Los Angeles’ mayor has outlined how he plans to win the 2024 Summer Olympic Games with a $4.5-billion bid, while Mayor John Tory remains quiet on whether Toronto will compete for host city status.

The detailed L.A. plan released Tuesday both sets the stage for a potential Toronto bid and sets the bar for any promises city, provincial and federal leaders may be willing to make.

After working behind the scenes to secure support, L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti’s plan includes both a renovated $800-million, 80,000-seat stadium and a $1 billion athlete’s village.

Meanwhile, Tory has been working to answer questions about a potential Toronto bid before deciding whether to sign a letter of interest, due Sept. 15.

On Tuesday, the mayor’s office said Tory is not yet ready to make that call.

“Toronto just finished hosting the Pan Am and Parapan Am Games, the largest sporting event in Canadian history,” said a statement from his office. “We are now in the process of analyzing how the Games went, collecting information on the Olympic bid process and consulting members of council, the business community, the public and both levels of government.”

While Toronto will now be months behind the work that has gone into an L.A. bid if the city chooses to compete, organizers will also have the benefit of scrutinizing the American contender’s promises before making their own.

L.A.’s pitch, which sets out five clusters of mostly pre-existing venues — including the previous Olympic Stadium and the Staples Center — may also signal that the International Olympic Committee is willing to make good on its promise to cut costs for host cities by relaxing requirements that have seen construction of massive venues often left underused after the Games.

L.A. has pitched to completely revamp the existing Memorial Coliseum — which previously hosted Games in 1932 and 1984 and has since been retrofitted — to be the main Olympic stadium.

The city also plans to turn a new soccer stadium, planned for completion by 2020, into a temporary, 20,000-seat aquatics centre at an additional cost of $100 million.

In all, L.A.’s bid committee says it is willing to spend at least $2.9 billion on new and retrofitted venues.

Put into a Toronto perspective, those venue costs alone are just above the $2.6 billion needed to fund all the necessary state-of-good-repair costs for Toronto Community Housing over the next 10 years.

And Toronto, should it choose to compete, would likely be looking to construct a new temporary or permanent stadium.

During an early-2000s bid for the 2008 Summer Games, Toronto pitched a new, 100,000-seat stadium and an athlete’s village in the Port Lands, which is still believed to still be on the table for a 2024 bid. Those costs in current dollars are unclear.

Those looking at Toronto’s willingness to bid have said it is crucial that several of the newly built Pan Am venues are able to be repurposed, including a $56-million velodrome in Milton and a $205-million aquatics centre in Scarborough. Those venues would be a 30- to 50-minute drive from the Port Lands.

By comparison, each of L.A.’s proposed sites — from Hollywood to the Valley to the downtown — puts most sporting events within 30 minutes of a centrally located athlete’s village, according to their bid book.

The plan also promotes a more than 14-kilometre subway line extension, expanded rail network with more than 30 new stations and nearly 200 kilometres of new HOV lanes to be built in the next decade, ahead of the Games.

Toronto transit, meanwhile, has long been delayed by politics at city council — which is still without concrete plans for a less than 10-kilometre Scarborough subway or a downtown relief line, as plans for Tory’s 22-stop, heavy-rail SmartTrack pitch remain in preliminary planning stages, with no details yet on provincial plans for high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes.

While talks between Toronto and other levels of government continue behind the scenes, with a bid committee yet to emerge, L.A.’s Garcetti is promoting widespread co-operation.

“The political leadership of the City, County and Region stands in lockstep support of bringing the 2024 Games to Los Angeles,” the bid book reads.

Garcetti has also vowed the city will take responsibility for any cost overruns, setting out a $400-million contingency fund, leaving the city with an estimated $154 million in profit — something Toronto is not likely to match.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

For both the 2010 Vancouver Olympics and Toronto’s 2008 bid, provincial governments assumed responsibility for overruns.

It’s unknown what commitment Premier Kathleen Wynne’s government is willing to make. The first step, a letter of interest, needs to be signed only by Tory to get the process officially underway in the next 21 days.

Despite the IOC’s efforts to minimize spending, including on the bid process, L.A.’s bid committee estimates it will spend $65 million, all of which is to be drawn from the private sector and crowdfunding.

Read more about: