Los Angeles Convention Center

• 1. Introduction

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  The Los Angeles Convention Center sits in the southwest corner of Downtown Los Angeles, a sprawling complex that has quietly shaped the city's cultural and civic life for more than five decades. Architect Charles Luckman designed it, and it opened in 1971 on Figueroa Street, wedged between Pico Boulevard and the street now called Chick Hearn Court. What began as a rectangular building has been rebuilt, expanded, and reinvented multiple times since. A tornado once punched through its roof. A Grammy ceremony moved in during a pandemic. Video game enthusiasts packed its halls nearly every summer for a quarter-century. And within a few years, athletes from around the world will compete inside it for Olympic gold. How did a convention hall in Downtown Los Angeles become so central to so many different chapters of American entertainment, sports, and civic memory? The answers stretch from a 10-foot monument outside its doors to a $2.2 billion bet on its future.

• 2. Charles Luckman's Building

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  Charles Luckman's original design placed the convention center on Figueroa Street as a straightforward rectangular structure. The building expanded in 1981, again in 1993, and once more in 1997. That final expansion brought the biggest physical change: the northeast portion of the center was demolished that year to clear space for what became the Staples Center next door. The south side of Pico Boulevard gained a strikingly different look through the addition known as the Convention Center Annex, built with green glass and white steel frames and designed by architect James Ingo Freed. Freed's annex gave the complex a two-part identity, pairing Luckman's older bones with a more contemporary aesthetic on the other side of the boulevard. The interior holds an unusual artistic landmark. Artist Alexis Smith completed two large inlaid terrazzo maps in 1993, each covering roughly 140,000 square feet of lobby floor. One is a map of the world centered on the Pacific Rim; the other, upstairs, charts the constellations around the north celestial pole.

• 3. Gilbert Lindsay and the Plaza

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  Gilbert Lindsay represented the Downtown area of Los Angeles on the city council for several years, and the open area in front of the convention center now carries his name: Gilbert Lindsay Plaza. In 1995, a 10-foot-high monument was unveiled there, honoring him as "The Emperor of the Great 9th District." The drive connecting Figueroa Street to the convention center building was also named for Lindsay. His presence is woven into the physical approach to the building, so that anyone arriving by car or on foot passes through a space that commemorates his tenure before ever entering a hall.

• 4. Tornado, Certification, and Green Glass

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  On the 1st of March 1983, a tornado struck the convention center and caused damage to the roof and upper-level panels. Repairs and new exterior signage came to a total cost of $3 million. The building's next major milestone arrived on the 15th of September 2008, when it became the first convention center in the United States to earn Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification for existing buildings from the United States Green Building Council. It was also the first Los Angeles city building of its age and size to reach that standard. That certification marked a turning point in how the city thought about the facility: not merely as a venue to maintain, but as one worth measuring against national environmental benchmarks.

• 5. E3 and the Game Industry

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  Between 1995 and 2019, the Electronic Entertainment Expo, known as E3, made the Los Angeles Convention Center its home almost without interruption. The exceptions were 1997, 1998, and 2007. For the rest of that stretch, the annual video game trade event returned to Figueroa Street each summer. The COVID-19 pandemic eventually ended the run; E3 was discontinued in 2023 as the video game industry reshaped how it presented itself to the public. At its peak, E3 at the convention center served as the year's defining showcase for the games industry, drawing publishers, developers, and press from across the world to Downtown Los Angeles.

• 6. Grammy Week and the Pandemic Games

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  Since 2005, the convention center has hosted the MusiCares Person of the Year tribute each year, two days before the Grammy Awards. For years it also held the pre-telecast portion of the Grammy ceremony itself, before that segment moved to the Peacock Theater in 2013. The 2021 Grammy Awards took a different shape entirely: the full ceremony was held in and around the convention center because of the COVID-19 pandemic. That same year, the Los Angeles Sparks played 11 of their 16 home games at the center during the 2021 WNBA season, after scheduling conflicts at the Staples Center created by pandemic-related delays pushed them out of their usual venue. The convention center was configured with limited seating for those games and drew an average of 1,144 spectators per game. The Governors Ball, the major Emmy after-party following the annual Primetime Emmy Awards, also takes place at the center each year.

• 7. Olympics and a $2.2 Billion Future

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  The 2028 Summer Olympics will bring fencing, taekwondo, table tennis, judo, and wrestling to the convention center, placing it inside the downtown sports park zone that organizers plan to anchor with an "Olympic way" live site along Figueroa Street. The following month, the Paralympics will bring wheelchair fencing, table tennis, taekwondo, judo, and boccia to the same venue. Long before those games begin, a major transformation of the building is underway. City hall approved a design plan in 2015, and in September 2025 the city council approved the full expansion, allowing it to move forward despite the disruptions caused by the January 2025 Southern California wildfires. The project carries a price of approximately $2.2 billion and is expected to add 190,000 square feet of exhibition hall space, 55,000 square feet of meeting rooms, and 95,000 square feet of multi-purpose space. The current facility already holds more than 720,000 square feet of exhibition space, 147,000 square feet of meeting space, and parking for 5,600 vehicles. The new construction is expected to pause briefly around the 2028 Games, then resume toward a target completion in 2029, leaving a building that Charles Luckman would barely recognize from the rectangular structure he first placed on Figueroa Street more than five decades ago.