What LA and the South Bay Are Building for the 2028 Olympics

The 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games are 22 months out, and the question we get from South Bay owners has shifted from “which events are coming here” to “what is actually being built.” The first question has its own page, Which 2028 Olympic events are coming to the South Bay? This one is the construction and transit ledger: what is finished, what is under way, what is funded but not started, and what has been dropped. It is organized by place, from the harbor north to the airport, because that is how it will affect you.

What is finished already?

Three pieces that matter to the South Bay are done. The LAX/Metro Transit Center opened June 6, 2025 at Aviation Boulevard and 96th Street, which put the C and K Lines at the edge of the airport for the first time. Intuit Dome in Inglewood, the basketball venue, opened in August 2024. And the Olympic sailing training center at Cabrillo Beach is not a plan; it has been operating since spring 2026 under a Port of Los Angeles permit, with international federations renting shipping-container offices on the adjacent lot and athletes living with host families in San Pedro, Palos Verdes and Long Beach.

The transit center is the one with an asterisk. Until the people mover opens, riders still transfer to an LAX shuttle bus for the last leg to the terminals.

What is being built on the San Pedro waterfront?

The largest Games-related construction in the South Bay is the Port’s own. On August 13, 2026 the Los Angeles Harbor Commission awarded $70.2 million in construction contracts inside an $86.4 million total project at Harbor Boulevard and 22nd Street. Griffith Company will build a 17.5-acre parking area with up to 2,100 permanent stalls, a public restroom, pedestrian walkways connecting Harbor Boulevard to Miner Street, a trolley stop, and a landscaped walkway, and will widen Harbor Boulevard to two travel lanes in each direction from S.P. Slip to 22nd Street. Construction begins in November 2026 and is scheduled to finish in January 2028, about six months before the sailing events. A second award, $3.7 million to CALTEC Corp., adds a restroom building and shade structures at the west end of Wilmington Waterfront Park on the same timeline.

The money comes from the Port’s Public Access Investment Plan, which has directed 10 percent of Port operating income to San Pedro and Wilmington public projects since 2015. That matters for how to read it: the parking and the wider boulevard are permanent, and they would have been argued for with or without the Games. The Olympics moved them up the list.

The sailing side is already active. The former youth camp at 3000 Shoshonean Road operates as an Olympic-class training center run by the nonprofit Pathway to Podium, under a revocable permit the Harbor Commission approved on April 30, 2026 that runs through the conclusion of the Games. The Port committed $5 million toward renovating the facility. In July 2026 the San Pedro Olympic Classes Regatta brought roughly 200 sailors from 34 countries into the harbor, 35 of them Olympians. It is one of only two major Olympic-class regattas held in the United States. Sailing teams train in the actual venue for years beforehand because wind and current behave differently in every harbor, so the harbor will host this level of traffic through 2028. The Port has said it intends a competitive process after the Games for a permanent sailing and community aquatic center on the site.

What is opening around it is covered separately in What is open at West Harbor in San Pedro right now?.

What is happening at LAX?

The LAX Automated People Mover is the project South Bay residents will use most, and it is the one furthest behind. The 2.25-mile elevated train linking the terminals to the rental car center and the Metro transit center was originally due in 2023, then January 2026. It has been more than 95 percent complete for over a year while Los Angeles World Airports and the contractor argued over money and schedule; a July 2024 settlement of $350 million brought the total paid above the original contract to roughly $880 million. As of July 2026 the posted opening was October 2026, and LAWA has been preparing shuttle-bus contingencies in case it slips again. The rental car center it connects to is operating. When the train opens, a Metro rider from the South Bay will step off the K Line at the transit center and ride nonstop to the terminal loop; until then it is the shuttle.

What changed in Inglewood?

The Inglewood Transit Connector, the automated people mover that was to run from the K Line’s Downtown Inglewood station to the Forum, SoFi Stadium and Intuit Dome, fell apart in 2024 after attracting well over $1 billion in commitments. On August 26, 2026 the Inglewood City Council selected a developer for the replacement: a $261 million package, funded through state and Metro grants, of three mobility hubs (the largest at Florence and Market, tied to the K Line station by a pedestrian bridge), streetscape work on Market, Manchester and Queen, and event-day bus lanes running north to south between the K and C Lines. Streetscape work starts in November 2026 and is planned to take about two months; the bus lanes and signal upgrades are expected in 2027. The design is written so as not to preclude a people mover later. For the South Bay this is the practical route to SoFi for the opening ceremony and swimming: K Line to Inglewood, then a dedicated bus lane, not a train.

What is Carson doing at Dignity Health Sports Park?

The venue that will host rugby and field hockey, among other events, is in the middle of a four-year refresh that AEG announced in December 2024: re-seating of the entire lower bowl, restroom renovations, refaced concessions and new premium seating, phased around Galaxy seasons from 2024 through 2027. It is upgrade work rather than new construction, and it is the kind that shows in the broadcast rather than on a map.

What is Long Beach building?

Long Beach, with seven Games venues, has organized its work under a plan called Elevate ’28: more than 180 projects and more than $1.089 billion of investment, of which $215.6 million is specifically Games-related. The two to watch from this side of the harbor are the Belmont Beach and Aquatics Center, an approximately $60 million replacement for the old Belmont pool with a 50-meter competition pool, a second instructional pool and spectator seating, under a contract with Bernards approved in January 2026 and due before the Games; and the Long Beach Airport concourse renovation, $37 million across all 11 gates, begun April 2026 and due in 2027. The running list is longer than that, and most of it is streets and parks.

Which freeway projects are on the Games list?

One, and it will not be finished. The I-105 ExpressLanes project converts the carpool lane on the 105 into two toll lanes in each direction from Sepulveda Boulevard to the 605. It sits on Metro’s Twenty-eight by ’28 list. Segment 1, from Sepulveda to Central Avenue, is under construction now, with sound walls, shoulder paving and bridge work running through fall 2026, and is expected to open in 2028. Segments 2 and 3 continue into 2029. El Segundo and Hawthorne drivers will live with the construction for the whole run-up. Metro’s overall Twenty-eight by ’28 scorecard stands at 11 projects complete and 17 in progress.

Is the transit plan for the Games funded?

Not yet, and this is the open question that affects everyone. Metro’s plan is a car-free Games for ticketed spectators, built on roughly 1,750 borrowed buses on top of its own fleet and a network of dedicated Games lanes. As of May 2026 it had commitments from 28 transit agencies to lend or donate more than 1,000 buses and more than 300 staff. It has also said it needs about $2 billion in federal money to run the operation, and on September 15, 2026 Metro told LA28 that without funding certainty by the end of the year the organizing committee would need to find another delivery partner for spectator and workforce transportation. Congress has $875 million in a spending bill that still needs passage. Read that plainly: the venues will be ready, the harbor road and parking will be ready, and the question of how a million extra daily trips move around the county is unresolved with 22 months to go.

What about the water taxi?

On December 4, 2025 the Metro Board unanimously advanced a San Pedro to Long Beach water taxi after a staff study found it feasible, with a fare that could be as low as $4 on the TAP system, and directed staff to identify operators and funding and report back within 180 days. Metro’s own timeline required a request for proposals by October 2026 to have service running by July 2028. As of this writing no operator has been procured. It remains an idea with a study behind it, not a service with a boat.

What is not happening?

Rail to Torrance. The K Line Extension to Torrance had its environmental report certified and the Hawthorne Boulevard alignment selected on January 22, 2026; the current estimate for opening is late 2036, and construction is not funded. Any plan that assumes South Bay rail by 2028 is eight years early. The full explanation is in the venue post.

Short-term rentals in the beach cities, so far. Manhattan Beach’s council considered a temporary short-term rental program as a trial for the 2026 World Cup and on January 20, 2026 voted 3 to 2 to reject it, citing capacity and public safety; nothing has been adopted for 2028. Redondo Beach’s 2019 ban stands. The City of Los Angeles is a different story: Mayor Bass’s 2026 budget proposed letting owners rent second homes short-term through December 31, 2028, capped at fewer than 5,500 new listings, and the proposal was still in committee as of May 2026. If it passes, it applies inside city limits, which in the South Bay means San Pedro, Harbor City, Wilmington, Playa del Rey and Westchester, and not the beach cities or the Peninsula. Check the current status before you plan around it.

What does the 2028 build-up mean for South Bay real estate?

Four things, in roughly the order they arrive.

Tenants come before spectators. The athletes are already here. Sailing federations have been leasing the container offices next to the Cabrillo Beach training center since spring, sailors are living with host families in San Pedro, Palos Verdes and Long Beach, and the Port’s permit for the center runs through the close of the Games. That is a two-year tenancy pattern, not a two-week one, and sailing is merely the sport that trains longest in its venue. Team staff, broadcasters, sponsors and the LA28 workforce follow through 2027 and 2028, and the Harbor Boulevard contractors are on site from this November. The demand that produces is for furnished housing within a short drive of the harbor: San Pedro, the east side of the Peninsula, Rolling Hills Estates, Lomita and Harbor City, with the beach cities picking up the Inglewood and LAX side. The short-term rental rules in every South Bay city are written around stays shorter than 30 days, so a furnished lease of a month or longer is ordinary tenancy under a standard lease; confirm the current rule with the city before you list, and treat any lease to a federation or team as a commercial negotiation, because that is what it is.

Then the visitor who comes back as a buyer. There is no reliable number for how many Games visitors later buy a home in the host region, and we will not invent one. What is knowable is simpler. Buyers who relocate here from other states and countries almost always visit first, and the Games put roughly two weeks of South Bay July on every screen in the world, with the sailing venue sitting under the Peninsula’s bluffs. For a seller weighing a 2028 sale, the calendar splits into a spring window before the Games Route Network closes lanes and fills hotels, and a fall window with an audience that has just spent two weeks here. Either is workable; the summer itself is a poor time to hold open houses on the harbor side. This firm has sold through one Los Angeles Games already. Raju Chhabria began working this market in 1984, the summer of the last one.

The short-term rental question runs city by city. Owners in Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach and Redondo Beach should not plan on a Games rental windfall; Manhattan Beach voted its World Cup trial down in January, Redondo’s ban stands, and nothing has been adopted for 2028 in any of the three. The one live proposal is inside the City of Los Angeles, which would allow second homes to be rented short-term through December 31, 2028 if the council adopts it. In the South Bay that applies to San Pedro, Harbor City and Wilmington, not to the beach cities or the Peninsula. If you own in San Pedro, watch that vote; if you own on the sand, plan on monthly leases or nothing.

Last, what stays on the ground. When the Games leave, the beach cities and the Peninsula will look exactly as they do today, which is the point of them. San Pedro will not. A wider Harbor Boulevard, 2,100 stalls of waterfront parking, a rebuilt public edge at 22nd Street and a competitive process for a permanent sailing and aquatic center on the Cabrillo site are the kind of public investment that changes what a neighborhood is worth per square foot of land, and they are funded and scheduled rather than promised. The airport train, whenever it opens, does the same for anyone who flies often. For anyone weighing a San Pedro purchase, the construction window from November 2026 to January 2028 is a real input to the timing, and so is the completion date. Both belong in the conversation.

What does this add up to for a South Bay owner?

The permanent improvements land in San Pedro: a wider Harbor Boulevard, 2,100 stalls of waterfront parking, a rebuilt public edge at 22nd Street and an aquatic center on the table after the Games. Those outlast the two weeks of sailing and will be part of the case for any San Pedro address for a long time. The airport gets its train, late. Inglewood gets bus lanes instead of a people mover. The 105 gets toll lanes, partly. Everything else on the Games list is operations, and operations are what is unfunded.

If you own between the Peninsula and the harbor and are weighing timing, the two dates worth writing down are January 2028, when the Port work is due, and the end of 2026, when Metro’s funding deadline decides whether the transit plan is Metro’s or someone else’s. Our San Pedro community page is the place to start, or send us the address and we will talk through the actual calendar.

Keep reading