The United States Olympic Committee board of directors unanimously approved a U.S. bid to host the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games, the USOC announced today. Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., remain under consideration, with the selection of a U.S. bid city to be made in early 2015. [...]
“All four cities have presented plans that are part of the long-term visions for their communities,” said USOC CEO Scott Blackmun.
— teamusa.org
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The most symptomatic site would be San Fran, just imagine the last of the lower income areas being paved over and built up with monuments of waste and corruption while the techies feign concern while never looking up from their iPhone screens. I light of that I think we may see a Bay Area Olympics in 2024...
...and then imagine those monuments being converted to high-density housing....
Doctoroff was onto something when he proposed that the NY Olympics bid be used as a catalyst for transforming the city into something even greater than what it is.
we taking bets? I'm thinking it's between Boston and LA...
Hosting the Olympics is pretty much the kiss of death. The costs are insane and the return on investment is non-existent. Wall Street will get behind the funding because it is a guaranteed short.
10 Olympic Games That Nearly Bankrupted Their Host Countries
^ ^ I don't think that's entirely true.
To paraphrase the Norwegian Olympic Committee's comments after they pulled their bid for the 2022 winter games, its bad for the city if the city doesn't need the infrastructure upgrades. The actual buildings are able to be converted pretty well so long as that's planned out in advance throughout the design proccess (Vancouver and London have been reasonably succesful with this). Think athlete's villages as new housing, sports facilities for ongoing recreation. Obviously things like ski-jump will never really get used again, but most venues can reasonably be converted for future use. The main problem, and a huge portion of the costs, are the infrastructure for hosting the games. In both Vancouver and London's scenarios, those infrastructure upgrades (primarily for moving people around) were heavily needed and would have happened in the near future regardless of an Olympics or not. Having the games act as a catalyst allows them to recoup some of the cost associated with it. In total, I believe both of those cases ended up coming out at around even.
Sochi and Athens on the other hand......
^ ^ Finally got to read that article - must say its the first time I've heard those figures thrown around for Van. Sounds like the reported loss in that article is entirely based on slow sale of the condo's from the athlete's village, which, in Vancouver, is not likely to stay like that, especially downtown.
Vancouver had to grapple with an estimated $1 billion debt, including $730 million incurred by the Olympic Village bailout [source: CNBC]. To recoup some of the cost, the city began marketing the Olympic Village as an environmentally friendly residential neighborhood, hoping to convince buyers to move into the many condos that sat empty. They received only a tepid response.
Sales of luxury condos in the Olympic Village's 16 buildings (now known as Millennium Water) were so slow that the project went into receivership and the complex was turned over to Ernst and Young, the firm charged with recouping as much of the city's debt as possible. Even so, the city and its creditors aren't expected to ever fully recover its Olympic expenses [sources: Austen, CNBC].
That was 2010. One of the biggest expenses - and a totally unrecoverable one - is security in the post-9/11 world. Britain spent over 500 million pounds (780m US) for security in 2012. Final cost: 9 billion pounds (14b US).
I think the main ski areas of the Vancouver winter Olympics, Whistler/Blackcomb effectively went bankrupt during the Olympics? And Montreal is still paying for their '76 (?) games. Total waste of money to host an athletic competition tarted-up to be something special. The level of corruption of the Olympic Commitee is just astounding.
Do you have any sources for the Whistler/Blackcomb comments? Never heard that before.
And I don't think anyone is disputing the Montreal situation. I'm talking specifically about the impetus for infrastructure as catalyst for recent Olympic host cities.
http://www.vancitybuzz.com/2013/02/three-years-later-a-reflection-on-the-vancouver-2010-olympic-games/
impetus for infrastructure is just part of the pitch. It's largely a pump and dump scheme. Most countries are catching on, thus the dearth of applications to host.
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