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it wasn't even feasible for them to build a stadium keep it up for two weeks and then tear it down like ther plans called for. Who really bought that contrived bs. You can thank the mccaskey's for that mudpit spaceship known as soldier field. So go tulsa!
It was entirely feasible to temporarily construct a stadium. As a matter of fact, London built their Olympic stadium for 80K with the intention of scaling it back to 20K...they just got lucky that a couple of soccer teams have expressed an interest in buying it.
Wanna know what isn't feasible and is entirely contrived? Building a full blown stadium for roughly $1 billion (which is what a full blown, permanent Oly Stadium costs) and having it sit after the games empty. Plenty of examples of white elephants: Beijing, Athens, Montreal, Seoul, etc. I'll take a $300 million temporary stadium over a $1 billion money pit that will require $10 million a year to operate without a decent tenant. Track and field stadiums make pretty awful football and soccer stadiums, so all things considered this is a good deal.
FWIW-the USOC list was just an exhaustive one to prevent any sit from raising a fuss about being excluded from the process. To run a Games you need: 1) a compact area capable of handling an extra 150,000 extra people on any given day for 2 weeks straight, 2) hotels, 2) political will, 3) $$$, 4) varied transit options to avoid Atlanta version 2.
There are only 5 or 6 of those cities in the US and even they are not guaranteed a bid no matter how strong their bids. The IOC voting process is an extremely political process with very unpredictable outcomes. Any city outside of those 5 or 6? Not a chance. Not ever again Atlanta. Not Denver. Not Miami. Not even Dallas or Houston. That means most certainly not a Tulsa or even a KC-Indy-Milwaukee-Orlando sized city.
I hope tulsa gets it. The world is full of people telling someone what they can't do. Let's be honest, chicago facilities suck and it wasn't even feasible for them to build a stadium keep it up for two weeks and then tear it down like ther plans called for. Who really bought that contrived bs. You can thank the mccaskey's for that mudpit spaceship known as soldier field. So go tulsa!
Have you ever been in one? The nicest is the United Center and even it's in a sketchy neighborhood. The grass at Soldier Field is deplorable and that's being generous not to mention thx to the McCaskey's, it was remodeled to be the smallest NFL venue. Rosemont, uh, OK.
It was entirely feasible to temporarily construct a stadium. As a matter of fact, London built their Olympic stadium for 80K with the intention of scaling it back to 20K...they just got lucky that a couple of soccer teams have expressed an interest in buying it.
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Wanna know what isn't feasible and is entirely contrived? Building a full blown stadium for roughly $1 billion (which is what a full blown, permanent Oly Stadium costs) and having it sit after the games empty. Plenty of examples of white elephants: Beijing, Athens, Montreal, Seoul, etc. I'll take a $300 million temporary stadium over a $1 billion money pit that will require $10 million a year to operate without a decent tenant. Track and field stadiums make pretty awful football and soccer stadiums, so all things considered this is a good deal.
FWIW-the USOC list was just an exhaustive one to prevent any sit from raising a fuss about being excluded from the process. To run a Games you need: 1) a compact area capable of handling an extra 150,000 extra people on any given day for 2 weeks straight, 2) hotels, 2) political will, 3) $$$, 4) varied transit options to avoid Atlanta version 2.
There are only 5 or 6 of those cities in the US and even they are not guaranteed a bid no matter how strong their bids. The IOC voting process is an extremely political process with very unpredictable outcomes. Any city outside of those 5 or 6? Not a chance. Not ever again Atlanta. Not Denver. Not Miami. Not even Dallas or Houston. That means most certainly not a Tulsa or even a KC-Indy-Milwaukee-Orlando sized city.
First and foremost, Chicago doesn't work that way. Cost "overruns" are the norm, then you have to tack on palm greasing. That 300 million in Chicago isn't 300 million. Might be 300 million somewhere else but not in Chicago and that would be with every olympic project. Tacking on hundreds of millions of debt is never a good deal when you're already flat broke and already paying back hundreds of millions of debt.
ATL wasn't considered a bust because of traffic. Exploding bombs tend to put a damper in things and perceived lack of security precautions. Even London had it's transportation issues and wait times. All Olympic cities will have that problem including the three largest public transportation networks on the planet (Tokyo, Mexico City and New York in that order). For the locals, that's just part of the package of hosting, you just endure it for two weeks.
Have you ever been in one? The nicest is the United Center and even it's in a sketchy neighborhood. The grass at Soldier Field is deplorable and that's being generous not to mention thx to the McCaskey's, it was remodeled to be the smallest NFL venue. Rosemont, uh, OK.
It was entirely feasible to temporarily construct a stadium. As a matter of fact, London built their Olympic stadium for 80K with the intention of scaling it back to 20K...they just got lucky that a couple of soccer teams have expressed an interest in buying it.
First and foremost, Chicago doesn't work that way. Cost "overruns" are the norm, then you have to tack on palm greasing. That 300 million in Chicago isn't 300 million. Might be 300 million somewhere else but not in Chicago and that would be with every olympic project. Tacking on hundreds of millions of debt is never a good deal when you're already flat broke and already paying back hundreds of millions of debt.
ATL wasn't considered a bust because of traffic. Exploding bombs tend to put a damper in things and perceived lack of security precautions. Even London had it's transportation issues and wait times. All Olympic cities will have that problem including the three largest public transportation networks on the planet (Tokyo, Mexico City and New York in that order). For the locals, that's just part of the package of hosting, you just endure it for two weeks.
I have been to both UC and Soldier Field for sporting events. The neighborhood around UC isn't great, but I've never felt unsafe there. As for Soldier Field, it's bizarre in appearance and suffered from some design limitations, but I found it to be a very comfortable place to watch a game and posessing good sightlines. I don't doubt it would've received fresh turf for the Olympics.
I have been to both UC and Soldier Field for sporting events. The neighborhood around UC isn't great, but I've never felt unsafe there. As for Soldier Field, it's bizarre in appearance and suffered from some design limitations, but I found it to be a very comfortable place to watch a game and posessing good sightlines. I don't doubt it would've received fresh turf for the Olympics.
If I'm not mistaken, the turf was just replaced not too long ago and still a mess, 2011-2012 I believe.
I agree on the feasibility of the temporary stadium in Chicago. I also think Atlanta gets unfairly criticized for its effort and Chicago was screwed by the IOC. Even if Indy were capable of hosting the games, I'd rather not.
If I'm not mistaken, the turf was just replaced not too long ago and still a mess, 2011-2012 I believe.
That could be true, but part of the problem is that American football is the primary sport played on it and at a time of year when it's tough to keep in top-notch condition. It's why so many other NFL venues have gone to field turf. Heinz Field in Pittsburgh has the same problem, perhaps worse because U of Pitt and area high schools also use that field.
First and foremost, Chicago doesn't work that way. Cost "overruns" are the norm, then you have to tack on palm greasing. That 300 million in Chicago isn't 300 million. Might be 300 million somewhere else but not in Chicago and that would be with every olympic project. Tacking on hundreds of millions of debt is never a good deal when you're already flat broke and already paying back hundreds of millions of debt.
Cost overruns happen with any major infrastructure/facility project anywhere, Chicago included. It happened with LOS too. The bigger point still stands: even spending $500 million on a temporary stadium (including costs to dismantle) is preferable to spending $1 billion for a permanent stadium that isn't properly used post-Olympcs. Those things have annual operating costs in the tens of millions a year even mothballed. See: Athens, Beijing, Montreal, etc. I was in Chicago when the bid was ongoing, and I agree that the fiscal situation made the bid questionable. My personal stance on it was that the infrastructural bones were there and the city has been ignored by the Feds for far too long when it comes to transit investment. DC, New York, Atlanta, Denver, San Francisco, Twin Cities are all getting huge sums to expand their system.s Net, metro Chicago pays out at least $10 billion more in taxes than it receives back in any given year. If the Games was a way to get a modest 10% expansion of existing CTA lines (at least two of Circle, Brown-Blue Connector, and airport transit hub DT), and a portion of that money back, then it was worth it.
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Originally Posted by msamhunter
ATL wasn't considered a bust because of traffic. Exploding bombs tend to put a damper in things and perceived lack of security precautions. Even London had it's transportation issues and wait times. All Olympic cities will have that problem including the three largest public transportation networks on the planet (Tokyo, Mexico City and New York in that order). For the locals, that's just part of the package of hosting, you just endure it for two weeks.
The bombing was the most tragic event, no doubt, but internationally, Atlanta is held up as an example of how not to do the Summer Games for two reasons: 1) over commercialization on a tacky scale, which did keep things in the black but at what price? and 2) transit, which was panned as horribly inadequate.
This is strictly due to the size and scale of the system. 600 buses, MARTA, and a 400K average weekday ridership today. Even with perfect planning, a system of that size can not handle an 300K Olympic visitors, almost all of who won't have cars and who will be entirely reliant on mass transit and cabs. ATL brought in out of town buses with out of town drivers to attempt to make up the disparity with poor results. What people have now realized post-London is that in the age of telecommuting many workers will stay home a day or two a week, freeing up existing capacity. A system like London handles over 10 million trips a day. Even a 10% reduction frees up enormous capacity. Throw in the fact that they have a fleet of 8000 buses providing regular service, and there is the opportunity to move buses to spots as needed with local drivers who know the way. Where London missed is that like ATL, they brought in out of town drivers who also ended up getting lost (not as frequently as ATL) when they didn't even need to. Commuting dropped considerably as did non-Olympic tourism. There was more than enough capacity. Where there bottlenecks and delays? Sure, but not on the scale of Atlanta.
FWIW, regional mass transit trips on a typical summer workday for various cities provide a pretty good indication of where the capacity is and isn't:
NYC (12.3 million), Toronto (3.0 million), Chicago (2.4 million), LA (1.8 million), DC (1.5 million), Boston (1.3 million), Bay Area (1.3 million), Montreal (1.3 million), Vancouver (1.2 million), Philadelphia (1.0 million). Once you get below these ten, capacity drops precipitously...Seattle, Calgary, Miami, Ottawa/Gatineau all around 500K. Atlanta, Houston, Minneapolis, Dallas all around 350K to 450K.
Even if those lower volume cities have underutilized transit, there isn't enough excess capacity to absorb the rush. Figure 300K visitors for 2 weeks (in line with London, Beijing, etc), 150K at any point in time, taking 3 trips on average (zero on the low end and six on the standard high end per day). That's 450K worth of trips. With a system like Philly, if you assume a 20% commuter decline (standard), that frees up 200K. You can make up for the other 25% for a two week period by reducing the idled buses getting service (out of town mechanics and cleaning crews who don't need to know the city geography to be effective) and just having a smallish increase in train/bus crowds. The system would be redlined for a couple of weeks, but it would hold up in grin and bear it mode. A system of 400K to 500K? No way.
That's why the entire 35 city list was a complete joke. Unless you're going to build an entire rail system from scratch (or in the case of a city like Atlanta, double the rail system and existing bus fleet to keep it close to par with other host candidates), there is really no point to it.
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