What’s one of the business community’s most unheralded pet projects? It may well be the Expo Center, a community recreation complex next to the Coliseum that includes a swimming stadium, a track field and other recreational facilities.
The most recent Friends of Expo Center fundraiser, on April 21, brought in $125,000, far above the $70,000 goal. The money will go toward subsidizing fees for local residents and adding some programs in order to get more people into the facility.
Steve Soboroff, the just-retired chief executive of Playa Vista LLC who serves as board chairman of the Friends of Expo Center, said the key was convincing local businesses that contributing to the recreation complex would keep kids off the streets and improve the community’s quality of life.
“Businesses that engaged in this project gave until it hurt,” said Soboroff, a former city recreation and parks commissioner.
Among the businesses that contributed for the first time this spring: AEG Corp., the Los Angeles Dodgers, Watson Land Co., Conga Room (which hosted the fundraiser) and Chartis Insurance Co.
Although it’s gotten little attention, Friends of Expo Center has raised more than $36 million to renovate the swim stadium and the sports field during the past decade.
One frustration, however, was that local residents weren’t using the recreation complex nearly as much as expected, Soboroff said.
So the group began steering money toward making the facility more user-friendly. The result: The number of local resident visits has jumped five-fold over the last four years to almost 1 million annually.
