LA28: The Herculean Task of Venue Infrastructure
Squash at Universal Studios. A huge swimming pool at SoFiStadium. LA28’s head of venue infrastructure says the Games’ goal of using only existing structures is a challenge he’s already working on.
At SoFi Stadium, in between professional football games and major concerts, the construction of two new Olympic-size swimming pools will soon begin. Over at the LA Memorial Coliseum, a false floor for an athletics track needs to be installed to meet regulations. And at Universal Studios, visitors who take the famous bus tour are likely to see a brand-new squash complex in the making.
Infrastructure isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when we think about the Olympics, but the venue renovation and buildout plan for the LA28 Summer Games is attracting attention for its uniqueness. Instead of building entirely new structures, LA28 is retrofitting, updating, and renovating existing venues. The goal of “no new venues” is not just about money, though this approach will save the organizers tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars. Mike Baim, vice president of venue infrastructure for LA28, says the plan is meant to leave LA and other host cities in a better place by updating existing venues to be more sustainable. It will also minimize community impact from Olympic “white elephants,” the purpose-built structures that are frequently abandoned once the Games end. “We are thinking about the infrastructure for LA28 as a distributed Olympic park,” says Baim. “The challenge is coordination across all the partners and vendors needed to pull this off in an extremely condensed time frame.”
It’s certainly a Herculean task (to invoke the mythological founder of the Olympics). By the start of LA28, Baim and his team will have to select venues in coordination with host cities; decide which sites can be updated, and for which sports; build new “overlays,” or temporary venues, on sites lacking existing infrastructure; secure the required permits; coordinate with owners and teams playing in those stadiums for time to build what’s required; then take it all down once the Games are over.
To be sure, the plan for LA28 looks more like a relief effort after a natural disaster or a temporary military base camp than it does any previous Olympics buildout. And that’s by design. Baim got the job in part for his nearly three decades of experience in the military—leading hurricane and other disaster-response efforts around the world, including the LA wildfires, during which he worked with LA28 CEO Reynold Hoover as deputy commander of relief efforts. “The government and community relationships needed in those situations is similar to what we are doing here,” says Baim.
Having LA as the epicenter brings up another decidedly modern-day challenge that was barely a thought in the minds of organizers in 1984, the last time the city hosted the Olympics: the possibility of an environmental catastrophe. “Everyone is aware that California, and Southern California in particular, has seen wildfires, blackouts, mudslides, and more in recent years,” says Michele Capra, a senior client partner and vice president in the business at Korn Ferry. In fact, one of Baim’s biggest hurdles is competing against data centers and other infrastructure projects to secure access to power and energy sources for the Games.
Data centers and other infrastructure projects are also responsible for another of Baim’s hurdles—finding enough talent (roughly 700 full-time staff and thousands of contractors) to handle the job. Or, as Ken Bloom, a senior client partner in the Global Infrastructure practice at Korn Ferry and co-head of the firm’s Public Private Partnership sector, puts it, “The buildout for the Olympics is intersecting with the broader infrastructure boom in the US.” That poses several recruiting challenges, he says, among them the fact that the people needed—in engineering, project management, logistics, and other areas—likely already have full-time jobs or other projects that conflict with the compressed Olympics time frame. “Infrastructure talent has the luxury of options,” says David Craig, a principal in the Global Industrial practice at Korn Ferry.
Since assuming the role at the start of 2025, Baim has hired about 130 people. So far, he says, several factors—including the security of a few years on the job, secure funding, the complexity of the assignment, and the lure of working for the Olympics—are outweighing some concerns engineering talent may have. But Baim is also pragmatic about competing for recruits against big tech, deep-pocketed private equity firms, and other data-center and infrastructure players. “As new talent is needed on shorter tenures, competing on compensation and security will make hiring more challenging for us,” he says.
Andrea Peters, an executive recruiter in Korn Ferry’s RPO practice who is working on some of the hiring for Baim’s team, agrees, but with a caveat. As she puts it, “Building game venues is different than building offices, and getting that experience in such a short window can be a real career accelerator for talent after the Games.”
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