Boston 2024

[underground]

It's sort of a loaded question to ask "has anyone been to Montreal" with no elaboration. Has anyone been to LA?

 

[Arlington]

^Loaded? Or too open-ended? Mysterious. Montreal (as a metro) has less than half the GDP of Boston, so I'm not sure where this is going. But I'd also note that London and LA are, in turn, twice as big as Boston. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_GDP

 

[Equilibria]

^Loaded? Or too open-ended? Mysterious. Montreal (as a metro) has less than half the GDP of Boston, so I'm not sure where this is going. But I'd also note that London and LA are, in turn, twice as big as Boston. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_GDP

He's referring to the financial disaster that the 1976 Games were for the City of Montreal (they were paying debts for 3 decades). According to Wikipedia, the story behind that is that the City first tried to manage the construction, managed it into the ground with municipal money, then lost control to the Quebec government which insisted that the City still cover all the costs.

As best I can tell, those Olympics were entirely publicly financed. Boston's bid is structured utterly differently. The disaster of 1976 produced the privately-funded 1984 Games in Los Angeles, in the same manner that the 2014 Olympics could produce a more responsible effort in Boston in 2024.

 

[Matthew]

Not only was it a financial disaster, it was an urban planning disaster.

The whole Olympic complex is a massive concrete wasteland.

Really, really terrible idea all around.

 

[Equilibria]

Not only was it a financial disaster, it was an urban planning disaster.

The whole Olympic complex is a massive concrete wasteland.

Really, really terrible idea all around.

Unquestionably true, but there aren't many similarities between Montreal's bid and Boston's.

 

[underground]

Not only was it a financial disaster, it was an urban planning disaster.

The whole Olympic complex is a massive concrete wasteland.

Really, really terrible idea all around.

Boston Olympics is a terrible idea if you're basing your conclusion on an n=1 study of Montreal. I could turn around and say that Barcelona wasn't a financial disaster, they were able to make huge improvements to their infrastructure, they were able to reuse an existing stadium that went on to a long useful life post games, and the city went through a huge era of prosperity despite a poor overall Spanish economy. So who's pointless N=1 study is less pointless?

In any case, you're trying to make a trend based conclusion (which is problematic in and of itself) based on an extremely small sample size where you can't even control the millions of variables impacting each sample. If every Olympics was the same, and the majority of Olympics were failures, then yeah, Olympics definitely = bad idea. But NO Olympics have been the same, and not all of them have been failures.

 

[George_Apley]

I could be wrong, but it seems to me that Matthew wasn't arguing against a Boston bid based on Montreal at all. He said that the Montreal bid was a terrible idea... that's how I read it at least.

 

[HenryAlan]

Not only was it a financial disaster, it was an urban planning disaster.

The whole Olympic complex is a massive concrete wasteland.

Really, really terrible idea all around.

Precisely. Everything about that is counter to what is proposed for Boston. Also, we really have to acknowledge that this sort of thing is something we do well here. Boston is the only major sports city without any public financed facilities.

 

[BostontoLancaster]

So a bunch of stuff was published yesterday regarding the Olympics. I found three articles...two about public skepticism regarding the bid and one about Baker's reaction. Rather than dropping all three into one post, here are some excerpts with links to the original articles if you're interested in reading the entire piece.

1. Debate over Bidding Resonating Loudest in Boston -- Boston Globe

Of the four US cities vying to host the 2024 Olympics, Boston — the city with the least recent history bidding for the Games — has seen the most intense public debate. An opposition group has formed and the city’s Olympic future has been the topic of ongoing commentary and argument on social media and the opinion pages of local newspapers.

“The noisiest city is Boston,” agreed Olympic site selection specialist Rob Livingstone, a Canadian who runs GamesBids.com, a website that tracks Olympic bids.

...

Los Angeles’s long Olympic résumé is an advantage in building public support for another bid, said Madrid, the political consultant.

“It is one of the few cities about which nobody would think: ‘Can they handle the Games or not?’ ” he said. While hosting the Olympics can be “a very expensive, massive, multi-year undertaking that can go horribly wrong — as many cities have found out — I don’t think LA’s city leaders have a burden to overcome to convince people that we can pull it off and pull it off well.”

...

The latest effort generated little news coverage through the fall, but Nathan Ballard, a spokesman for the San Francisco 2024 group, said attention and news coverage have ramped up over the past few weeks. San Francisco’s mayor, Ed Lee, is on board, and the San Francisco Chronicle editorial page last month gave organizers a tentative thumbs-up, saying the framework of the bid was “very encouraging.”

That framework is similar to what Boston 2024 has proposed: a temporary Olympic stadium that can be removed after the Games, maximum use of existing sports venues, and a pledge not to ask for public money, outside of what would be spent for permanent transportation improvements.

“Obviously there has been some grumbling, but by-and-large people in the Bay area are used to having the population swell on occasion for big events,” Ballard said.

...

In Washington, the 2024 Olympic bid is led by sports and business heavyweights such as Ted Leonsis, head of the company that owns the NBA’s Washington Wizards, the NHL’s Washington Capitals, and the Verizon Center where both teams play; former NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue; and Sheila Johnson, president of the WNBA’s Washington Mystics and a founder of the BET Network.

Washington made a pitch for the 2012 Games, but did not win the backing of the USOC.

Lisa Delpy Neirotti, an Olympic specialist at George Washington University, which is in the District of Columbia, said DC 2024 has received significant news coverage this year, but has not yet generated much opposition.

“Being disturbed with road closures, things like that, is pretty common here,” she said. “I think maybe the people in this community are just immune to it.”

2. As Boston, Other U.S. Cities Pursue Olympics, Critics See no Upside -- NPR

The anti-hosters also aren't buying the argument that host cities benefit long-term from increased business and tourism, citing studies showing no real change in economic activity. With Boston already booming with tourism in the summers and hotels at 90 percent capacity, the Olympics can't offer much improvement.

"The city is kind of small, and our infrastructure, like the roads, is already overtaxed," says Dennis Kelley, a native Bostonian and owner of the Yankee Lobster Fish Market.

...

Boston certainly isn't alone in this Olympic-size debate. Tom Tresser, who led the movement against Chicago's (ultimately failed) bid to host the 2016 games, says there's no way the Olympics could make a city like Chicago a world-class city.

"You can't be a world-class city if you've got serious problems with violence and education and inequality," he says.

Critics of placing the games in Washington, D.C., point out that the capital is already on the map of international tourist destinations; the Olympics won't help there. In San Francisco, some think the city's "quirky politics" could shut down its chances. And as for Los Angeles, it would be the third Olympics hosted by the city (after 1932 and 1984), which some consider a downside.

3. Charlie Baker Treads Carefully Around Olympic Questions -- Boston Globe

Note: this is actually an article that covers a broader range of topics that the future Governor addressed last night. Pretty much everything he said about the Olympics is in the excerpt below, so not much.

Baker also waded into a growing debate over whether Boston should host the Summer Olympics in 2024. He acknowledged criticism that there has been little public input on the question, but said the process is just beginning and could be a way to promote the state abroad.

“What’s actually going to happen here is, we may get permission to compete to be the host of the Olympic games,” Baker said. “It’s like getting a hunting license to be able to go promote Massachusetts and Boston as a great place. … Could we win? I don’t know.”

 

[Matthew]

I don't see the upside, and the downside is potentially staggering.

 

[Equilibria]

I don't see the upside, and the downside is potentially staggering.

The upside, as many have argued repeatedly, is the acceleration of needed infrastructure projects, as well as the enjoyment and fulfillment of holding a global event.

I don't see the "potentially staggering" downside, either. Prior hosts have been placed at risk for cost overruns, but the IOC has considered relaxing that this time, and Boston 2024 has been very clear that they will, as a private entity be at risk and insured.

Other than that, all public projects associated with the Games have already been proposed by the State. You can see all the boondoggle potential you like in them, but that applies regardless of the Olympics. This is a private athletic event with the clout to move a lot of political mass. It's like a ten-year Harvard - it has infrastructure and planning demands that hold weight with the State and the City. It is NOT a Big-Dig-esque public effort.

Do you see three weeks of traffic and light attendance at the MFA as "staggering" costs?

 

[Matthew]

I just don't think that the Commonwealth will follow thru with the acceleration of needed infrastructure projects. I'm not even sure they know how to do so, even if they really really wanted to.

Regarding public or private -- all urban megaprojects have effects. Usually bad. Especially when it involves creating large, institutional, monolithic facilities.

 

[CSTH]

A hypothetical case study to focus the conversation a bit

Would GLX have been more FUBAR if it had happened in the context of an Olympics? Or less FUBAR? Or more FU in some dimensions, and less FU in others?

Discuss...

 

[coleslaw]

Oh, that creepy dystopian city with an odd Eastern European vibe to it? Yeah, I've been there.

Is that really what you think of Montreal. I found it to be a city with the right mixture of grit and class and unafraid to show its promiscuity and underside. I love it.

 

[cozzyd]

IMO, few American cities compare favorably to many Eastern European cities (in terms terms of infastructure and cityness, obviously not GDP). Though, I'm probably biased since I was born in Bucharest.

 

[SeamusMcFly]

I just don't think that the Commonwealth will follow thru with the acceleration of needed infrastructure projects. I'm not even sure they know how to do so, even if they really really wanted to.

Regarding public or private -- all urban megaprojects have effects. Usually bad. Especially when it involves creating large, institutional, monolithic facilities.

But, isn't the only real large monolithic facility to be built temporary? All others would be smaller, and or upgrades to existing facilities.

Your skepticism about boston ability or inability to follow through on major infrastructure upgrades however, are well founded.

 

[393b40]

But, isn't the only real large monolithic facility to be built temporary?

There's a saying in software engineering: "Nothing is more permanent than temporary."

 

[SeamusMcFly]

There's a saying in software engineering: "Nothing is more permanent than temporary."

There's also a saying at the IOC. 'If we're paying for it, it's temporary.'

Some built in protection against unneeded waste of space buildings that would require acres of permanent parking is a nice.

 

[BostontoLancaster]

Articles from the weekend:

1. IOC Sets Schedule for 2024 Olympic Bid Process -- USA Today

The International Olympic Committee said prospective contenders must submit their candidacies by Sept. 15, 2015, starting a preliminary application phase that will run through April or May 2016. The formal "candidate city" phase will continue until the selection of the host in the summer of 2017.

...

Under the timeframe, the IOC will host an "information seminar" for applicant cities in Lausanne, Switzerland, from Oct. 7-9, 2015, to set the rules and procedures for the campaign.

Cities will then face a deadline of Jan. 8, 2016, to submit their bid files to the IOC.

2. Potential U.S. Bid for Olympics has Timing on its Side -- USA Today

If the U.S. Olympic Committee decides to pursue the 2024 Summer Games, as expected, it will do so knowing there is almost no chance an American bid will face the kind of humiliation New York and Chicago did. Unlike when the U.S. bid for the 2012 and 2016 Games, the USOC has representations at the highest levels in the IOC.

And the IOC doesn't embarrass its own.

"They have a strong IOC membership position today. And I think that that's really important. That's going to help a bid," Pat Ryan, who was chairman and CEO of Chicago 2016, told USA TODAY Sports recently.

...

The IOC is also aware that it needs to make occasional trips to the U.S., particularly for the Summer Games. It will be at least 28 years between Summer Games in the United States, and it hasn't hosted the Olympics since the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City.

Take that all together, and Ryan said the timing for a U.S. bid is close to ideal.

3. Why We should Relax about Boston's Olympic Bid -- Boston Globe

OLYMPIC VOLLEYBALL on Boston Common? Maybe. But we are a long way off from that possibility.

As someone who has been to virtually every Olympic Games since 1988, who used to head a company that was an international Olympic sponsor, who in the past has expressed doubts about a Boston Olympics, and who once held the International Olympic Committee’s feet to the fire for a stunningly corrupt bidding process, I have one word for the critics of a Boston bid: Relax.

The United States Olympic Committee has to first decide if it wants to bid at all and then has to decide among four American cities. And then, assuming it does, there are many international competitors who are possible bidders: Paris, Hamburg, Melbourne, Rome, Doha, Johannesburg, Istanbul, to name a few.

So there is no reason for anxiety at this juncture. Allow me to offer a dose of reality:

1. The details of the bid will change. Even if the USOC chooses Boston as its candidate, it will be September 2017 before the IOC decides which city among the international competitors will host the Games. That represents more than two years for Boston to further develop a plan, scrutinize it, debate it publicly, and then to refine it.

2. Vladimir Putin is not in the State House or City Hall. Much of the worry about bidding for the Games centers on the potential squandering of public funds. Two Games much cited by critics — Beijing in 2008 and Putin’s Sochi in 2014 — cost $40 billion and $50 billion respectively.

But these Olympics were financed by authoritarian regimes, and extravagance is no longer the order the day. At the IOC, they are keenly aware of the danger of making the Games so expensive that only an authoritarian regime would want them — especially now that four of six bidders have dropped out of the running for the 2022 Winter Games. So the IOC is working towards a less demanding economic model and is about to vote on a strategic roadmap named Olympic Agenda 2020, which would consider the use of pre-existing facilities as a positive factor in evaluating bids.

Given the depth of the sports infrastructure in Boston, which includes not just professional venues, but also university athletic facilities, as well as the dormitories that house a quarter of a million students, Boston could launch an extremely strong bid without promising to build everything from scratch.

Of course, there will need to be infrastructure improvements, such as in public transportation, that will require public funds. Nonetheless, rest easy. This is a democracy. Charlie Baker and Marty Walsh are too smart and too inclusive not to allow a public debate.

3. The new Olympic leadership is remarkably progressive. In 1998, the IOC had a poisonous bidding scandal that came to light in the run-up to the Salt Lake City Games, and I felt it was important to publicly demand reforms. In 2003, I appeared before the US Senate Commerce Committee and testified that USOC was a bloated, opaque bureaucracy. Fortunately for world-class athletes and their fans around the globe, both organizations took the right lessons and now have true professionals running the show. Both the USOC and the IOC are on much better paths today.

USOC CEO Scott Blackmun has said that the organization will choose a city for “fiscal responsibility” and an appealing story. The recently-elected IOC President Thomas Bach has said from the start that “sustainable development” is his vision — in other words, making sure that the Olympics helps a city reach its social, economic, and environmental goals, long after the visitors depart.

4. In Boston, a city where everyone wants progress, but few embrace change, the Games could spur some much-needed action. The lack of affordable housing in metropolitan Boston is clearly a crisis. What if the Olympic Village could be used after the Games as 10,000 affordable housing units? What if the improvements in our aging transportation infrastructure brought better public transit to outlying communities and opened neglected neighborhoods to new business investment?

5. If Boston decides to host the Games, it is likely to stick the landing beautifully. We may not have Los Angeles’s glitter or Paris’s wide boulevards or Istanbul’s exotic look, but we have more important things to offer the Olympic Games: Walkability and charm, the brains and taste to manage the Games well, and a really unusual civic cohesiveness. Boston’s business community and government have always been balanced by its great universities, superb hospitals, and nonprofits of all kinds. All the players tend to view metropolitan Boston as a community of partnerships, and they work together to enhance our unique competitive advantages.

So relax. If Boston decides to go for the Games, they will be another intelligent public-private partnership, and, like many ventures in our history, we will set an example for how things should be done.

 

[BostontoLancaster]

Emphasis is mine.

A Boston Olympics: The conversation must continue

By Marcela García and Nicole Hernandez December 09, 2014

Playing host to the world for the 2024 Olympics would be a great responsibility, burden, and — possibly — a boon to the Boston area.

And the public conversation about whether the Games should be held here cannot be limited to one event.

Globe Opinion’s discussion Monday night brought several questions, conversations, and observations into one space, but it by no means was the final say for either supporters or opponents. On one side, Chris Dempsey, the co-chair of the No Boston Olympics group, outlined passionate arguments against Boston being the host for the summer games in 2024. On the other side, Juliette Kayyem, a member of the Boston 2024 group that is putting together the city’s bid for the games, did her best in trying to describe the benefits that will come to the city.

Here are some of the key quotes and takeaways from the night that the public should consider as Boston pursues its bid for the Games:

‘I have not read the bid.’

Perhaps the most jaw-dropping quote from the evening came from Kayyem, who admitted she has not read the full bid — she has only seen a limited portion of it — which hasn’t been public. Transparency was a key issue during the conversation. Dempsey repeatedly tried to get a commitment out of Kayyem to make the four US bids public, but she kept dodging the question, insisting Boston is only at the beginning of a “very long process.” Tokyo, she said, changed 40 percent of sites after being selected. The only final decision made so far, according to Kayyem, was that Mayor Martin J. Walsh supported the bid.

How will regular Bostonians benefit?

Kayyem talked about a new and more sustainable vision for the Olympics, which is apparently consistent with what Boston should want. She said Bostonians will benefit from “presenting Boston as the global city that it is. It is a party but it is not just that.”

She also highlighted what the Olympics did to Barcelona’s waterfront and underscored that the Olympics can galvanize public works.

We confirmed that Boston has deep scars.

So the Big Dig scarred us — and apparently also hosting the Democratic National Convention in 2004. Bostonians hold deep grudges, and we cannot forget about the horrible traffic nightmares, street closures, and interrupted businesses. But Kayyem insisted in the infrastructure benefits, which moves people and communities, in turn, spurring the economy.

Should we just kill the Olympic Games?

The debate surrounding the Olympics has been so heated that it has led some people to consider the idea of simply getting rid of the Games altogether. But not even Dempsey could bring himself to agree with that statement. “It is not for us, for No Boston Olympics, to decide whether the Olympics should just end. The Olympics are phenomenal . . . but they’re not in the best interest of the people of Massachusetts.”

Boston Globe

Anybody else a little surprised that a member of the 2024 Organizing Committee (Juliette Kayyem) was chosen to represent the committee trying to bring the Games here and, by her own admission, she hasn't even read the Boston's bid fully? I feel like she was sent to this forum with a six-shooter that only had three bullets. Maybe I'm missing something, but I at least assumed all the members of the 2024 Organizing Committee and our legislators had seen the bid packet.