs, said Bill Gengler, a DMV spokesman.

Gov. George Deukmejian approved the loan in October amid concern that the foundation would be unable to repay it. David Nielsen, executive vice president of the foundation, said a provision of the law that permitted the loan requires repayment within 20 years. He said sales of special license plates during the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Olympic Games netted about $2 million.

“The Olympics have a broad appeal, and this will open up a new series of vanity plates,” Nielsen said. “Closer to home (in Southern California), there is a lot of support for the training center.”

The plates will be issued with either the letters CA or US as a part of the seven-character license. Nielsen said people who were unable to get vanity plates because the letters or numbers they wanted were unavailable will now be able to do so.

Leslie Eicher, a spokeswoman for the foundation, said the plates will be heavily promoted, and a statewide public service campaign this summer will boost the fund-raising efforts.

“California has a vested interest in this,” Eicher said, noting that about 30% of the athletes who participated in the 1988 Olympics were from California.

Foundation president and former San Diego City Councilwoman Gloria McColl said: “This training center will give even more Californians the chance to compete in the Olympics because they now have access to state-of-the-art training, virtually in their own back yards.”

The training center is on 154 acres and will overlook the Lower Otay Reservoir, about 15 miles from downtown San Diego. It will include housing for 300 athletes, a 57,000-square-foot gymnasium, nine playing fields, a 50-meter pool, a 20,000-square-foot visitors center and administrative offices. The land and the infrastructure--streets, sewers and drains--were donated by EastLake Development Co. and are valued at $20 million.

Construction will cost about $59 million, said Eicher, adding that the foundation has already received about $39 million in private pledges. Ground breaking will be in June, and construction is expected to take 18 months, Eicher said.

The center will be the third Olympic Training Center in the country, but it will be the first to warm-weather, year-round location. The other two are in Colorado Springs and Lake Placid, N.Y., Eicher said.