City Unveils Its Last and Best Bid to Gain 2012 Summer Olympics (NYTimes w/ slide show) ; View Bid Book Here
City Unveils Its Last and Best Bid to Gain 2012 Summer Olympics
By DUFF WILSON

Published: November 18, 2004

New York City's Olympic boosters revealed their last and best plan yesterday before their final efforts to convince the International Olympic Committee that the city should hold the 2012 Summer Games.

While Paris, considered the favorite, also unveiled a comprehensive proposal yesterday, leaders of the NYC2012 committee highlighted New York's advantages in multiculturalism, money and media power.

The other finalists are London, Madrid and Moscow. They also staged events to mark their final bids to the I.O.C., which will pick a winner July 6 in secret balloting in Singapore.

Daniel L. Doctoroff, the deputy mayor for economic development and founder of NYC2012, said that New York would deliver an unprecedented experience for Olympic athletes as well as aggressive marketing to make Europe's and Asia's favorite sports more popular in the United States.

He said that New York could not be surpassed for athletes' experience and sports legacies, two factors believed crucial to many of the 117 members of the I.O.C. who will vote.

Mr. Doctoroff also said that the plan addressed past criticisms of housing and transportation of the athletes, and he insisted that a proposed $1.4 billion stadium on the far West Side of Manhattan was essential to the bid and would receive final approval before the I.O.C. vote.

While New York has never bid for the Olympics, Paris has won twice (for Games in 1900 and 1924) and has been a finalist twice in recent years.

French officials said they believed their plan also responded to I.O.C. guidance by clustering sites for competition around the Stade de France and planning a village not far from the Champs-Élysées. Jean-Paul Huchon, vice president of the Paris Olympic bidding committee, said that the war in Iraq and general anti-American feelings in the world would also help its candidacy.

London provided its first look at a planned 80,000-seat Olympic stadium in a 500-acre Olympic park to revitalize its east end. Sebastian Coe, the two-time track gold medalist and chairman of London's bid, said that it responded to I.O.C. criticism of the competition sites it proposed earlier as too dispersed and its transportation system as obsolete. London pulled more competition sites together and won government commitments to upgrade mass transit.

Madrid announced $1 billion in Spanish federal support, but the 1992 Olympics were held in Barcelona and it may be too soon for Spain to hold them again.

Moscow, a long shot, shot fireworks over Luzhniki Olympic Stadium and set up an electronic device near Red Square for Russians to register their support for their city's bid.

Mr. Doctoroff said New York had made two major changes in its final plan to address I.O.C. concerns.

Gone are the planned high-rises in an Olympic Village in Queens across the East River from the United Nations. Instead, the village would feature low- and midrise buildings with 4,400 of the largest apartments ever offered to Olympians.

Also gone are the plans to transport athletes from the village to events by boat, subway and train, replaced by buses in specially designated Olympic lanes, with satellite vehicle tracking.

Mr. Doctoroff said a New York Olympics would bring $7.6 billion in capital projects and cost $2.8 billion to run, without raising taxes. He said that NYC2012 had signed contracts with one-third of the hotel rooms in the city and nearly every surface that can display an advertising sign.

"We've managed to pull it together for this moment," Mr. Doctoroff said. "I think this is our moment.''

He promised an "electrifying celebration" of global sport in "the world's second home," plus "the biggest environmental transformation in city history."

Councilwoman Christine C. Quinn, a Democrat who represents the West Side, said that she would be thrilled with a New York Olympics but that Mr. Doctoroff, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and other boosters should have given the I.O.C. an alternative to the proposed Olympic Stadium.

The stadium is planned along the Hudson River, with $800 million from the Jets, who would own it, and $600 million from public bonds backed by taxes on anticipated new office buildings.

Mr. Doctoroff reiterated that the stadium, which would hold opening and closing ceremonies and track and field events, and the attached convention center were essential to the Olympic bid. He said there was no suitable alternative, especially one where a tenant, the Jets, would put up $800 million.

"They should have had a Plan B," Ms. Quinn said in an interview yesterday. "It will be very ironic and really unfortunate if at the end of the day their tunnel vision prevented them from submitting a fully comprehensive bid, and if that does them in, they really will have only themselves to blame."

Mr. Doctoroff said he expected final approval of the stadium project by the Empire State Development Corporation in December and the Public Authorities Control Board by February. Ms. Quinn said those agencies were rubber stamps largely appointed by Gov. George E. Pataki, who supports the Olympic bid.

David F. D'Alessandro, the chairman of John Hancock, a global Olympic sponsor, said the stadium controversy was overblown. He said that all five finalists could build good facilities and that I.O.C. members looked at other factors.

New York gains from its media power and diversity, Mr. D'Alessandro said, and loses from European anti-Americanism.

In addition, Vancouver is bringing the 2010 Winter Games to North America, but arguments can be made several ways regarding geographic balance. Greece, the host to the Olympics this year, is a member of the European Union, so it may be North America's turn for the Summer Games after Beijing in 2008.

"The other real question that will weigh heavily on I.O.C. members is whether or not New York is really ready to dedicate those two weeks to the Olympic Games," Mr. D'Alessandro said in an interview. "They don't want to be in a city where they're just absorbed like another event. They want to be the center of attention. If Bloomberg and Doctoroff have to prove anything to anybody, it's that you will be the center of attention for two weeks in New York.

"You know, if you have the World Series or Super Bowl here, it's almost like you're throwing potato chips into the fire. That's very, very important to them."

Under the NYC2012 plan, Olympic rings would be projected in the night sky, as if they were the Batman signal. The Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty and other landmarks would be specially lighted. Each borough would have its own Olympic color. Skyscrapers, buses and subways would be draped in Olympic murals.

The village is to be privately financed. The land for it is owned by the Queens West Development Corporation, a government agency. Governments have already spent $120 million on the site, the bid book says.

If New York wins the bid, it has a year-by-year plan to keep the flame burning hot: 2005 to 2008, launching an Olympic Sports Marketing Council to help the international federations grow; 2008 to 2011, advertising and campaigns to recruit 60,000 volunteers; 2011 and 2012, "install massive countdown clocks in Times Square and other locations throughout New York City."

New York's 562-page bid book promised unprecedented ticket capacity, a possible selling point after the sparsely attended Athens Games this summer. The committee said it would sell 9.4 million tickets that would generate $852 million at a sell-out rate of 81 percent. Most tickets would cost $50 or less, the committee said, although tickets to the opening and closing ceremonies would cost $450 to $1,500.

For I.O.C. members, New York has set aside 1,793 rooms at the Waldorf-Astoria and Palace hotels, special seating and other amenities.

Cristyne L. Nicholas, head of the city's convention and visitors bureau, has guaranteed that the city will not have any other important national or international event during the Games or a week before or after.

Under the plan, about a third of the 36,000-member police force would be devoted to Olympic security. Mr. Doctoroff said security would be financed by $110 million from Olympic revenues and federal assistance if needed. He said the athletes' village would be relatively easy to protect because it would be surrounded on three sides by water.

Before the the I.O.C. votes on the bids in July in Singapore, an Olympic commission will scrutinize every city, starting with Madrid (Feb. 3-6) and then London (Feb 16-19), New York (Feb. 21-24), Paris (March 9-12) and Moscow (March 14-17).

New York's strategy is to tout not only its financial might, but also its multiculturalism. Mr. Doctoroff said that New York was every nation's second home; 40 percent of New Yorkers were born outside the United States.

New York wants to be at least the second or third choice of every I.O.C. member. The strategy is to divide and conquer the European capitals by surviving early rounds of voting and picking up the votes of cities that are eliminated but do not want Paris, for instance, to win, because that would kill their own chances in 2016.

Iconic sites would make new stages for some Olympic events. The triathlon would fill Central Park - swim the reservoir, bicycle four laps on the road, run a double lap on the outer footpaths. Olympians would play baseball at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, basketball at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan, soccer at Giants Stadium in the Meadowlands, and tennis at the home of the United States Open in Queens.

A new waterfront park on a 35-acre industrial site in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, would feature an aquatics center for swimming, diving, synchronized swimming and water polo, and a beach volleyball arena across the river to the Empire State Building.

Soccer matches would also be held in Boston, Philadelphia and Washington, before the men's finals in the Olympic Stadium.

After the Games, the committee said, New York would be left with new world-class sites for sporting events. These include rowing, canoe and kayak courses, on a man-made, 168-acre lake in an Olympic Park in Queens; a new park for equestrian events built over Fresh Kills, formerly the nation's largest landfill, on Staten Island; a velodrome in the Bronx; and an archery range at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park.

The plan also detailed plans for a Paralympics, which traditionally follow the Summer Games, at a cost of $76 million.

The New York Committee for the Olympic Games promised to set aside $75 million for a legacy foundation. It would help maintain the facilities, support youth programs, assist elite athletes and attract championship events to the city after the games.

The boosters also promised to donate about $25 million in sports equipment to regional youth programs and developing nations.