Honda Center and downtown Long Beach will play significant roles in the 2024 Olympics should Los Angeles be awarded the Games, Los Angeles 2024 officials said Thursday.

Honda Center in Anaheim would host the volleyball competition and Long Beach would be home to six sports as part of a revised plan that extends the footprint for the Olympic Games that originally was centralized in Los Angeles.

LA 2024 officials are also in talks with state and Riverside County officials about making Lake Perris the Olympic rowing and canoe venue. Riviera Country Club in Los Angeles would host the golf competition and a new NFL stadium in Inglewood will also be part of the final bid, LA 2024 officials said.

The revised plan focuses on four Olympic sports parks and emphasizes the proximity to public transportation and the Los Angeles and Orange County region’s wealth of world class facilities. It comes just days before the Oct. 7 deadline for 2024 bid candidate cities to submit to the International Olympic Committee their Stage II bid books addressing governance, legal issues and venue funding. It also follows months of conversations between LA 2024 and international sports federations officials about potential 2024 venues.

“For us the first conversation was what’s the right thing with the sport and how does that match with taking advantage of our existing venues, they’re all world class providing the best platform for the Games,” LA 2024 chairman Casey Wasserman said. “So the expanded footprint is really best venues, right for the sports, right showcase, right opportunity, and what you see is the result of that process that has been going on for a long time now.”

The shift away from a more compact venue plan brings the Los Angeles bid into closer alignment with Agenda 2020, a series of IOC reforms that emphasize sustainability.

“We think what’s important in the eyes of the IOC as outlined in Agenda 2020 is a sustainable plan that works for the long-term vision of the city, and we believe that taking advantage of these venues, which we have a wealth of them in Los Angles and Southern California, is the most Agenda 2020 responsible plan we can put forward,” Wasserman said. “They happen to be iconic venues, We can cluster sports around those venues and we think the result is a great platform to host the Games for the athletes and the fans to really elevate the experience for everybody.”

The IOC will select the 2024 host city on Sept. 13, 2017 in Lima, Peru. Paris, which like Los Angeles is seeking a third Olympics, and Budapest are also in the bidding.

Rome Mayor Virginia Raggi said Wednesday she would not support what she described as an “irresponsible” bid for the 2024 Games, essentially ending that city’s bid.

The LA 2024 changes present the IOC with a venue plan that is in contrast with the proposed Paris layout, which also emphasizes top-flight existing venues but ones that for the most part are not near each other.

The revised plan also allows LA 2024 to use UCLA venues as training facilities for athletes staying in the Olympic Village on the Westwood campus. Pauley Pavilion would host the wrestling and judo competitions.

Wasserman said the decision to move volleyball from Pauley Pavilion to Honda Center was made at the request of the Federation of International Volleyball (FIVB), volleyball’s global governing body. LA 2024 met with FIVB officials at their Lausanne headquarters earlier this year.

The move to Anaheim was also a point of emphasis during a meeting between FIVB officials and LA 2024 chief executive Gene Sykes and sports director Doug Arnot last month at the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.

“They made it very clear they preferred the Honda Center to other alternatives that we offered them, and one of the things we’ve said to leaders of the sports federations in almost every case we’ve had multiple choices, which makes our bid unique,” Sykes said. “If they can help us design a bid that works best for them they become allies of our bid, which is very important to the bid strategy. So we’re fortunate to have the wealth of opportunities and available choices that we have in this community.”

The move was also an obvious choice because of Orange County’s rich volleyball history, LA 2024 officials said.

“They preferred Honda for a number of different reasons. One, I think the size, the seating capacity, the hospitality opportunities that they had at Honda,” Arnot said. “They felt that it was a better environment overall for volleyball. And quite frankly the fact that Orange County is at the epicenter for volleyball in the United States was another compelling reason to consider Honda. They know they’ll have a great friendly crowd there.”

Long Beach would become a fourth Olympic sports park, joining similar parks in downtown Los Angeles, the San Fernando Valley and the South Bay at the StubHub Center. The Long Beach Arena would host team handball. The city’s downtown waterfront would be the site of open water swimming and triathlon, which also would use the Long Beach Grand Prix course. Temporary facilities would be built for water polo and BMX within the downtown Olympic sports park. Sailing competitions would take place just off the Long Beach pier, enhancing the viewing opportunities for spectators.

“We just saw a natural evolution of opportunities with sailing and some of the other sports centering around a downtown Long Beach,” Wasserman said. “The redevelopment that has happened down there and the ability to bring some temporary venues like BMX and water polo to a waterfront really creates an iconic location. It really creates a great opportunity to showcase a set of sports in an iconic location.”

A driving force behind the Long Beach sports park was also desire by the ITU, triathlon’s worldwide governing body, to replicate the grand prix style race course used for the Rio triathlon. LA 2024 officials also offered the Palos Verdes Peninsula and other Los Angeles County locations to the ITU as potential triathlon sites.

“We gave them everything they could see and they chose Long Beach and when they were assertive as they were about it, it make it easy for us to think about how else we would build a park around that in Long Beach,” Sykes said.

LA 2024’s sports park theme would allow the organizers to cluster multiple venues in proximity to public transportation and within one secure area, with celebration and fan festival-like areas within the park. The plan will reduce security costs, make the Games more accessible to fans and enhance the spectator experience. The sports park plan will also encourage fans to attend lower-profile sports by placing them close to venues for big-ticket sports.

“Being able to place multiple venues inside one secure perimeter is a great advantage for us and a great opportunity for our security partners to concentrate their energy, their efforts and the infrastructure in one place and to allow us to develop an atmosphere inside that will be an even more compelling experience,” Arnot said.

The sports park plan could see Anaheim playing an even larger role in a 2024 Games. In a Sept. 13 letter to IOC president Thomas Bach, the Anaheim City Council assured him that other local venues in addition to the Honda Center would be available during the 2024 Games.

“The Venue City hereby confirms and undertakes, to the maximum extent of its authority, that no major public or private event, conference, or other meeting, other than would ordinarily occur at the Disneyland Resort, Anaheim Convention Center, Angel Stadium of Anaheim, Honda Center or City National Grove of Anaheim, which could have an impact on the successful planning, organizing, financing and staging of the Games or their public and media exposure, will take place within the Venue City itself … or its neighborhoods, during the Games or during the preceding or following week, without the prior written approval of the IOC,” the council wrote Bach.

The council also answered a series of IOC questions and agreed to provide general guarantees to the IOC.

“The City of Anaheim looks forward to continuing to work with the City of Los Angeles towards our shared objective of Los Angeles being selected to host the Games,” the council wrote Bach. “Bringing the Games back to Anaheim and Southern California is a great opportunity for us to showcase our diverse and vibrant region to the world, and we stand ready to partner with the City of Los Angeles in this endeavor.”

Contact the writer: sreid@scng.com