Boston 2024

kmp1284 said:
I don't think there's any comparison in prestige between Olympic golf [...] and the Ryder Cup or US Open.
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We agree on this one, just not on the direction.

As a golf tournament, both the Ryder Cup and the Majors are more important. As an event in general, it is not even close. Not in the same ball park, not the same galaxy. The Olympics are the number 1 event in the world. Short of the Country Club building a soccer stadium in the middle of hole 18 to host the World Cup final, there is nothing they can do that would resonate more around the world. People that don't care at all about golf will watch.

There is a reason tennis in London was played at Wimbledon. There is a reason tennis will be played at Roland Garros if it ever goes to Paris.

It would be a travesty to have the Olympics in Boston and not play golf at the Country Club (and I know very well it is a decision for the members to make) but they organized the last massive event there in '99. It will be 25 years come 2024. That is plenty of time.
 
My personal experience from working with lots of lawyers on complex contracts (in RE development, affordable rental housing in particular, and equity finance thereof): while one certainly needs a lawyer to litigate or really understand the deep complexities of a contract, us non-lawyers can often opine on the political impact of a document every bit as well as lawyers. And we can read a contract and get at least a decent first-order comprehension, without a lawyers input.

Having said that, I'd also very much like to hear from attorneys on the forum.

On the employee-muzzling front, I agree it would be politically absurd to try to enforce this. Just a complete backfire to take action against any employee. As to whether it's legally enforceable, that I am unsure of.

As for the financial indemnifications, they look reasonably stiff compared to other contracts I've seen, not a whole lot of carve-outs. And they really seem to run in only one direction. A big question is what sort of Guaranty Agreement backs this, if any.
 
One more before I gotta go back off lunch break.

The Joinder Agreement has a loopy aspect. This will take a bit for me to explain: long post warning.

The preamble lists the USOC and the City of Boston as parties to this Joinder. The preamble does reference another document, the Bid City Agreement, which is between the USOC and Boston 2024 Partnership. The latter is the private bid group with Fish, Kraft, et al. The USOC and the Boston 2024 Partnership are jointly defined as the Bid Committee – City of Boston is not within that Bid Committee, at least not according to this document. The Bid Committee is not a signatory to this Joinder Agreement, only City and USOC.

Here’s what I find odd: in Section 3.01, it says “the City shall, jointly and severally with the Bid Committee, defend, hold harmless and indemnify the USOC, its trustees, directors, ….” etc, etc. from all harm and so on. So that seems at first glance to put the Boston 2024 Partnership on the hook for the indemnification along with the City. That’s good for the taxpayers, right? Except, wait a sec, the Bid Committee jointly offers this indemnification, and the USOC is a party within that Bid Committee. This is circular: the USOC is within the indemnifying entity and also the recipient of the indemnity. And, the Boston 2024 Partnership does not sign on this Joinder Agreement. I can introduce you to lawyers who’d consider all those factors to add up to a sufficient collective loophole through which the Boston 2024 Partnership could dodge any indemnification burden under this document taken alone, should such an indemnification even arise. There may, of course, be language in the Bid Committee documents that puts the Boston 2024 Partnership on the hook via some other avenue. But I do not see them on the hook here.

This doc puts the City on the hook in various ways, including in section 2.02: “The City shall provide or cause to be provided all of the City funding, facilities, operational support, and other resources specified in and by the Candidature Documentation.”

So, OK, so now I will stop playing amateur lawyer (a dangerous affair), and will move on to the political impact of this. I want to see the Candidature Documentation. FWIW, I am still firmly in the neutral column on this bid. I think the proponents of this bid should be rushing to publish something that shows some private entities on the hook in some way. This has been consistently touted as a privately financed Olympics, aside from the transit improvements that were going to happen anyway. And the security expenses, which those nice Republican majorities in both houses of Congress will of course happily provide [cough, cough].

The idea of a privately financed event that prompts much-needed transit upgrades sends me leaning towards the “pro” side. My latent realism about MA politicians (or cynicism if you prefer) makes me leery that it’ll work that way, but not yet leery enough to lean all the way to “anti”. So here’s the first doc that I saw hitting the web, and it firmly puts the City on the hook, but not any private entity. They need to get those other docs out there and fast. I am assuming for politeness’ sake that they exist: there must be many other pertinent docs to come. right?

I’ll also note that I don’t live in Boston, I only commute there daily on the T. This Joinder Agreement in no way shape or form mentions the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, or its taxpayers, or the MBTA, etc. That's nice for me, as I see nothing that puts me on the hook. Not so nice for all you Boston residents who pay taxes: Walsh has signed you up, and didn't even to get a copy of the USOC's signature on the version that got posted.
 
And taking one quick glance at the insurance doc, I did not see USOC with "Bid Committee". Upon re-reading the Joinder Agreement, I think I over-reached when I said in my prior post that USOC is within the Bid Committee. So I retract that comment about the loopiness of USOC indemnifying itself.

I stand by my argument that the Boston 2024 Partnership is not on the hook in the Joinder Agreement, however.
 
Schorschico said:
We agree on this one, just not on the direction.

As a golf tournament, both the Ryder Cup and the Majors are more important. As an event in general, it is not even close. Not in the same ball park, not the same galaxy. The Olympics are the number 1 event in the world. Short of the Country Club building a soccer stadium in the middle of hole 18 to host the World Cup final, there is nothing they can do that would resonate more around the world. People that don't care at all about golf will watch.

There is a reason tennis in London was played at Wimbledon. There is a reason tennis will be played at Roland Garros if it ever goes to Paris.

It would be a travesty to have the Olympics in Boston and not play golf at the Country Club (and I know very well it is a decision for the members to make) but they organized the last massive event there in '99. It will be 25 years come 2024. That is plenty of time.
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They charge a six figure initiation fee and the waiting list is a mile long. I'm not sure they care too much about making a statement. There are plenty of better golf courses out there but as for the country club experience and the breadth of their offerings, nobody does it better(Olympic Club perhaps).
 
Enough with the golf talk.

At this stage, if it isn't a top driver of TV viewing, it isn't important.

Top events can change depending on personalities, but roughly the top 10 "events" are:

Opening & Closing (O Stadium)

Big 3 Sports
Aquatics (Swimming & Diving)
Gymnastics
Athletics (Track & Field)

Second Tier

Football (Soccer)
Volleyball
Equestrian (as a TV novelty, apparently)
Basketball
Cycling

...and then everything else
 
I was missing a slash in my link above (to the Mass-Live page with the Joinder Agreement), here’s that link again:

http://www.masslive.com/news/boston...sed_olympic_docu.html#incart_related _stories

MassLive also has the bid document here:

http://www.masslive.com/news/boston...ad_the_bid_documents_boston.html#incart_river

Very rough schematics only. But it does show Tennis, Aquatics, and Water Polo structures, all in Allston, along with an I-90 realignment. So they’re projecting that happens by 2024.

Over at Widett Circle, there seems to be some assumption that a lot of the rail yards, though not all, get decked over. (again these are not detailed drawings.) They refer to the Widett area as “Midtown”.

Two relevant quotes about “Midtown”
One, from page 25 on the printed page, but 32 on pdf pagination:

“The opportunity proposition is simple: transform a tangle of maintenance yards and city public works buildings into a platform for entertainment and future commercial development that transforms an urban scar into a meaningful seam between neighborhoods.”

The other, from page 37 on the printed page, but 45 on the pdf:

“For areas like Midtown, we must relocate key transit and public works functions. While this is a requirement for use of the land, we will demonstrate that these relocations represent opportunities for consolidation of facilities, new efficiency of operations and the unlocking of legacy possibilities.”

The drawings themselves, such as they minimally exist, do NOT depict everything of those rail facilities getting relocated. On their drawing, the Southampton repair facility still seems to be there, Cabot Yard is less clear to me but I think it’s still there.

Aesthetically, I do not consider rail repair facilities as an “urban scar”. More importantly, even if I were to consider them ugly, the trains I ride gotta get fixed somewhere. OK, Riverside for my main commute route, but I do ride the Red Line and Amtrak sometimes, and those cars aren’t being maintained at Riverside.

This has long made me nervous about this Widett Circle stadium idea. I’ve never seen much chance for a stadium there, with the attendant Olympics prettification that boosters will want surrounding it, without some major spillover impact on those rail yards. If the team really can and “will demonstrate that these relocations represent opportunities for consolidation of facilities, new efficiency of operations and the unlocking of legacy possibilities,” as they promise here, I’m all ears. Improved transit due to Olympics? sounds great. Key transit facilities getting shunted someplace inferior for the convenience of an Olympics followed by a retail infill? Count me out. I'd rather see Widett Circle get filled in with more rail repair facilities, to handle repairs for the someday-enlarged T and Amtrak fleets (I can hope, can't I?).

I am going to be very curious to hear from the folks on this forum with the transit experience on these matters, I admit to being in over my head. If y'all we need more details still, I won't be surprised, these bid documents are at the level of PR.

Oh, by the way, I didn't see one peep about the Boston Food Market. I did not deep-read the thing, I admit.
 
Widett is supremely important for South Station Expansion (and CR expansion overall). They're fooling themselves to think otherwise.
 
Olympic soccer takes up a lot of venue space, but it's a really minor competition. It's all under 20 y/o teams. The senior national teams don't compete.
 
Matthew said:
Widett is supremely important for South Station Expansion (and CR expansion overall). They're fooling themselves to think otherwise.
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Still, from a "SIM City" standpoint, it seems
- if you keep your train yards downtown, you gotta deck it over (e.g. work now underway at Penn Station, NYC)
- CR systems (e.g. NY Central/MNRR) can work with "the yards" pretty far from "The Terminal" (GCT)

Surely there's some other place they could go, like at the "far" ends rather than the "inner" one. I'd say only Amtrak absolutely needs them where they are--but only until the NSRL put's Amtrak's end-of-the-line @ Woburn (which'd be perfect)

OT: In fact, I'd rather use Widett redevelopment (and the $ from it) as partial justification for NSRL, allowing much transit to move out to Woburn's low-rent district and to replace it with "center city" uses.
 
The bid doc is golden! Thanks for sharing.

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Did you catch the part about a "new, public authority" to assemble and manage the Widett Circle site?
 
I find it interesting that Suffolk Downs gets nothing. Is that realistic? Is it pandering to Mayor Walsh's hope that it'll somehow be a casino in 2024, or a recognition that it'll all be condos by then?
 
I guess the two major questions we've had that are now answered are:
1) Yes! South Station Expansion is on!
2) NO!!!! SOUTH COAST RAIL IS ON!!!!!!
 
And in the last half hour or so they've dumped four more big items, same page as before:

http://www.masslive.com/news/boston...ad_the_bid_documents_boston.html#incart_river

OK, so NOW we have details, each of these go way deeper than the overview thing posted earlier.

Definite decking of rail lines just West of Cabot Yard repair shop. However, it seems to have the Cabot yard shop excluded, i.e., not relocated. Did Bev Scott perhaps say "fuhgeddaboudit"? Also only that cleaning shed of Amtrak's relocated, the rest of Amtrak untouched? I think? For those of you with deeper knowledge of these facilities, there's lots more meat on the bones now.
 
Arlington said:
Still, from a "SIM City" standpoint, it seems
- if you keep your train yards downtown, you gotta deck it over (e.g. work now underway at Penn Station, NYC)
- CR systems (e.g. NY Central/MNRR) can work with "the yards" pretty far from "The Terminal" (GCT)

Surely there's some other place they could go, like at the "far" ends rather than the "inner" one. I'd say only Amtrak absolutely needs them where they are--but only until the NSRL put's Amtrak's end-of-the-line @ Woburn (which'd be perfect)

OT: In fact, I'd rather use Widett redevelopment (and the $ from it) as partial justification for NSRL, allowing much transit to move out to Woburn's low-rent district and to replace it with "center city" uses.
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I'm all for blue-sky stuff like NSRL and also more prosaic ideas such as making do with less layover, including ideas such as as operational reform. For example, instead of parking the trains all day, run them as additional off-peak service.

However, I'm not sure how we get the people who insist on running the trains in 19th-century-style into the 21st century, much less build the NSRL.

And even if we did see some reforms, Widett is just perfectly placed. And it's not like Hudson Yards, which is surrounded by high-value uses. Widett is a huge, wide open, industrial wasteland that was formerly a swamp. It's not "downtown". Decking is a lot of money, and I don't see how it's justified in this spot, unless the Olympics really pours it in.
 
Matthew said:
Widett is a huge, wide open, industrial wasteland that was formerly a swamp. It's not "downtown". Decking is a lot of money, and I don't see how it's justified in this spot, unless the Olympics really pours it in.
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Yes, we'd have to assume that they move the CR stuff to Readville or South Attleboro or, as you suggest, keep it in motion midday, rather than parked.
 
The velodrome is intended to be permanent and be operated as a private venue. It is located on Draw 7 Park. This is state owned, Chapter 97 in an environmental justice area. Ch. 97 is no net loss and takes a act of the legislature to convert. Then has to have a EIR. Also Ch. 91 waterfront. They may want to rethink that one. What a bunch of assholes.
 
Some funky stuff here
infrastructure.jpg

I'm seeing a proposed Cambridge Street (Cambridge) light rail, as well as heavy rail on the Grand Junction.
 
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