Bringing the Olympics to Boston has been talked about my entire life, but despite decades of discussion, there’s still little to no public groundswell of support for the idea. So why does the legislature still have a committee looking at it? Today’s Boston Globe report by Michael Levenson makes clear that construction and consulting firms are desperate to get their hands in the multi-billion-dollar Olympics cookie jar.
How blatantly is the process being driven by the wealthy businessmen who’d profit from it? The committee’s chairman is Suffolk Construction chief executive John Fish:
Fish’s firm could benefit from all the construction projects that would have to be built to host the Olympics. But Fish insisted his role as a construction company executive would not influence his role as panel chairman charged with impartially examining the viability of a Boston Olympics.
Oh, I’m sure Fish only has our best interests in mind & would never put his own first! Even though Fish thinks our climate, clean our air, and job prospects should take a back seat to Fish not having to look at wind turbines.
Consulting giant PricewaterhouseCoopers is also hoping for a piece of the action. Here’s how far down their rep had to dig for an example of something that didn’t completely rip off taxpayers:
[Barry] Nearhos, speaking about the new airport and high-speed rail line built for the Games in Sochi, told the panel that not all the costs for the projects were borne by the Russian public. For example, a private company built one of the ski venues in Sochi, he said, and will operate it as a private resort after the Games.
There was this one ski venue that was built properly! You might assume taxpayers would build the ski resort & private companies would profit, but in at least this one case, you’d be wrong!
The meeting seemed to keep coming back to public funding that would generate private profits. For example, Fish was eager to push “public-private partnerships”:
At the commission meeting, Fish mused about using a public-private partnership to build an Olympic village, which he said could then be turned into housing for middle-income workers after the Games end. He also said facilities at the 100 colleges and universities in the area could be upgraded to host athletes and events.
Here’s the thing: If improving public transportation, building more apartments, and investing in higher education is such a good idea (and it is), why don’t we just do that? Why do we have to shovel subsidies at the scandal-ravaged International Olympic Committee and “public-private partnerships”?
But wait, there’s more! A British diplomat reassures us that London benefited from the Olympics, probably … if you don’t count the absurdly massive cost overruns:
Costs ballooned about 300 percent over initial estimates and the Olympics may not have resulted in a net economic gain for the city, she said.
“I can’t honestly say we’ve made a profit out of the Olympics,” Kitchens said. […]
And, after the budget was revised upward by 300 percent, “we stuck to it,” she said.
After we gouged taxpayers for three times more than we’d first promised, we tightened our belts! It’s like fiscal conservatism for people who think the Iraq War was fiscally conservative.
Let’s invest in making Boston a great place for the people who live there, not for people who might visit for a week in 2024.
plus some transportation infrastructure. Seems like not much return on $14 billion.
We could do both of those things AND buy a new big screen TV for every Boston resident to watch the 2024 Olympics and still have like $11 billion leftover.
if I never ever have to watch not only the Olympics but the Stupor Bowl and Hockey ever again in my lifetime.
If this is ever put to a referendum, put me in the “Hell No” column.
I didn’t realize anyone was being forced to watch these events. You can keep your TV and avoid watching stuff you don’t like. Let me know if you want details on the “how to”.
But more seriously, it is possible to be a fan of the Olympics (like me) and to simultaneously believe that having them in Boston is a bad idea.
OK – back to watching the curling I recorded from this morning. 🙂
is in the movie “Help” when the Beatles are in the Alps (Switzerland I believe) and one of the “Stones” is replaced with a bomb. And I think it plays a part in an episode of the Simpsons as well:)
Why didn’t the smiley face work. 🙂
All this comes on the heels of NPR’s report on the economics of hosting the Olympics?
http://www.npr.org/blogs/theedge/2014/02/03/268917536/the-games-are-a-great-party-but-not-a-great-investment
Bottom line:
“So cities, go ahead and host the Olympics. It’s a great party. It’s just a terrible investment.”
There’s no groundswell of support because it’s really not on the public’s radar, which may be fine for now as this still seems very preliminary.
but I thought it was just me.
It makes absolutely no economic sense.
Any politician who thinks this is a good idea automatically makes it to my list of people *never* to vote for.
Having the Olympics in Boston is just one of many Bad Ideas that get bashed here.
As they should.
of support if only it would register on the public’s radar, when you said the following just 2 days ago on another topic:
Seriously, I only draw the connection, because you comments are among the few that I make an effort to read.
As far as I know it has not been polled. All I meant is that I would not expect such a groundswell to be spontaneously generated without it being a commonly known news story.
Who live and work in the areas this would largely effect.
It’s bashed because it’s a bad idea, led by self interested people who won’t even allow as cosy benefit analysis until the state agrees to bid – and just bidding would cost tens of millions of dollars, all flushed down the toilet.
I have not seen one. Of course we should study whether bidding is feasible, but I feel I’m just hearing a lot of we can’t do it without trying. In school we often tell kids that “can’t” is a four-letter word, the use of which is highly discouraged, at least without some serious effort before resorting to it.
I live in Boston, and I don’t know of anyone who has expressed any interest in the Olympics coming here when the topic has come up. That’s not a real poll, of course, but without any other evidence, you have to have be wearing rose colored glasses to believe anything else.
In any case, it doesn’t really matter whether people think it would be cool to have them here. The question is whether tax payers want to pay for it. Given that we have repeatedly rejected attempts to get tax payers to pay for stadiums for our beloved sports teams, I find it highly unlikely that they would be willing to throw money at such an obvious boondoggle.
excited by the idea of the dramatic Opening and Closing Ceremonies and Bob Costas babbling on and on so, earnestly, you probably know a supporter. However, once you explain our failures to effectively manage any big project in a fiscally responsible manner, then the pendulum swings the other way. Me, I’m entrenched in the no column. I’ve never seen officialdom undertake any project that hasn’t been a complete fiasco costing us money.
I don’t feel strongly either way — I think I lean against it, since the city barely functions as is — but I wouldn’t rule it out. Like I said, it could be an opportunity for other improvements.
I think China and now Sochi are going to spur a global backlash against Olympic spending. There’s no way they need to cost $50 billion, and we might see a move toward more emphasis on the amateur aspect and less on the showcase aspect.
I like the idea of having the Summer Olympics in Boston.
It certainly doesn’t have to have a price tag like previous Olympics. We can showcase what we already have; the Boston Marathon route, the Charles River. We could even utilize college arenas.
Everything doesn’t have to be held in Boston. Events could be held down the Cape, on the North Shore, Worcester, etc.
This is a chance for our home, rich in history and culture, to be showcased on a world stage. I would be proud of that.
We could end up with a better public transit system, upgraded colleges/universities, and a renewed sense of pride.
I say let’s do it, but do it right.
At the very least, we should continue to study the idea.
I don’t think the Boston Marathon route could be used in the Olympics because the start and finish points have to be near to each other and there is a limit on elevation drop. Any real marathoners out there can probably give specifics.
the problem with the Boston Marathon course was the change in elevation. It was said that it cost a recent winner a record. It’s hard to imagine that one of the historic, signature, marathons in the world is disqualified for this reason. As far as I’m concerned, its historic nature, alone, should make other marathons adjust to conform to it. For that matter, how difficult would it be to adjust the course, to keep the poobahs of racing happy? After all, it’s a few years away. Surely someone with a GIS system could come up with a good alternative.
You say “it doesn’t have to have a price tag like previous Olympics”. Well, the only way to win is to promise the IOC gigantic “legacy” facilities that get them all excited. That’s why Sochi won.
I’m open to the idea of a Boston Olympics, but flying through Terminal E in Logan tells me it would be hard to make it happen. I can’t imagine the USOC making Boston its bid in 2024, but let’s see how it plays out.
If that means what I think it means (facilities that will last beyond their Olympic usage), I can see host cities wanting venues they can use again, but why would the IOC care?
The IOC wants to feel they have an impact, ever since Seoul was given some credit for helping break up the dictatorship in 1988. Buildings left over the Olympics is one way to show that they did a city lasting good. Problem is one rarely knows what to do with a leftover velodrome or whitewater kayaking facility.
Would be billions and billions and billions… and the IOC won’t award Boston anything unless we have top notch facilities. Bidding is expensive itself. Tens of millions. If we know we won’t get it because we won’t play ball with the IOC’s level of extravagance it likes from these games, we shouldn’t waste our time, money or resources into it.
If we’re not willing to plop down 20+ billion (conservative guess considering inflation) we have no business bidding.
…who would? Are other cities that much richer than Boston that they wouldn’t miss the $20B? What motivates other cities to “play ball with the IOC’s level of extravagance” that doesn’t apply to Boston?
Do we agonize over why other cities in the US have thrown away hundreds of millions of dollars on money losing stadiums for public teams? No we don’t.
As long as their are other locations who value pageantry and prestige over economic sense, there is no way to compete for a more reasonably priced option.
Also, there are many other cities that would have fewer venues that would need to be built from scratch.
1) Emerging countries desperate to host the games for PR purposes and willing to pump in enormous resources to win the bid (China, Russia, Brazil — South Korea will probably also fit this list).
2) Cities who already have most of the infrastructure in place to host the games, so they could put in a lower than average bid, if in regions that will produce guaranteed ratings successes to keep the IOC’s US network coverage happy.
London fit that bill, sort of. It’s cost was still pretty high compared to the Olympics of yore, but much more affordable than it would have been for a US city since the UK backed those games in a way the feds here probably won’t.
One thing to bear in mind is that in most countries, the country primarily finances the game, not the city or state. The US is pretty distinct in that we bid against ourselves and that the winning US bidders are expected to fund the game with little federal help.
Utah is really the first US Olympics where the federal government pumped in upwards of half the cost of the games — and even then, that only happened after Utah needed to be bailed out in order to avoid a national embarrassment.
There’s no way, though, for bidders in the US to plan on any given level of federal funding. It would be at the whims of Congress and/or the President. Does anyone want to take the chance that if Boston needed $10 billion from the feds to make an Olympics here happen, that we’d actually get it? I don’t.
So that really only leaves giant, wealthy cities, with giant wealthy states backing them as likely to have the resources to fund the thing in the US.
LA could put in the most reasonable bid — so much so that I would actually support another Olympics there — because unlike most of the US, they already have most of the venues and hotel space that would be needed to put the games on.
NYC could outspend anyone in the US if they wanted and ‘zerg build’ those venues, but while Bloomberg was self-important enough to want to do that, I doubt de Blasio would be.
Chicago probably couldn’t afford it — not really — but they have an egomaniac as Mayor who probably thinks it can, so they’ll put in a competitive bid if they want it and may just get it.
When it decimates their budget in the long run, it will only give the Rahmster another reason to take a bat to the teachers or something.
Boston doesn’t need to purported ‘prestige’ that emerging countries are willing to pay through the nose to get, not when we have Harvard, MIT, the Boston Marathon and the Red Sox. So we don’t “need” these games, and it comes down to whether we could reasonably afford them.
We can’t count on a significant investment from the federal government to put these games on. Without that, we absolutely, positively *cannot* risk putting ourselves on the tab for a two week long series of events that could cost north of $20 billion in 2020.
Nor do I think we have the infrastructure or hotels to win the bid anyway, even if we willing to give the IOC a blank check.
Even though multiple cities in the US bid against each other, at least at first, is it not the case that the USOC chooses ONE city to be THE bid city representing the US for any given Olympics? Once that is chosen all resources can be put behind that city.
Also, I do think it makes more sense for states or other regional entities rather than individual cities to make the bid. For example, “Boston” should really mean MA to alleviate stress on the city proper and since I’ve heard it suggested some events would be elsewhere, including up here in Lowell.
Ryan is incorrect in saying that the US is unique in having national cities compete against one another. Other countries (Italy and Great Britain, for example) do so as well. Their competitions are often less formal than American ones have been — though the USOC is trying to get away from that.
Yes, at some point the USOC will choose one bid. Of course, they really are regional bids — the two facilities complexes in Sochi are forty minutes apart, and Vancouver/Whistler was the same. A “Boston” summer bid could include Lowell, Foxboro, or Plymouth easily.
I’ve said elsewhere that maybe fifty cities have the capacity to host what the Olympics have become. Chicago is one — more than New York I’d say — but Boston certainly isn’t.
… Wikipedia, the average number of total athletes for the last six or seven summer olympiads is around 10,000.
10,000 athletes. In Sochi, it’s less than that. about 6k, as it has been, traditionally, for Winter Olympics.
Also, according to Wikipedia, the average registered attendance for the yearly Boston Marathon is well over 20,000 athletes and the peak registration was well over 30,000. This does not include ‘free runners’ who do not register and who make up a sizeable portion of the field who could swell the number of athletes to well over 60,000. Well over 500,000 people spectate. People come from all over the world to participate and to spectate.
By tradition, in Boston every year, when the Marathon is held, the Red Sox play a home game at Fenway Park. This has been occurring yearly for well over 100 years…. and every year for at least the last 12 years has been a sellout crowd of well over 30,000 spectators. It has become a routine for the game to get out and everybody head over to cheer on the runners.
Boston every single year holds dual sporting events in one day that dwarf any single Olympic event and the total number of Olympians for the two weeks of the games doesn’t come close to the total number of runners in one day of the Marathon. Aside from the opening ceremony, no single event will draw the number of spectators that the Marathon draws, never mind the added spectators of the Red Sox game.
If Boston cannot hold an Olympiad than I am at a complete lose to know who can.
The 2012 summer program needed 30 venues and hosted 500,000 tourists from overseas to the Olympics. We don’t have a place to do the track or opening and closing ceremonies. Boston would need a new subway system and airport to bring those people to the venues. Are you going to rely on Terminal E and the Green Line? Unlike a Celtics and Red Sox game, you have ten venues active at any one time. You can’t just ramp up for a two-hour crush of commuters — you have a twelve-hour crush. And do it eighteen days in a row.
That’s why these bids start several years in advance and maybe we should be looking further down the road. Maybe it will have the side effect of lighting a fire under efforts to improve our infrastructure which we should be doing anyway.
You mistake me. I did not say we could do it tomorrow with no change to our infrastructure whatsoever. There will need to be changes. I don’t, however, think the changes need to be monstrous… Instead of an “olympic village’, for example, why not just have a couple of ‘Carnival Cruise’ ships park in the harbor for the duration? The same can be done for excess hotel rooms. When the Olympics are done, they just sail away.
As far a the subway goes… it’s the oldest in the nation and desperately in need of an upgrade anyways. I think, whether or no we get the 2024 Olympics Massachusetts should think about serious money on that infrastructure… So it should come as no surprise that I don’t see that as a stumbling block.
I was actually surprised at the relatively small number of athletes relative to the hype and the dollars spent. And so I think that hype is just hype and the dollars spent don’t reflect the true cost of the olympics. I think the nationalists in China and Russia, spending obscene amounts of money to paper over their inadequacies have had the effect of making the Olympic games seem bigger than they are. I don’t really think Sochi costs $50B. Rather, maybe Putin is just an idiot for hiring incompetent and corrupt people to run it.
It costs tens of millions just to seriously bid on these things.
This is not a winning bid
If we can’t put together a bid that’s at least competitive, we shouldn’t bother.
Lack of hotel space and proper venues is only one of many reasons Boston is currently a poor choice for the Olympics.
The feds are not necessarily going to pump in the needed money.
And the way we bid in the US is different enough to make it much harder and costly for us than other countries that are better at having a more unified bid.
Last April we mobilized nine million cops for 24 hours. I assume that did not cost billions.
Yes to serious consideration of the Olympics… and I’m not seeing a lot of that here. If the consideration is serious, with neither a knee-jerk “yes” or an impulsive “no” of equal or greater intensity, whatever the outcome I’ll be satisfied.
But no to this bozo Fish who seems to be grubby of finger and shallow of thought… never mind the clear conflict of interest. if he’s the chair of the commission, one hopes for better members down the ranks…