Boston 2024

Our Olympic stadium wouldn't fall into ruin either because it could be sized down to be the Revolution stadium after the games are over. Honestly, I used to be against a Boston bid, but I'm leaning more towards it everyday. I think the development associated with it could really be very very smart development.
 
datadyne007 said:
Our Olympic stadium wouldn't fall into ruin either because it could be sized down to be the Revolution stadium after the games are over. Honestly, I used to be against a Boston bid, but I'm leaning more towards it everyday. I think the development associated with it could really be very very smart development.
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I'm curious: How does one 'size down' a stadium?
 
datadyne007 said:
Our Olympic stadium wouldn't fall into ruin either because it could be sized down to be the Revolution stadium after the games are over. Honestly, I used to be against a Boston bid, but I'm leaning more towards it everyday. I think the development associated with it could really be very very smart development.
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The problem: The Revs stadium will be done long before Boston would even win a bid, and I'm not sure I'd want to delay it "just in-case." Certainly, the Krafts would be incredibly important to any bid effort (the chairmanship of the bid committee should be his to turn down) and maybe they'd want the stadium, but frankly I can't think of a possible Olympic stadium site I'd want to ultimately use for a soccer stadium as opposed to street gridding and full redevelopment.
 
Equilibria said:
The problem: The Revs stadium will be done long before Boston would even win a bid, and I'm not sure I'd want to delay it "just in-case." Certainly, the Krafts would be incredibly important to any bid effort (the chairmanship of the bid committee should be his to turn down) and maybe they'd want the stadium, but frankly I can't think of a possible Olympic stadium site I'd want to ultimately use for a soccer stadium as opposed to street gridding and full redevelopment.
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Well, if its possible to 'size down' a stadium, is it possible to size one up, for the olympics? Build the stadium early for the Revs, expand upon it for the Olympics, and then bring it back down to size afterward? Or, just build it to Olympic scale early, and let the Revs play in a too large stadium for a few years.

Of course, you're assuming that just because they want a stadium now that they'll be able to get in done in the next decade that this would be a problem.
 
DominusNovus said:
Well, if its possible to 'size down' a stadium, is it possible to size one up, for the olympics? Build the stadium early for the Revs, expand upon it for the Olympics, and then bring it back down to size afterward? Or, just build it to Olympic scale early, and let the Revs play in a too large stadium for a few years.

Of course, you're assuming that just because they want a stadium now that they'll be able to get in done in the next decade that this would be a problem.
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It's counter-intuitive to do it that way. That would require 3 construction phases (small-big-small). The whole point of downsizing a large stadium is to effectively reuse/adapt what you don't need.
 
datadyne007 said:
It's counter-intuitive to do it that way. That would require 3 construction phases (small-big-small). The whole point of downsizing a large stadium is to effectively reuse/adapt what you don't need.
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Well, yeah. I'm just trying to figure out how to mesh the idea of building a stadium large enough for the olympics and small enough for the Revs. If we had an idea of what time frame we could realistically expect a Rev stadium to be built, it would be easier.
 
Equilibria said:
The problem: The Revs stadium will be done long before Boston would even win a bid, and I'm not sure I'd want to delay it "just in-case." Certainly, the Krafts would be incredibly important to any bid effort (the chairmanship of the bid committee should be his to turn down) and maybe they'd want the stadium, but frankly I can't think of a possible Olympic stadium site I'd want to ultimately use for a soccer stadium as opposed to street gridding and full redevelopment.
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I wish the revs would host a game at BC's alumni stadium. It seems like a good match for venue size and public trans.
 
palindrome said:
I wish the revs would host a game at BC's alumni stadium. It seems like a good match for venue size and public trans.
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That solution would make a lot of sense, except that it doesn't address the primary issues. It's smaller than Gillette, but not small enough, and Kraft doesn't own it. It's not that the new soccer stadium is just for the good of the Revs - Kraft wants the asset.

Sizing up a stadium for the Olympics is tough, because Olympic stadia have field requirements that other venues don't. They need an enormously wide track, for instance, and often have stages and showpieces hiding under the grass (as London's did/does). The demands on the field affect all the other geometry of the stadium from the core out, as it were.

This is why American cities can't just use an NFL stadium for the Summer Games for anything but Soccer semi-finals. It works for the winter, though, that's how Vancouver did it (with BC Place).
 
The Atlanta Olympic stadium was downsized into today's Turner Field, the Atlanta Braves baseball park.
 
This notion that you need to be able to support an 80,000 cap stadium and several other large, permanent stadiums has been debunked, no?
2004 Athens built up and now has tried like hell to downgrade (or mothball) existing facilities. But the city has a multitude of other problems.
2008 Beijing is a growing city that (apparently) easily absorbs new facilities.
2012 London recognized that it didn't need dozens of new permanent facilities so it built several temp/modular buildings.
Seems like the host cities are frequently tweaking the "right" formula. Why couldn't Boston do something akin to London's 2012 Games (or Chicago's most recent bid which proposed mostly temp facilities).
Cue the: because the MBTA sucks!!!! Well so does MARTA. And I never thought Sydney's transit held a candle to Boston (and yes, I lived in Sydney).
 
I had some fun playing around with google maps, and discovered that if you used the South Bay Plaza as the core of your plan, and expanded out to include most of those industrial areas around it, as well as building over the Red/Orange lines and 90/93...

You come up with 700 acres of land on the high end. Given that London built their Olympic park on under 500 acres, I think the space concern is not as bad as some think. Of course, its not like we can just move on in and tear down every public storage facility, towing company, and seafood warehouse in Newmarket, particularly since the city wants to maintain some industrial capacity.
 
Beacon Park and the old Sears and Coke warehouse sites across Cambridge St are about 200 acres altogether, and Harvard is probably not doing anything with them soon. An olympic village there would see immediate reuse as student housing, and BU has already set a trend for highrises along the Charles.

Harvard Stadium is also RIGHT THERE and could have the northern seats added back, as well as some nosebleads attached to the existing structure that could be removed after the event.

Nickerson Field could probably also be converted back into its Braves Field capacity (or greater) since its surrounded by a decent amount of green space, even after the towers were build around it. Hell, you could probably demolish everything bounded by Gardner, Malvern, Babcock and Beacon Park for a large stadium too.

Those two facilities could hold some of the lower-key events, then you really just have to build one main stadium, which seems like a good fit somewhere in the South Bay.


Edit: I gave this a bit more thought afterwards:

I didn't worry about any of the facilities in London with capacity's under 10,000 as they are abundant at our surrounding colleges.

Gymnastics/Basketball Finals:
TD Garden
(18,624 Celtics, 20,000 London)

Field Hockey:
Nickerson (nee Braves) Field
(10,000 as Nickerson, 40,000 as Braves, 16,000 London)

Boxing, Fencing, Judo, Table Tennis, Taekwondo, Weightlifting, Wrestling:
BCEC + Hynes
(basically the same as the ExCeL)

Modern Pentathlon (running, shooting):
Franklin Park
(527 acres Boston, 180 acres London)
---you could probably do it in Allston too as there are a ton of parks along the Charles---

Equestrian:
Suffolk Downs

Tennis:
Harvard Stadium
(30,323 current, 57,166 old, 30,000 London)
---I would really like to see Harvard Stadium used no matter what, since it's design is based off the stadium from the first modern olympics---

Outdoor Vollyball:
Moakley Park, Southie
(comparable in size to London's venue)

Indoor Volleyball:
??? Maybe a temp structure over Steinbrenner Stadium?
(15,000 London)

Diving, Modern Pentathlon (swimming), Swimming, Synchronized Swimming:
New Permenant structure at the abandoned piers south of Maverick Square
(260'x520' London, 440'x600'Eastie)

All the boating events would take place on the Charles, but you could use Pleasure Bay for some things too as it is free of waves, and perhaps even the Chestnut Hill Reservoir.

Olympic Stadium / Soccer Finals:
New Permanant Venue, reducable in size.
(90,000 London)
 
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While I think that Aquatics should take place on one of the college campuses (coordinate with one of the universities to expand and improve their natatorium), the idea of using that dead zone south of Maverick for something is intriguing. Per bing maps (which has an area calculator, unlike google), you've got about 30 acres there, if you build on the piers, and 15 just on that big rectangle of solid ground. Thats pretty good right there.

The rest of your list looks pretty good to me; though I'd put equestrian events at Suffolk Down, and, per my own aesthetics, I'd like to see beach volleyball someplace close to the water (perhaps even Revere beach!), thats certainly an option for the Maverick site.
 
DominusNovus said:
While I think that Aquatics should take place on one of the college campuses (coordinate with one of the universities to expand and improve their natatorium), the idea of using that dead zone south of Maverick for something is intriguing. Per bing maps (which has an area calculator, unlike google), you've got about 30 acres there, if you build on the piers, and 15 just on that big rectangle of solid ground. Thats pretty good right there.

The rest of your list looks pretty good to me; though I'd put equestrian events at Suffolk Down, and, per my own aesthetics, I'd like to see beach volleyball someplace close to the water (perhaps even Revere beach!), thats certainly an option for the Maverick site.
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Suffolk Downs, DUR! I'm changing my OP.

My rationale for a new aquatics center is that while the pools themselves are present at all the colleges, I don't believe without significant modification they could fit even a fraction of the attendees. Also it seemed natural to put it near water, and I was trying to evenly distribute the events around the area to give every neighborhood a slice of the pie.

I know a lot of complaints about the olympics are that everyone stays just in the olympic village, which doesn't do much for the economy. By spreading things out not only is the load on the transportation system not as bad, but it forces attendees to explore the city.

As for the outdoor volleyball, I was looking for a place that was large enough for stands as well as the field itself. Upon further scrutiny the southern section of Revere Beach near beachmont could work, however I think Moakley Park in southie would be a better venue. I'm adjusting my OP to that effect too.
 
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I agree wholeheartedly with the idea of spreading out the Olympic facilities through the city as much as possible.

You're absolutely correct regarding the existing capacities of the Universities regarding their Natatoria; only BU and Harvard come close to Olympic requirements. However, only BU has a relatively new Natatorium anyway. Every other institution's is very dated, and NU specifically is looking to replace Cabot, which is right next to Barletta Natatorium. Coordination with one of the schools on building a new, Olympic standard facility is certainly an option. While I like the idea of it being near the water, I'm inclined to suggest that such a facility be on one of the campuses, since, in the end, the only ones that would really have any use for a competitive-class Natatorium would be the major universities.

I like the Moakley idea, too. Especially good if the center of the Olympics were built in Newmarket (my personal favorite idea), as they wouldn't be too far off.
 
Yeah, I was really just trying to toss eastie some love. My thoughts were that it could perhaps be a regional center for competition as well as a popular public diving pool type thing, getting people over to maverick for something other than pizza. It would probably just be a white elephant though, so a scaleable facility at one of the universities would probably be a better idea.
 
davem said:
Yeah, I was really just trying to toss eastie some love. My thoughts were that it could perhaps be a regional center for competition as well as a popular public diving pool type thing, getting people over to maverick for something other than pizza. It would probably just be a white elephant though, so a scaleable facility at one of the universities would probably be a better idea.
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I don't even think a Natatorium at one of the major universities would even need to be scalable. Now, I'm biased in favor of NU, as an alumnus, but I have to imagine that NU, along with the smaller Fenway area schools (Wentworth, Emanuel, Simmons, etc.) could certainly make use of a large scale facility like that.

And Eastie certainly deserves some love in the plan. Your suggestion about the piers is still a great site for something; its actually one of the few relatively areas in the heart of the city thats just completely undeveloped. 30 acres, and you could probably squeeze it up to 45 or so if you build between those abandoned piers. I just don't know *what* should be put there.

But I'm building a comprehensive map of locations on bing (it really is pretty good compared to google), so I'm definitely including it in my list. PS, does anyone have a nice, concise listing of all the facilities needed for the Olympics, particularly the more logistical type of things (IE, not just venues for competitions)?
 
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Proposition Joe said:
Yeah I did something like this too for the thread I linked: Link
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Interesting stuff and some good choices for venue locations.

I almost wonder if a world class aquatic center could be built and used by the area colleges, BC, BU, Northeastern, Harvard, etc. Not sure if all of them have swim and diving teams, but one could be built and then downsized like the one used in London will be doing.
 
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