USOC Turns Focus to Carson

The U.S. Olympic Committee has designated the Home Depot Center in Carson an “official training site,” a move that will draw athletes, Olympic officials and world-class events, and positions Los Angeles as an Olympic business center as the USOC embarks on what appears to be a major restructuring.

Immediately, the USOC’s designation, formally announced Monday, means enhanced training opportunities -- and matches and meets -- for soccer, track, cycling and tennis athletes at the $140-million, privately financed complex, developed by AEG, the firm backed by Denver billionaire Philip Anschutz. AEG gets to use the five-ringed Olympic symbol at the facility, according to the USOC.

Key administrative components of the federations that run some Olympic sports will also be based at the complex. Perhaps more significantly, however, the designation carries the possibility of further development at the site, located on the Cal State Dominguez Hills campus -- a hotel, dormitories and thousands of square feet of office space.

Such facilities, if approved by city and campus officials -- and officials cautioned that an entitlement process must yet be initiated -- would go far in establishing Los Angeles as the de facto base for the Olympics in this nation. The plans come as renewed attention is being paid within the USOC, and in Congress, which in 1978 gave the USOC authority for Olympic sports, to the USOC’s place of business.

USOC headquarters now are in Colorado Springs, Colo. So are many of the various “national governing bodies,” which oversee the individual Olympic sports -- the triathlon, team handball, judo and cycling federations, among others.

The USOC also maintains three other training centers -- in Colorado Springs, Chula Vista and Lake Placid, N.Y., as well as other facilities, with a recent internal study noting the USOC’s penchant for maintaining what it called an “edifice complex.”

The Carson complex, AEG President Tim Leiweke noted, would cost the USOC “not one penny.”

In recent weeks, as the USOC has struggled with management turmoil so intense Congress is now threatening a wholesale makeover, experts have said that being in the foothills of the Rockies has long made it difficult to attract top-notch executive talent to the USOC. Congress is due to hold a second hearing Thursday into USOC affairs. The first was Jan. 28.

Compared to other major metropolitan centers -- New York, Washington, Chicago -- that might seek USOC headquarters, Los Angeles stands alone. It offers the lure of the weather, the clout of the nation’s second-biggest city, and the legacies of the 1932 and 1984 Summer Games. Also, the three U.S. members of the International Olympic Committee live here.

For now, none of the sports federations are moving their headquarters to the Home Depot Center. But the facility will be the U.S. Soccer Federation’s national team training headquarters, the site of the U.S. Tennis Assn.’s western states development programs, the team track cycling development and training headquarters, and site of track and field development programs.

“This is just the beginning,” Leiweke said. “I think it is reasonable to assume that there will be other governing bodies that we ultimately develop a relationship with.”

The initial “official training site” designation is, by mutual agreement, for one year only, Leiweke and USOC officials said. The USOC’s policy-making executive committee awarded the designation at a weekend meeting in Chicago. Leiweke said the USOC “needed flexibility” but AEG expects renewals. He also said AEG officials have “made a lifetime commitment.”

He also said, “This is not something that ultimately would in a normal business fit our rate of return equation that we look at when we invest money in these projects,” adding, “We have an opportunity to create a legacy, and Mr. Anschutz, in part, is very driven by giving kids a place to come and get turned on to these sports.”

Scott Blackmun, AEG’s chief operating officer and a former USOC chief executive officer, said, “This is going to be a great partnership.”

Jim Scherr, the USOC’s senior managing director for sport resources, cautioned in an interview that the designation of the Home Depot Center as an official training site ought not to signal a wholesale relocation of the U.S. Olympic enterprise to Los Angeles.

But he also said, referring to AEG and Anschutz, “Just to have a relationship with this company and this individual, who has so much ability to get things done, has to be good for the [sports federations] and the athletes.”

The 125-acre facility includes a 27,000-seat soccer stadium and nine additional soccer fields; an 8,000-seat tennis stadium that can grow to 13,000 seats, plus eight show courts and 30 more tennis courts; a track and field stadium that can seat up to 20,000 people, and a 3,500-seat indoor velodrome, the only indoor velodrome in North America. The 1984 Olympic velodrome was located there.

The soccer and track stadiums are due to open June 1, the tennis stadium July 1. A Golden Spike Series track meet is scheduled for opening day. The soccer stadium will be the site of Major League Soccer’s All-Star game Aug. 2 and the home of the Galaxy.

With the USOC training designation in hand, construction on the velodrome will now begin, Leiweke said.

Plans call for it to open in time for the Junior World Championships in 2004. The facility will also be the site of the 2005 cycling World Championships.

The San Diego Chargers will use the center as their summer training base beginning in July.