Los Angeles FC seeks nothing less than to create an expansion MLS franchise from the ground up while simultaneously building a community around the disparate ethnic and racial groups in Southern California that identify with the ultimate global sport.

Ambitious? Unambiguously.

Especially since club President Tom Penn concedes he doesn’t know much about the sport or Southern California. He has lived here, mostly in a hotel at LA Live where he struck up a friendship with fellow resident and Galaxy striker Robbie Keane, since the franchise was announced as the successor to Chivas USA a little over a year ago.

But Penn knows the business of sport as an executive with a succession of NBA teams. His employer most recently was the Portland Trail Blazers until he was fired in a move that shocked fans after apparently running afoul of billionaire owner Paul Allen just a few months after receiving a raise and a promotion.

“I’m not a soccer guy,” Penn admitted earlier this week at a restaurant in Torrance, a city the now-Manhattan Beach resident was visiting for the first time. “In my years in basketball, I saw multiple non-basketball guys screw things up, so my intention is to hire a lifetime soccer guy to come in and make the soccer-related decisions. We will empower him … to hire the coach, to put together the strategy on the roster and to make all football-related decisions.

“I feel what I do have is experience in sophisticated professional sports operations and in particular the structuring of financial packages and deals — the global football landscape is perfect for that.”

Expect that employee to be hired within the next 60 days as the clock begins to run in the new year on LAFC’s intent to start playing in Exposition Park in 2018, presumably in the adjacent and vast Coliseum initially.

LAFC hopes to take possession of the 150-acre Sports Arena site in May or June and begin demolition. A Dec. 10 hearing is scheduled before the city Planning Commission, where the $250 million project will be discussed.

“It’s a venue that’s being designed to be vertical rather than horizontal,” Penn said. “It’s going to keep the energy focused on the pitch. We’re designing a supporter-specific section for 4,000 of the best fans around with amenities to go with it.”

If that sounds reminiscent of small, urban stadiums like the one in Portland, that’s no accident.

Penn, who describes himself as a “new enlightened soccer fan,” caught the bug when he attended a Timbers game with his two kids.

“They picked up on all the chants with the Timbers Army, they looked at me like, ‘Dad, thank you.’ And I was like. ‘OMG, this is amazing.’ I didn’t know this could happen in America. And so that was the spark of my passion for what we are doing.’

In a sense, many of the components of LAFC have fallen into place almost by default.

The name, originally a placeholder, became reality when other variations such as LA Futbol Club and LA United were dismissed.

The Exposition Park site, long pursued by MLS because of its relatively inexpensive real estate and central city location, was settled upon because of the difficulty of finding the necessary acreage for parking in the arts district or other downtown sites.

And the team’s colors — decided, but not yet announced — will likely be primarily red despite flirtations on Twitter with gold or gray that harken back to the NFL Rams and Raiders.

Whether Los Angeles can really support a second MLS team in the wake of Chivas USA’s underwhelming flame-out remains to be seen. But at least Penn and his two dozen well-known investors, which include the likes of Magic Johnson and Mia Hamm, are taking a more realistic tack than their brash and divisive predecessors.

“We firmly believe that we can unify the world’s city through the sport,” Penn said. “Nothing unifies like sports. And nothing brings people together across cultures, across boundaries, across ages like soccer.”

For more soccer news, read the 100 Percent Soccer blog at www.insidesocal.com/soccer.