Boston 2024

I don't see the relevance of pointing to (1) a purposeful shutdown of the OL in 9/11-spooked 2004, nor of (2) observing that random failures happen randomly.

My point stands: July or August vacation season naturally unburdens & un-peaks Boston systems making it a better than normal time to host things. look around you. EVen random failures this season are easier to deal with than April or September
 
Arlington said:
and how Starbucks selections of breakfast sandwiches stays full all day (instead of favorites selling out before lunch)
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I love how you used this as an example. The struggle is so real when you want a sausage, egg & cheese for lunch.
 
datadyne007 said:
I love how you used this as an example. The struggle is so real when you want a sausage, egg & cheese for lunch.
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^ The power of Social media means we need not stuggle alone--or with the spinach egg white wrap.

Come Labor Tuesday, our beloved sausage-egg-cheese will again be selling out by 10:30a
 
JohnAKeith said:
I'm not trying to start an argument, just suggesting it's a complicated situation.

And, after I wrote what I wrote I started thinking about NYC and how it was able to (successfully?) handle transportation post-9/11 and post-Sandy. I think LA can handle the Olympics a lot easier than we could have. You'll be in one part of that city and hardly even realize it's going on in another part.
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Only because LA couldn't possibly have worse transportation and that gridlock will seem normal.

LA has the worst congestion in the US: http://www.dailynews.com/general-news/20150331/how-bad-is-traffic-in-los-angeles-new-report-says-its-the-worst
 
Failure 101:

Simmons College Offering Boston 2024 Course This Fall
Should we wait for Course 2.0?

By Kyle Clauss | Boston Daily | August 24, 2015, 5:05 p.m.

Simmons College, located in the Fenway, will offer an undergraduate course titled “Boston Olympics 2024,” which will examine various aspects of Bids 1 and 2.0 in the context of Susan Fainstein’s The Just City, as well as the work of Andrew Zimbalist, a Smith College professor who debated Olympic boosters in the saga’s first and only televised debate.

Teaching the course will be Dr. Michelle Kweder, a critical management scholar who also teaches in Simmons School of Management. She says Fainstein’s award-winning book “talks about democracy, equity, and diversity being key to ‘just’ urban planning.”

“My hope is that at the end, they have a framework to understand/evaluate the planning that will occur while they are in Boston and if they stay,” says Kweder, a veteran of the Mayor’s Office of Intergovernmental Relations under Tom Menino.

...

Full article:
http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/blog/2015/08/24/simmons-college-boston-2024/
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Breaking via the AP: The USOC has accepted LA's bid.

Let's all remember:
"Boston is our city."
—USOC's Dan Doctoroff, 37 days ago
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Here is a link to the current LA bid document.

http://media.trb.com/media/acrobat/2015-08/23799507497660-27163623.pdf

I did a quick glance-through, what I thought to be of particular interest is the section on venues, where instead of a narrative venue description, the venues are described through a set of Q&As. The questions presumably coming from the USOC, and the nature of the questions appears to reflect the USOC's reaction to what was often a nebulous presentation of venues in the B24 2.0 bid. And LA24 has a venue lined up for every sport (did not cover baseball/softball). For the renovations to the Olympic Stadium, LA24 identifies the contractor who provided the cost estimate (AECOM); B24 never identified a source for its stadium cost estimates.

The fuzziest area is the Broadcast Center and Media Center, but at least LA24 has a site identified, which happens to be a lot at NBC-Universal studios (convenient as NBC holds the broadcast rights).

Zimbalist doubts they can bring the Olympic Village in for the $1 billion cost estimate, but that seems to be his only major concern.
 
Here is a brief summary of the LA venues.

On/near USC campus

Olympic Stadium: Coliseum. Existing. Renovation, $500 million paid by USC. An additional $300M by LA24 ($100M in capital construction, $200M in Olympic overlays.) Seats 80,000 (Supposedly to be future home of NFL team.) Track and field.

Aquatics Complex. New. New MLS stadium will be converted temporarily. $200 million by MLS for the 22,000 seat soccer stadium; $100 million for Olympics related construction. Swimming and diving.

Galen Center. Existing. Seats 10,300. boxing.

Shrine Auditorium. Existing. Seats 6,300. Weightlifting.

_____________________________
Downtown

L.A. Convention Center. Existing. 25-30,000 across six sports. Badminton, Handball, Rhythmic Gymnastics, Judo, Taekwondo, Table Tennis, Wrestling

Staples Center. Existing. Seats 19,000 Gymnastics, basketball final.

Nokia Theater. Existing. Seats 7,100. Fencing.

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Hollywood

Hollywood Blvd. Existing. Marathon. Walk. Road Cycling.

Griffith Park. New. 6,000 seat stadium. Mountain biking. BMX. $33 million.

Wilson Golf Course. Existing. City-owned. 30,000 attendance capacity. $55 million. (May be a placeholder for Riviera GC.)
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The Valley.

Sepulveda Dam complex. Existing and new. $90 million. Seating not provided. Archery, Equestrian, Modern Pentathlon, Shooting

Sepulveda Dam complex. New. $30 million. 8,000 spectators. Canoe slalom.

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Coastal / Westwood

Santa Monica. Existing and new. $50 million. Seating not provided. Beach Volleyball, Skate, Triathlon, Cycling Time Trial, Open Water Swimming

LA Tennis Center. Existing and new. $40 million Seating 5,000. Water polo.

Pauley Pavilion. Existing. Seats 13,800. Basketball preliminaries.

Drake Stadium complex Existing. Seats 15, 000 and 5,000. $20 million. Field hockey.

_________________________

South Bay

Stubhub stadium. Existing. Seats 27,000. Rugby.

Stubhub Tennis Center. Existing. Seats 8,000. $18 million for additional courts. Tennis

Velodrome. Existing. Seats 5,000. $45 million for renovation. Track cycling.

________________________

Inglewood. LA Forum. Existing. Seats 17,500. Volleyball.

Pasadena. Rose Bowl. Existing. Seats 92,500. Soccer.

San Pedro (LA Harbor) New. No seating provided. Yachting. (May be placeholder).

Lake Casitis, Ventura County. Existing and new. $200 million. Seats 12,000+ Rowing. Canoe sports.
 
Per the BBJ: Seems like the LA bid has a bit of fuzzy math -- also related to construction over a rail yard. Union Pacific apparently has not agreed that the LA Olympics can redevelop their freight yard for the Olympic Village. Cost to acquire and relocate the yard was not included in the bid.

http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/b...las-olympic-village-plans-raise-eyebrows.html

What is this obsession of Olympic bids and unobtainable rail yards?
 
JeffDowntown said:
What is this obsession of Olympic bids and unobtainable rail yards?
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The recent influx of residents to/growth in desirability of downtown districts? Its not as if cities have an appetite for clear-cutting neighborhoods for urban renewal anymore.
 
Texasian said:
The recent influx of residents to/growth in desirability of downtown districts? Its not as if cities have an appetite for clear-cutting neighborhoods for urban renewal anymore.
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I do understand that pressure. But the bidders in both Boston and LA are/were going after ACTIVE rail yards, not disused ones (like Beacon Yards). These active yards serve a purpose too!
 
The Olympic Athlete's Village concept needs to be dropped by the International Olympic Committee at some point. Well developed cities are too dense and developed already to just find twenty or thirty acres in a good location and drop a major city neighborhood development there with 5 years notice.

Rehabbing existing housing should be a favorable option along with splitting it up in multiple locations near and around a city. Hotels and existing dormitories should be on the table also.
 
JeffDowntown said:
I do understand that pressure. But the bidders in both Boston and LA are/were going after ACTIVE rail yards, not disused ones (like Beacon Yards). These active yards serve a purpose too!
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In the 2024 bid document, LA24 let drop this little BTW when it came to the Olympic Village: 'The largest single shareholder of the Union Pacific is Philip Anschutz.' A rather strange reference to be sure,....

But maybe that's all that need be said.

Anschutz is also the chairman of Union Pacific, and is characterized as the second most powerful sports figure in LA, after Casey Wasserman. (Wasserman heads LA24.) Anschutz is the world's largest owner of sports teams and sports venues, and a number of his venues are listed as competition sites by LA24.
 
stellarfun said:
In the 2024 bid document, LA24 let drop this little BTW when it came to the Olympic Village: 'The largest single shareholder of the Union Pacific is Philip Anschutz.' A rather strange reference to be sure,....

But maybe that's all that need be said.

Anschutz is also the chairman of Union Pacific, and is characterized as the second most powerful sports figure in LA, after Casey Wasserman. (Wasserman heads LA24.) Anschutz is the world's largest owner of sports teams and sports venues, and a number of his venues are listed as competition sites by LA24.
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Okay, but Anschutz is a shareholder, not the owner. UP is a publicly-traded corporation. He's also not the CEO. UP sounds pretty locked in that the site isn't available.

I have no doubt that he's prominent in the company, but this the kind of thing that we'd all be rolling or eyes at if Boston 2024 said it about Bob Kraft.
 
Equilibria said:
Okay, but Anschutz is a shareholder, not the owner. UP is a publicly-traded corporation. He's also not the CEO. UP sounds pretty locked in that the site isn't available.

I have no doubt that he's prominent in the company, but this the kind of thing that we'd all be rolling or eyes at if Boston 2024 said it about Bob Kraft.
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LA will almost certainly back out of the bid if they can't make the Athlete's Village plan or a viable alternative work within a reasonable budget. Their "commitment" to the bid will evaporate the same way Boston's did if the apparent costs get out of control. Their apparent political support appears to have bought them about a year to come up with a viable alternative site for the athlete's village.
 
L. A. City Council voted 15-0 this morning to okay the LA24 bid.
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The Union Pacific Yard is called the Piggyback Yard; its an intermodal yard. Location-wise, it appears to be as much a geographic anomaly as the Beacon Yard. Its situated very near Dodger Stadium. There are four intermodal UP yards in/near Los Angeles, of which Piggyback is the smallest. Piggyback also has a circular layout, and lacks the long horizontal stretch of tracks of the other yards.

The Army Corps of Engineers is interested in acquiring Piggyback, as it tries to tame the Los Angeles River. That's a project similar to what's happening on the Muddy River, but much larger.
 
stellarfun said:
L. A. City Council voted 15-0 this morning to okay the LA24 bid.
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The Union Pacific Yard is called the Piggyback Yard; its an intermodal yard. Location-wise, it appears to be as much a geographic anomaly as the Beacon Yard. Its situated very near Dodger Stadium. There are four intermodal UP yards in/near Los Angeles, of which Piggyback is the smallest. Piggyback also has a circular layout, and lacks the long horizontal stretch of tracks of the other yards.

The Army Corps of Engineers is interested in acquiring Piggyback, as it tries to tame the Los Angeles River. That's a project similar to what's happening on the Muddy River, but much larger.
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Not going to happen by 2024. They need another location or bust.
 
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