Big Win for Construction Unions: LA City Council Gives Thumbs Up to Convention Center Expansion
It has been more than a decade in the making. City officials debated it, ordered repeated environmental impact reports, engineering studies, and design specs. But in the end, they always pulled the plug.
Finally, on Sept. 19, at the end of a long week at City Hall, the LA City Council voted 11-2 to expand downtown’s aging Convention Center, with construction to begin next month.
The $2.6-billion project calls for an aggressive construction schedule to meet the hard deadline of the 2028 Olympics and Paralympic Games that will be hosted in Los Angeles, and where the Convention Center will be the site of multiple Olympic events.
“This is great news for IBEW 11 members,” said IBEW 11 Business Manager Robert Corona. “We expect to realize several hundred new jobs for our members within the next few months. Job calls may be going out next week.”
IBEW 11 has made Convention Center expansion a top priority because it will create immediate and long-term jobs for members, and when completed it will serve as a linchpin in downtown Los Angeles’ continued resurgence and revitalization. A total of 13,000 construction jobs and another 2,150 permanent jobs are expected to be created to fulfill the project’s ambitious and tight deadline.
“The Convention Center has been ignored for decades,” Corona said. “I should know; I helped build it at the beginning of my career as an electrical apprentice over 30 years ago. The time to move this project is now. Let’s show the world LA is still the land of opportunity. Let’s create economic opportunity for working families as we prepare to host the Olympics and build a convention center fit for Angelenos.”
Work on the project will begin immediately, with calls going out this October. Construction will temporarily pause in May 2028. From June to September 2028 the Convention Center will host Olympic events including judo, wrestling, and other competitions. Work would then resume, with construction slated to continue through 2029.
Building trades members testified about the need for the Convention Center not only to revitalize downtown, but also for the good middle class jobs it would offer for years to come.
Antonio Sanchez, IBEW 11’s Political Director, said the vote was a “massive win” for the city and the building trades. IBEW 11 members will benefit by getting job calls immediately, with the promise of more Convention Center work in the future, he added.
“Kudos to the broad coalition we worked with for the past several years including labor and business, to bring this home,” Sanchez said.
This coalition included IBEW, Teamsters, the Painters and Allied Trades, LA/OC Building Trades, IATSE, Central City Association, and the Valley Industrial Community Association.
“We all knew we needed this expansion because large conventions were skipping LA because our Convention Center was not up to standard,” Sanchez said. “Our Convention Center is straight out of the ‘80s.”
Upgrade Long Overdue
Supporters hailed the expanded Convention Center as a critical investment in Los Angeles’ future, one that will breathe new life into downtown LA and attract more investors, conventioneers, businesses, and tourists.
This was a HUGE win for our members,” said District 1 North Business Rep Zachary Solomon, whose district includes downtown LA. “Not only will this project create hundreds of short-term construction jobs over the next four years, but there will be more ongoing convention work for our members as the frequency and size of the conventions grow over the years. And don’t forget, we also represent the civil service staff of elections at the center and they may soon need more.”
LA Mayor Karen Bass was behind the expansion, saying it will create much-needed jobs, boost tourism and investments, and will make LA more competitive with other cities.
Supporter and labor ally Councilwoman Ysabel Jurado noted: “By moving forward with this expansion, we’re creating thousands of good union jobs, supporting local businesses, and making sure our City has the revenue it needs to fund vital services.” She added, “This project is about giving the heart of our city the boost it needs to keep Los Angeles moving forward.”
Currently, the Convention Center generates about $504 million annually for the Southern California economy. The expansion and remodeling will make the Convention Center the largest on the West Coast and the tenth largest in the nation.
Supporters agree that the Convention Center expansion and upgrade is long overdue. Los Angeles has been losing conventions to neighboring cities for years because of lack of contiguous meeting space.
The expansion will connect the South and West Halls, a complicated project because it must span Pico Boulevard. Plans also call for transforming the segment of Pico Boulevard which currently bisects the Convention Center with new lighting and finishes to turn it into the main visitor pick-up and drop-off zone.
The 28-acre project will provide about 325,000 square feet of additional new exhibit hall space for conventions and meetings. The expansion would increase the facility’s overall footage to more than a million square feet, allowing it to better compete for large events against other major cities.
JGM provided construction management, administration, and inspection services to support the four-level addition including structural engineering coordination, cost estimating, scheduling, on-site inspection, budget review, quality assurance and reviews, project reporting, contractors’ compliance, and value engineering.
Ernesto Medrano, head of the LA/OC Building Trades Council hailed the expansion as an investment in LA’s working families.
“Our members are ready to don their hard hats, work boots, and tool belts and start moving dirt,” Medrano noted.
“We turned out at City Council meetings and testified, then had many private one-on-one meetings with City Council members to convince them to invest in LA’s future, and to invest in LA’s construction workforce,” Solomon said. “In the end, IBEW 11 and our labor partners made the winning difference.”
