I did, for Chicago 2016 during my Mayoral Fellowship back in 2009. I rarely like to toot my own horn, but it was one of the most educating experiences I’ve had in my 25 years. Certainly one of the best public policy lessons.
So keep in mind five things:
1) The Host City and the IOC want completely different things
What Chicago Wanted:
Chicago wanted the Olympics for the same reasons Boston does-to spur investment in our aging infrastructure, to bring Olympic quality public parks, publicly accessible athletic complexes, and a functioning multi tiered public transit system all as the spur to revitalize some of the worst neighborhoods in the city. And to do so at minimal cost. We wanted to use the Olympics as an urban revitalization project in four crucial areas:
a) Turn Washington Park into the Millenium/Central Park of the South Side
Take an Olmsted park that has fallen into disuse and disrepair and rebuild it for the whole city. This required placing the arena here, and making sure the 80k capacity could be reduced to a more usable 20k capacity.
b) Turn Meigs Airport into a lakeside Millenium Park and give the burgeoning South Loop needed open space
This meant illegally demolishing a private airport in the dead of night, seizing it by eminent domain, and making it be the centerpiece of the nautical events-particularly sailing and rowing.
c) Get the Gold Line built
A proposed rapid transit system built on the existing Metra tracks and a ring connecting it to the Red Line ensuring the South Side had rapid transit and ensuring this linkage could be a spur connecting that redevelopment to downtown and gentrifying these depressed communities.
d) Redevelop Bronzeville
Which required seizing and destroying Michael Reese hospital and putting the Olympic Village there, turning it into another mixed used development after the Games.
What the IOC wanted/demanded:
1) Everything in one place
The main venue, the secondary venues, the aquatic venues, and the Olympic village should all be near each other and readily accessible via existing public transit
2) Whatever looks pretty for the cameras
Venues should be in visually striking places with clear views of the beautiful parts of the city (not in neighborhoods you want to redevelop for instance).
3) Chains over local vendors
Daley promised big M/WBE contracts to a host of local vendors the IOC wanted nothing to do with, King Richard (who rarely had votes that weren’t unanimous on his council) got dealt with a body blow by the City Council requiring those percentages, agreed to it to win over black support without consulting the IOC, and then getting told by the IOC to fuck off and just accept McDonalds as the food vendor, Coke as the drink vendor, Busch as the beer vendor, and other multinationals. This was the key thing turning the black community against the bid.
2) The IOC Always gets What it Wants
And when it does, you realize that your plan becomes their plan, and the city either shoves their plan down the throats of its citizens by over promising and exposing yourself to flip flopping charges (as Daley did) and losing public support for the games or you get stuck with things your city doesn’t need (an 80k arena in Montreal and London, a subway in Athens) and is still paying off.
3) They always lose money
4) They don’t showcase your city’s assets
They showcase an IOC/corporate take on your city. Really, will thousands of rich foreigners spending money on $18 cokes in an arena that doesn’t exist after the games really remember Boston fondly or want to come back and invest?
It makes sense for a former regional backwater like Atlanta or a spacious low density city like LA, but really, our universities already give us Alpha City cache on an international scale that hosting the Olympics won’t really add to.
5) Boston is not what the IOC wants
Chicago spread its Olympics out to win support in each of the crucial neighborhoods. Some events in Humboldt Park for the Hispanic bloc, most of it in the South Side for the blacks, some of it downtown for the business community and ended up pissing the IOC royally off. And that’s still having everything in city limits.
They want an LA or Atlanta-a low density place to just build an ‘entertainment/atheltic district’ cordoned off from the city. London is now stuck with such a district that it won’t use, Philly and LA-possible competitors of ours-already have those districts in place with quick and easy airport-arena transit access. The Koreans already have their bullet train built (I saw it for myself) for the 2018 games. We are nowhere near ready.
And other little things. Like allowing Lyft and Uber to operate, having taxis willing to go from Boston-Cambridge and willing to take credit cards, a truly direct airport to city transit line (and no the Silver Line and Blue Line don’t cut it!),Not to mention bringing our alcohol and transit regulations into the 21st century. Lastly enough space within city limits to have all the arenas in one easy to walk around location. So cross off Foxoboro, cross off Western MA, and cross off other states. It ain’t gonna happen if those are a part of it.
Either be willing to knock down a large portion of Boston to build an IOC level complex, or don’t bother bidding. I’d say the latter is our best approach. Its one of the most laughable and absurd ideas I’ve heard since turning Everett and Springfield into the next destination gambling venue. So of course we’re gonna fucking do it…
it’s probably going to win.
NBC wants it after waiting this long — and NBC’s $$$ as a percentage of the entire IOC’s budget is absolutely, positively mind bogglingly massive. (The TV rights for most countries is cheap in comparison, even factoring in population size.)
If the Boston bid was selected as the US bid, it would actually have a better shot than Chicago because of the timing. Most “experts” have seemed to imply that about all potential US bids… which is all the more reason why we have to increase public opposition to these Olympics.
Here is a link to the competition:
DC-Funny enough, an urban planner I worked with on the Chicago bid is currently working for the DC bid. He has already been to London and figured out their best practices, his team has already met extensively with the USOC and IOC on an informal basis and made revisions according to their plan.
They have three airports all with direct transit links to the host city, they have a new football stadium (fedEx field) an in city indoor arena and brand new baseball stadium within easy access to public transit. They have already handled a Papal visit, DC has handled inaugurations and other high profile security events and has extensive experience there, and they can regionalize better than we can since DC and Baltimore are just an hour apart. Inner Harbor could be used for aquatic events, along with all of Baltimores tier 1 sports stadiums, and the beltway and MARC provide ample transit links between both cities. A great region to host with a ton of corporate and governmental entities willing to pitch in. We are already getting delayed on the Somerville-Medford green line extension while they’ve laid down two brand spanken new Metro lines in the past decade alone. Oh and obviously no dumb 19th century hang ups over credit cards in taxis, booze regulations, all night transit, or Uber like Beantown.
SF-An even easier two city bid with all the arenas Oakland has, a better transit system with a healthier long term labor contract just inked, Stanford and Berkeley with other tier 1 athletic complexes within easy access by transit and highway, a ton of Silicon Valley sponsorship waiting to be dumped there. Larry Ellison and Mark Zuckerberg on board. And a brand new Santa Clara stadium already in place. Direct airport transit links. A bit more challenging than DC, but definitely ahead of us. Oh and obviously no dumb 19th century hang ups over credit cards in taxis, booze regulations, all night transit, or Uber like Beantown.
LA-The frontrunner. Has already hosted twice before and has an Olympic venue waiting to be reuitilized as part of a massive entertainment/athletic district that also includes the Staples Center, Rose Bowl, and other stadia within relative proximity to each other, two highways, and now a transit line. They got a direct transit-airport link as well, City of Industry coming in for an NFL stadia and Anaheim as a better regionalization of the games. Oh and obviously no dumb 19th century hang ups over credit cards in taxis, booze regulations, all night transit, or Uber like Beantown.
…but I’d love to hear just a little bit more “yes we can” for the home team.
Cost millions of taxpayer dollars and leave behind white elephants and holes in the ground.
And I want the home team to act in a responsible way. Opposing the Iraq War wasn’t rooting against the United States, it was rooting for a sensible foreign policy that avoided a costly mistake. Similarly, I want an economic policy that makes sense and is grounded in reality, not one tethered to a quixotic Olympic bid or dying industries.
I like my reality to come with a side of dreaming of what could be reality. Most advancements in history started by someone having a dream that was called unrealistic by others.
Sometimes reality bites, but it should be the focus on public policy. A 21st century transit system would be a wonderful dream for the city to have, its a big bold plan, its expensive, and its a necessity for us to stay competitive. Why can’t that be our Apollo project?
…though I do hope to see a manned mission in my lifetime. The transit system is complementary to hosting the Olympics and would be a strong argument for the state rather than just the city footing the bill for the bid. I’m still in favor of making reality rather than living with it.
Please read my actual post and get back to me with specifics. I spent the better part of a four month paid fellowship with 20 other graduate students working with the three official entities for the Chicago 2016 games and have a good perspective on what a bid needs to be successful, why Chicago failed, and why Boston isn’t anywhere near where Chicago was when it failed.
Wishing and hoping is great until you’re Mayor Daley in front of a crowd of four thousand people in front of the Picasso your dad got, on the plaza named for your dad, and realizing that the bid you bet the rest of your mayoralty and millions of taxpayer dollars on got fourth place. The bid you had all but guaranteed. I love Boston so much I want it to skip that step. And I have far more respect for Marty Walsh, wouldn’t want to wish that feeling on him.
Maybe it won’t work out for us in the end, but I don’t want to jump to that step before we even try, and I certainly don’t want to assume that Boston will be an exact repeat of Chicago. Every case is different.
Most dreams I know that kids (and adults) have are far more meaningful than 3 weeks of events most people have never heard and don’t care about.
Let’s spend that money on schools, not white elephants and entertaining the .01%.
But so should be an Olympic Bid. Personally, I could imagine making the Olympics work in Boston. But it’d be wickid expensive, and I don’t think that the locals or even the Massholes in aggregate should pay for it. National pride requires national bucks.
The USOC should choose from among domestic candidates to represent us to the IOC, at which point it can become federal.
Per the Wiki article on its bid:
What the IOC likes:
Why Athens failed in 1996:
Are we closer to Atlanta or Athens when it comes to infrastructure? I’d say Boston is closer to Athens.
We could afford to spend that money elsewhere and put it to good use.
Atlanta also had a prominent corporate backer with long term IOC connections:
And lots of bribery:
Practices considered normal and widespread until the 1998 games. This was the last successful American bid.
Boston does not have the rated infrastructure in place to host the games by 2024. It does not have the global media infrastructure of Ted Turner or LA, and it does not have the strong IOC corporate ties that a Coca-Cola would have. Our bid will be amateur hour, and a massive waste of money that would be better spend ensuring Boston does in fact become the globally competitive city it wants to be. We don’t need a bid to get there. Though losing the bid might be the sobering wake up call we need to realize how 19th century our state, city, and region remains when it comes to infrastructure and welcoming global business.
Oops. Here it is.
In most contexts I’d take that as a compliment:)
Seriously, though, it sounds like we should be spending similar amounts of money on similar things, bid or not, and I’m not convinced Boston is not up to the task.
really?
The IOC will want the Bay State to spend big on transportation projects that will make it easier to get tourists to the olympic venues.
Massachusetts needs to spend big on transportation projects that make sense for Massachusetts residents to travel nearby where they live and get to and from work or colleges, etc.
There may be some overlap in all of that, but maybe not as much as you think. Logan Airport has already got Silver Line and an entire tunnel for it. I think it’s time we invest in other aspects of our transportation infrastructure, centered on areas and neighborhoods that are in great need of improved or extended service.
And that’s to say nothing of the billions that would be flushed down the toilet in security costs, along with the white elephant venue projects that will cost billions further that we don’t need.
If the federal government isn’t going to pay for the whole party, then it’s a three week party we can’t afford to have.
….will fit right in with the casinos.
Boston definitely would have to come in with a square peg bid and dare the IOC to abandon its round hole thinking. It is possible the unfolding 2022 fiasco will cause a re-think of how the games get done, but that’s by no means a sure thing, or even likely. You’re probably right that L.A., Philly and D.C. all would give the IOC more of what it wants. What we’d have to knock down to make the IOC happy would be frightening.
Though it would be nice to have a train that goes directly to the airport.
Hey, if nothing else, the Olympic village would make a hell of a casino.
Richard Daley and his cronies getting ‘minority owned’ contracts thought that they could have their cake and eat it too, get an international event to Chicago while still playing the Chicago Way and hoping to get a cut. It didn’t happen. Remember folks, the same people who got picked to be in charge of the Big Dig and casinos would be the ones we’d put in charge of our bid. Continental construction, Steve Pagliuca, and Bobby DeLeo all wanting a cut. We don’t have a business community with international cache and caliber, nor do we have a local political community. Imagine Council President Linehan trying to welcome an African IOC delegation at Logan? Steve Lynch for the rainbow games? Wake up folks. The water is still very dirty around here. Let’s focus on cleaning it up.
… that you have been part of a non-successful bid you are qualified to speak to your experience interacting with the IOC. And that’s not nothing.
But you are not qualified to speak to either a successful bid, completed games, whether or no the games are economically feasible or the inside workings of what –if anything– the IOC ‘wants’. So I have a bagful of salt to apply to about 3/4s of your post.
I, however, am genuinely curious about:
… can you speak to what happened, if anything, with these projects post 2009?
A key component was that the Olympics would be the engine driving most of those changes. There are a lot of Chicago specific municipal financing issues to deal with, vis a vis TIF districts , that theoretically if reformed could actually start pumping money back into the neighborhoods they were designed to help. Until that happens, property taxes are largely a slush fund for the City Council, the Mayor, and his political priorities.
Emmanuel knows that reforming TIFs to be redistributed equitably would piss off the business community and the old guard Aldermen whose support he relies on to stay in office. Doing so would give the city enough money to actually rebuild the parks, invest in poor communities in a responsible way, and even invest in our schools. Failing to do so leads to massive school closure, city layoffs, ‘pension reform’, and the other municipal accounting tricks we are seeing instead.
Theoretically, the Olympic bid would have brought in enough corporate dollars, tax dollars from the events themselves, and support from the state and feds to build all this infrastructure so even if the games lost money these goals would be accomplished. It was largely a feather in Daley’s retirement cap (he even promised to put a fifth star on the Chicago flag!) but I must say I was impressed with the sincerity of the bid backers and the public-private partnerships willing to actually follow through. I’m convinced a bid might’ve been a good thing for the city, but the things that would’ve made it good for the city (redevelopment, green development, infrastructure, spreading the gains to every neighborhood) were the goals that ended up putting us in conflict with the IOC.
And once we had to curtail and cut back on the promises made to neighborhoods, council and grassroots support eroded. Having to shill for the Olympics in a neighborhood like Auburn Gresham during a community meeting was an experience I’ll never forget, but wish I could. And protesters followed the IOC to every single event. The lack of existing infrastructure in place, the pork barrel politicization of the bid to win over every interest group, and the eroding public support once some interest groups felt betrayed ended up sinking the deal.
They ended up gambling on Rio, but it was a safer bet than Chicago. The World Cup forced Rio to have everything in place for 2016 by 2014, and most of the opposition has already been heard for that event. 2016 should be much smoother. Tokyo had the most well thought out plan for its bid and the most elements already in place, which is why I was unsurprised that it won in 2020, I was sure it would’ve beat us in 2016.
… of whether you answered the question. Of the projects listed, to wit,
can you speak to what happened, if anything, with these projects post 2009?
That is to say, did they get built? Re-worked? Dropped entirely? I’m genuinely curious and the answer you’ve provided is sorta hand wavy… I think you’re saying they did not get done, but I want to be certain.
a) Turn Washington Park into the Millenium/Central Park of the South Side
Didn’t get done, ain’t gonna get done.
b) Turn Meigs Airport into a lakeside Millenium Park and give the burgeoning South Loop needed open space
We have a public arts/performing space and it may be ready to host concerts on a regular basis by 2020. Also has a great beach and hot dog stand now, still a little remote to get to unless you like long walks or bike rides.
c) Get the Gold Line built
Springfield killed it after the bid failed.
d) Redevelop Bronzeville
An ongoing and controversial process. Redeveloping the Michael Reese site seems contingent on Chicago winning the Obama library and utilizing it as a site, but since my alma mater took over the big it seems more likely it will be in the Washington Park/Kenwood/Hyde Park neighborhood. My gut tells me Obama puts it in Hyde Park, not just for sentimental reasons but since Axelrod’s IOP could be based in the library, and Jarret and Pritzker are already primed to make a killing off of Hyde Park developments related to the library.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the Michael Reese site in Bronzeville ends up like the old post office, or the Fordham Spire-projects in need of a reason to be built by developers with the money to build them. Perhaps the proposed George Lucas museum could utilize that site.
Organic redevelopment is slowly occurring. People are getting priced out of the South Loop to the North and Hyde Park to its south, a few new restaurants and a proposed jazz venue are opening up, and they are finally getting some political pull. But it’ll be mostly private or local. Not the worst thing in the world in some respects.
Meigs Field would have been a mess anyway, and is at least a park now, rather than an airport. How did an IOC bid turn that into a hole in the ground?
Each of these things seems like a property development issue common to any city–Downtown Crossing– and not problems that have anything to do with the aborted Olymplic bid.
In any event, I agree with you that this proposal is DOA. Massachusetts is not sufficiently far removed from its last Big Government Construction Project boondoggle, and the fading memory of the West End should immediately pour cold water over any proposal to “improve” a neighborhood by a big project.
On the other hand, they could improve Boston by bulldozing that abomination of a City Hall and putting anything– anything! a casino, a cement plant, an auto crusher, a girly bar, a municipal landfill, a smoking ruin– in its place.
If it weren’t for the aborted IOC bid then we would still have a functioning executive airport downtown (which would make the Obama visits a lot easier!), and a functioning trauma level hospital in Bronzeville (so shot south sisters didn’t need to bleed out on the drive to Northwestern Memorial). Those were both knocked down for a bid we didn’t win.
Now we have to lure Obama or George Lucas to make projects out of those pits. Northerly island could be a great park, but now that we have a recession and IL has a ton of budget problems, they won’t be fixed.
I am saying the bid boosters said all this redevelopment that was put on hold would be solved with a bid . But bids aren’t a good catalyst for redevelopment. Anyone who thinks a bid is a sound substitute for a sensible revenue generating fiscal policy is wrong. The bid itself wastes millions, requires demolitions to show intent, and then if it fails-all that energy that was spent on the bid instead of redevelopment is sapped. And I am also pointing out that Chicago was in a much better position than we will be and it still lost. I would rather have Boston focus on the great challenges we have in the real world which should be motivation enough to get them solved. A great public transit system is a boon to the city and the region.
The airport in particular seems like a good deal if you live there; living near an airport is lousy, and living near a park– even a future park– is preferable.
I didn’t know about the hospital. That is a problem everywhere, though seemingly particularly so on the South Side, because ERs lose a lot of money. I didn’t realize that an ailing trauma center was closed in order to support a bid for 2016. That’s lousy.
Otherwise, I am right there with you, though I am not sure that these things are ever intended as revenue generating fiscal policy. They are clearly not revenue generating. The question is whether non-financial lasting benefits–if any there be– justify the costs. In Montreal, the answer is unquestionably “no.” In LA or Atlanta, I am not so sure.
In any event I am not sure that significant investment into a great transit system will ever happen apart from some external impetus, such as this might be. Otherwise, I guess we can just hope that Democrats make this a priority if they ever manage to seize control of the legislature and governor’s office from those anti-transit Republicans.
LOL, as best I can over the tears.
As for Reese I did some more research. The deal still stinks, which I detailed in a comment at bottom. We will pay $134 to maintain it as a hole in the ground. But the hospital was closed down by evil insurance and hospital management companies, not evil politicians as I implied above. The trauma issue is sort of unrelated. My alma mater should’ve ponied up and stepped in after Reese closed but it weaseled out which has been an ongoing, but separate controversy. Chicago goes out of its way to with it’s dirty politics to make Boston’s seem downright parochial in comparison.
Well
a) I am far more qualified than you are since you haven’t worked on any Olympic bid as far as I know
b) We knew what the IOC wanted from day 1, we had access to their parameters and we tried to fit our bid to meet those parameters and quickly realized that we would have to cut back on some promised revenue and projects to certain communities. And I saw firsthand how that eroded the support, I started my program in June and heard nothing but good things at our event at the Taste of Chicago by August the public was against us in those communities and a strongly organized resistance group, funded by M/WBE businesses that felt they were getting squeezed, turned against us.
3) I know exactly how one should do a successful bid, it’s what my buddy is doing for the DC bid, and what he has spent the last three years of his professional life working on. I didn’t hear anything about a Boston bid since last summer, and we didn’t commit to one until just now, so we are at least three years behind DC which has been paying my friend full time to analyze their bid, work with and network with the IOC and USOC, has already sent him to London where he met with planners before and after the 2012 games to analyze best practices, and he has already worked with stakeholders in other bids.
I am at least as qualified as you are when being able to link to a podcast with Stephen Dubner to bolster a point which is neither germane to the debate nor one I’m not qualified to make (‘They always lose money”) Neither you, nor Dubner, are accountants (so far as I know) much less economists or actuaries… I can link to articles too. I have some that say that London 2012 paid for itself and others that say most Londoners would happily repeat the experience.
I know you probably don’t want to have this debate, which is why I point out that you shouldn’t have included some ‘points’ in your diary because they are not relevant to the experience to which you can speak.
Are you saying that DC is a successful bid?
A better link-economist refute London government subsidized report saying it made money. My old professor Allen Sanderson also has made a mini career out of saying the Olympics won’t work and wrote an interesting paper on the subject concluding they always lose money.
I am saying DC has a significant head start. It absorbed the Baltimore bid into a far more credible regionalized bid than any we could propose, it paid a team to go to London before the games, to see who won the 2020 bid and consult with the winner, and to work closely with the USOC and IOC to meet their paremeters. He has at least a three year head start, and if he is at the bottom of their totem poll he still sounds like he has put more thought and planning into this than Marty Walsh who just made a decision today. The people in charge of our bid have not done a bid before, they haven’t hosted an international bid before, and have far less political and financial clout.
The heavy hitters SF has like Ellison are bigger than our heavy hitters. And LA has been planning a bid since it last hosted, and will leverage a future bid with its inevitable NFL expansion franchise.
Boston just has a lot less to start off with, a lot more work to do, and not enough to differentiate itself from the competition. The IOC likes to reward cities that have hosted before, that have well thought out and finances plans on existing infrastructure plans (safe bets) or reward bold and creative plans from emerging powers or emerging cities that offer a unique experience.
I will say we are around the same size of Vancouver, and could look to their regionalized winter games in 2010 as a model for Boston to make a Winter Bid.
It depends on what your goal is. If your goal is to use the Olympics as a point of pride for your city and nothing more, than I think Boston has the potential capability to host a Winter games and investing to make the potential a reality might be a wise plan. If your goal is to fix the T, fix the roads, and integrate gateway cities with Boston and use the Olympics as the means-than its a bid that will fail. Cities willing to lose money that present either a safe bid (we could host the Olympics tomorrow!) or a bold bid (letting us host the Olympics makes the IOC look forward thinking!) win. Cities that want the bid as a catalyst for something else tend to lose (Chicago) or realize too late how little they gained (Athens).
and unlike you, jconway used actual arguments, backing them up, whereas you just attack the messenger instead of actually making arguments.
… He’s actually set himself up as an ‘authority’. Which perview he promptly oversteps by adding points demonstrably outside of his authority. This suggests that he either can’t contain his enthusiasm or distrusts his own authority. A perspective you would more easily see if his points didn’t massage your bias.
“Massage your bias” — that’s pretty creative, I have to admit.
I haven’t overstepped it. I worked for four months on a variety of urban projects at a competitive fellowship in the Chicago Mayor’s Office. I was one of two undergrads there, the other undergrad is now working full time for the DC bid. Similarly, I have attended Allen Sandersons’ lectures and heard him discuss at length his decades long peer reviewed research into why Olympics lose money for their host cities. I attached a link to his summary report that he had published with the U Chicago Press during one of my lengthly replies to your short pot shot posts.
Do you have any research, any experience, or any expertise to contribute to this discussion? I am all ears to hear from a booster that has links to something more quantifiable than ‘happy thoughts and hopeful dreams’ but actual data.
… any authority. I make no claim to authority outside of the perspicacity of a close reader. You do. I do not claim to know either what the IOC wants or whether or no the IOC will choose City A, City B or City C. You do make that claim. I do not claim to know for certain even whether you are right or wrong in your assessment. You do. I can only say that, if you a right, it is only co-incidentally and not by virtue of what experience you have.
Your experience, however rich and broad it is, cannot speak to why the IOC will, or will not, choose Boston. Nor does your experience and authority extend to the very much disputed contention (and it is a contention… which is, by definition, a situation where authority is absent) about whether or no Olympics always lose money. You made other declarative statements about other aspects of the IOC (“the always get what they want”) and you claim surety where you cannot make that claim.
These are things YOU added that are not encompassed by the authority you claim. I think you added them because your enthusiasm got away from you, which is understandable, but it has led you to mistake what you feel for what you know. Don’t do that, is all.
Can anyone have this discussion? Certainly you seem to have taken yourself out of it.
The boosters have the blind enthusiasm, my arguments are based on a limited experience for sure, but one nobody else here has been a part of.
Chicago said to its council and residents the games would give x, y, and z to gain public support. The IOC then said, fuck no to y and x and demanded we fund z ourselves. The public trend against the games, protested IOC events, and the council held out on the promised funding until three weeks before the IOC vote. All of those things hurt us.
I am seeing Walsh and some here promise the same set if deliverables that sunk the Chicago bid with the public and the council as soon as they found out that the IOC wants a specific blueprint and vision and you either suck it up or lose the bid trying to fight it.
I think it’s a massive waste if money to even consider a bid, especially considering Chicago is paying off a potential $134 million debt over a potential site.
San Fran and LA have more capital and media and DC has a three year head start. What facts or experiences do you being to counter my claims?
I think you have hit upon something here. I think you’ve pretty much laid out the case that Chicago (really Hizzoner the Mayor Daley) promised the moon in an effort to get the Olympic push to assume a great deal more political will and momentum than would otherwise exist. To the extent that this is true it creates a divergence (automatically) between what the host city wants and what the IOC wants and I think that Mayor Walsh should keep that most keenly in mind as he proceeds.
I think if you take away the IOC’s bullying ways, you’re still left with an organization that is highly focused on world wide sporting events and the choice of cities with housing and transportation sufficient to support those events. They may not see themselves in the business of generalized urban improvements. Who knows, but maybe that’s the root cause of their strictness and inflexibility…? Maybe they’ve dealt before with cities trying to kick-start themselves out of inertia with the Olympics… Ya think?
But the mistake that Daley made, promising streets paved with gold and a magic unicorn in every backyard because the Olympics, is just a failure of political vision and shouldn’t be a knock on the Olympics. Trying to substitute the Olympics for civic pride, economic momentum and political will says more about the cowardice and risk-aversion of modern politicians than it does about the efficacy of the Olympics.
If, however, we have civic pride, economic momentum and political will to begin with then… why not go for it?
Olympics lose money for host cities, they substantially disrupt host cities for months before and after the games, and they often leave unusable white elephant venues in their wake.
The public, particularly in this day and she, is not inclined to spend precious taxpayer dollars on the substantial modifications that the Olympics will require. Our infrastructure, transit, and a lot of our local regulations will need to be significantly altered. This is a state that voted against beer in grocery stores not too long ago, that may vote against a responsible gas tax to fund the T, and vote against a minor expansion of bottle deposits since they still think it’s “Taxachusetts”.
Like the casinos, Olympic boosters will need to promise lots of local jobs, lots of local projects, and lots of local revenue that the IOC has no interest in providing. When the public realizes it, they will turn against Walsh just as they did against Daley.
I might add all Chicago venues were going to be privately funded, built within city limits, and spread across the city. Is the Boston business community ready to pony up those funds? Do we have the space to build a village, stadiums, and major venues near each other? If our small underground tunnel to the airport was 10 years late and 22 billion over budget I shudder to think how we can put everything in place by 2024 without taxpayers losing money.
Neatly encapsulates the argument against.
Purely for contrarian purposes, I nominate City Hall and City Hall Plaza as the site for an Olympic Stadium.
…why is there such a competitive bid for them? If what you say is true it would seem the IOC would have to beg cities to host and thus allow potential hosts to dictate terms.
a completely lack of care for anyone living there?
I’ll also submit that for a few very, very small number of cities across the Globe, the Olympics can be done at a feasible cost and with comparitively little disruption.
That’s becoming less true in modern times, with London as a ‘cheap’ ~$15 billion games, since they already had the transportation infrastructure, hotels, airport and many of the venues. They even had the space.
Boston isn’t one of those cities. We’re an amazing city, but we’re not a London or a Beijing or even a LA.
And that’s okay.
What a destructive monstrosity that place is. Downtown Boston succeeds despite it — testimony indeed to our strength, with a concrete albatross like that around the city’s neck.
And the razing of the West End and the creation of Government Center should be a stark warning to any future Boston redevelopment project centered around centralized planning and international tastes. Brutalism was such a fad, and we have been stuck with its worst examples for most of our public buildings. Slum clearance was another bad fad. And even when our smart projects like the Big Dig go over budget with significant amounts of cronyism and corruption-we should really look in the mirror and get our head examined before donning our armour and tilting at windmills.
In the broad confines of your experience there are valuable metrics, variables and lessons to be learned, to be sure. Why are you, apparently, not capable of limiting yourself to them? I absolutely want to discuss what you did and what you learned. Like I said, it’s not nothing. But you’re like the guy who insists he knows how to run a bank because he got a pretty big loan once. Having gotten a big loan is a valuable piece of experience and knowledge that we can discuss. How to run a bank, which we can also discuss, isn’t contained in the purview of having gotten a loan. Then, when I challenge you on this, you want me to prove to you that I know how to run a bank… I don’t. Never claimed to do so. I’m negating your claim, not proffering one of my own. Neither of us know how to run a bank.
disguised in statements about the arguments.
and re-use it every four years, and for other things in between. Put it on Kwajalein Island, or Grenada, or someplace where it will inconvenience a minimum number of people.
I haven’t worked directly on a bid, but I did significant research work as an undergrad on Olympic bidding, partially thanks to the storehouse of documents in Montreal left over from 1976. A couple things worth mentioning:
-Chicago’s loss was (as previously mentioned) largely about IOC politics. An American city was not going to get the bid, full stop. No matter what quality it had. Telling that Chicago finished last in the voting amid some cities not on its quality level. That obstacle has been removed, and the IOC wants to come to America for the same reason as the Catholic Church — money.
-The debacles of Qatar’s World Cup, and the Winter Olympics nobody wants, are shifting some of the process. While I can’t promise the process will be less corrupt, it’s getting harder to play favorites.
Boston’s shortcomings are much more about infrastructure — we have no way to get the people here, and not enough places to put them. There isn’t the ability that China, Kazakhstan, and Russia have to mandate thousands of (shoddy) hotel rooms out of nowhere. Boston can’t handle a games, simply put. I suspect it’s on the list because it has some easier hooks for culture/looks than, say, DC. How do you host an “international event” which is supposed to have little nationalism in a city whose sole raison d’etre is national politics?
Boston Magazines October cover calls Boston “China’s Town”. A bit of hyperbole (and borderline racist) since in my experience only the Irish have narrowly predominated amongst the many peoples from all over the world who come here all the time…. so why single out the Chinese? I have no real way of proving it but I’ve long suspected that a large impetus behind the the Massachusetts casino push is to vacuum up more of the international dollars that jets in and out of here regularly. Boston really is an international town in the same way that London, NY, LA, Paris and Tokyo are international towns. No, they are not at the same population but that’s not relevant here. DC, as you point out, is international focused without being international by virtue (sic) of politics… And, while Chicago is a great great city, it too, is not an international city.
So I think Boston is on the list because it is an international town. Nor do I think our infrastructure is as parlous and inadequate as many here think. And even if they are we have 10 years to straighten that all out…
Are the security concerns in the DC area, vis a vis the Federal Government operations, too great to make movement of the Olympic community (athletes et al) as well as any and all attendees too difficult when considering the security arrangements for the Olympics? Would one cover the other, or must they overlap and create an unnavigable rats nest for anyone thinking of participating?
Boosters will tell you that it only makes the area more secure and makes the athletes safer since all these national security assets are already in place.
Realists would look at the secret service failing to protect the President as proof it won’t be able to protect athletes. Since Munich, most villages are fortresses, but it would obviously be a bigger terror target than the Bejing games.
I think you’re both right. All the structures are in place for security in DC, and how to move possible “targets” around a city. But the people in that structure seem to be not quite up to snuff right now.
Thanks!
Boston gets the summer Olympics . The entire operation is halted when ex-cons who were kept out of the casino land deals emerge once again and gum up the works. Mitt Romney arrives on the scene wearing a white cowboy hat (souvenir from the Utah Olympics), saves the Olympics (once again, he’s good at that apparently) and uses that to vault into the White House. Yup, just one more reason to oppose the Olympics in Massachusetts in case you needed one.
some prostitutes to entertain the IOC first…
Hire the Mayflower Madam to handle it all. You know how we like Massachusetts role in American history. Have some of the old House or Senate leadership do the pandering. I’m sure Ernie can find a role for Steve Wynn and Kevin Cullen.
From last weeks Tribune:
And unfortunately a casino may be our only way out:
Cities lose millions when they win the bid, but losers also have to pay the price for decades.
I’m sure there’s still a few more schools left that Rahm can shut down to pay for it.
#olympicpriorities
Here’s an idea: instead of landing the Olympics and then running around to build up the infrastructure, let’s turn it on it’s head.
1. Let’s identify the public infrastructure we’ll need for the Olympics, and a reasonable timeframe for construction. Where there’s discretion, front-load the infrastructure that will get high use during non-Olympic time.
2. Let’s start building it! Especially the transportation infrastructure, additional hotels and hospitality, and things that require long term land use planning. Come on Marty! Gov! State reps! Get on it! If it’s good for the Commonwealth, there’s no reason we have to ask the IOC for permission.
3. Let’s revisit this in 2018 (for a 2028 bid), when our first round of improved infrastructure is coming on line, our second round is under construction, and the people of Massachusetts can be more easily convinced that the stretch from “present day” to “Olympic-ready” is more manageable. In the mean time, because we’ve front loaded, our economy is stronger because we’ve got a more reliable and complete transportation system, increased hospitality resources, and all the jobs it required to build and now operate that infrastructure.