Japan 'wakes up and smells the coffee' on Olympic Costs

[tay]

Japan Just Cancelled Its Outrageously Expensive Olympic Stadium








And in doing so, made itself a poster child for rethinking the insane costs of major sporting events like the Olympics, explaining that it would start over with a new design. Could the tide be turning against the idea that cities have to spend billions to host the Games?


Early this morning, the Guardian reported that the Japanese government had reached a decision about the fate of its New National Stadium after two years of protests, redesigns, and cost-reductions. “We have decided to go back to the start on the Tokyo Olympics-Paralympics stadium plan, and start over from zero,” said prime minister Shinzo Abe, according to The Guardian.


The new stadium will have to be designed and built in less than five years—and the World Cup of rugby, which was supposed to take place in the stadium in 2019, will have to find some other venue (the rugby execs, as you might expect, are pissed).








So, how on Earth does a building that was designed three years ago, on a necessarily razor-sharp schedule, for a sporting event that will take place in a handful of years, get cancelled outright? Let’s review.


The stadium was designed by high-profile UK/Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid, and was originally projected to cost around $3.1 billion—as we pointed out at the time, that’s $2.6 billion more than Hadid’s Olympic venue in London.


Over the past two years, public protests drew thousands of people in Tokyo, and last summer, the Japanese government said it would reconsider the design and cut the costs by a whopping $1.3 billion. Today, it looks like that wasn’t enough. Japan says it will scrap the design completely and figure out a way to build a stadium within the next five years that can host the Olympics without costing billions and overwhelming the neighborhood.


As contentious as this whole debacle has been, this is great news for more cities than Tokyo. The absurd cost of hosting the Olympics is more than just a crap deal for host cities. It’s potentially a crap deal for whole countries and even international economic zones.


The Athens Olympics, in 2004, has widely been blamed for helping trigger the economic collapse in Greece that’s currently threatening the stability of the entire Eurozone. In the decade since, potential host cities have cut and run, with the International Olympic Committee struggling to find potential hosts beyond countries like Kazakhstan, Russia, and China.




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Japan Just Cancelled Its Outrageously Expensive Olympic Stadium Design

 

[tay]

I see the blood suckers are having a circle jerk about TO bidding for the Olympics and I wonder how much tax money they are prepared to spend.......








Mayor puts future of Boston Olympics bid in question






Boston's mayor delivered a harsh blow to the city's effort to host the 2024 Olympics when he declared on Monday he wouldn't sign any document "that puts one dollar of taxpayer money on the line for one penny of overruns on the Olympics."




That document is the host city contract that has to be signed by government leaders before any city can be chosen as host. Mayor Marty Walsh made his announcement at a hastily called news conference that coincided with Gov. Charlie Baker's meeting with the U.S. Olympic Committee


The host city contract is a document that, essentially, guarantees that the International Olympic Committee won't be held responsible for any cost overruns for an Olympics.


That puts the burden on the host city, state and country. It's always a difficult sticking point for U.S. candidates, because unlike governments in most other countries, the U.S. government doesn't back any Olympic efforts. The contract doesn't need to be signed until 2017, but given the 11th-hour signings that have happened in past, failed bids — most notably, New York for 2012 and Chicago for 2016 — the USOC is eager to have it delivered well before then.


Walsh said it won't get his signature until he's assured the taxpayers won't have to foot the bill.


"I will not sign a document that puts one dollar of taxpayers' money on the line for one penny of overruns on the Olympics," he said.
"I refuse to mortgage the future of the city away. I refuse to put Boston on the hook for overruns, and I refuse to commit to signing a guarantee that uses taxpayers' dollars to pay for the Olympics."


The official deadline to nominate a city isn't until Sept. 15, but the USOC is looking for answers right away. That's in part because there still could be time to get Los Angeles on board, and because there's a key International Olympic Committee meeting taking place later this week in Malaysia, where the 2024 bid will be a hot topic. Leaders of the Boston bid were expected to attend.




Boston won’t yield to USOC pressure on Olympics, Walsh says - Metro - The Boston Globe






Mayor puts future of Boston Olympics bid in question






UPDATE


BOSTON — The United States Olympic Committee killed Boston’s beleaguered bid for the 2024 Summer Olympics on Monday, hours after Mayor Martin J. Walsh said that he would not sign a contract with the organization if it wanted him to do so by the end of the day.


The U.S.O.C. announced the termination of the bid in a statement, saying support for the Boston bid was not strong enough. The group said it would consider other options for a 2024 bid.


“I cannot commit to putting the taxpayers at risk,” Mr. Walsh had said at a hastily called news conference. He added that if the U.S.O.C. demanded that the contract be signed by Monday, then “Boston is no longer pursuing to host the 2024 Summer Games.”


“I refuse to mortgage the future of the city away,” the mayor added. “This is a commitment that I can’t make without ensuring the city and its residents will be protected.”






The comments set up a head-on collision with the U.S.O.C., which had publicly voiced support for Boston while privately wringing its hands in doubt that the city could win over skeptical residents, more than half of whom oppose the bid, according to recent polling.




http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/28/sports/olympics/mayor-casts-doubt-on-boston-2024-olympics-bid.html

 

[Corduroy]

As a proud member of the anti-Olympic wet blanket committee, I welcome former Olympic boosters to the fold. Can we have our money back now?

 

[Locutus]

but toronto.

 

[taxslave]

About time those that are elected/appointed to look out for taxpayers interests started doing just that.

 

[tay]

Greece probably wishes it could get back the $15 billion it spent on its summer Olympics. Instead it is stuck with myriad abandoned venues.



Deep skepticism here about whether taxpayers would be stuck footing the bill for the Olympics has doomed Boston’s bid to host the 2024 Summer Games and raised questions about whether any other major American city might be willing to take on the risk.

This has made some people sad.

Boston’s world-class universities and hospitals make it a globally significant metropolis. But its residents have rejected the cosmopolitan dream of hosting the 2024 Summer Olympics [...]

Other provincial places might aspire to join the first rank of cities, and so covet the Olympic Games -- but not Boston, where support barely got above 50 percent at its highest point. At some fundamental level, Bostonians want to stay provincial [...]

Boston is still great at knowledge. But it isn’t the Athens of America -- and by skipping the Olympics, it’ll assure it doesn’t become the Greece of America, either.

The premise was that Boston was a global favorite to host the games as a response to the Boston Marathon terrorist attack two years ago. Given that the marathon is symbolically key to the Olympics ... choosing the city would represent "a repudiation of the local manifestation of global jihadi terrorism." Honestly, the argument makes no sense. Neither does any comparison with Greece at this moment. What, Boston isn't the Greece of America! Thank heavens!


http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-07-28/boston-doesn-t-need-your-olympic-attention


Of course, the argument here wasn't economic, it was intellectual—as Athens was once the center of learning and culture in the Western world, so is Boston today. It's not, really (no matter how many awesome universities call it home, including my own alma matter), but again, not sure how hosting the Olympics would give Boston anything more than a nightmare headache and destroy its financial security for years to come.

The Beijing Olympics of 2008 cost $44 billion. Athens in 2004 cost $15 billion. London leveraged existing infrastructure to run a lithe Olympics at $10.4 billion. Brazil is reportedly spending $25 billion on their upcoming games, after spending $15 billion for last year's World Cup.

The idea of throwing that much money for a three-week event is patently absurd. Athens is littered with the abandoned remnants of its Olympics a decade ago.

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/gallery/2014/aug/13/abandoned-athens-olympic-2004-venues-10-years-on-in-pictures



London was more efficient in its venue planning, but is still tearing down facilities.


In fact, the globe is littered with the abandoned remains of Olympic venues.

https://www.distractify.com/haunting-images-of-abandoned-olympic-venues-1197627259.html


In fact, hosting the Olympics has become such a money suck, that only two cities are bidding for the 2022 winter games: Beijing and Almaty, Kazakhstan. In other words, only despotic regimes are willing to piss away their population's cash for a short-term propaganda boost.

So why do cities spend that money? The fallacious claim that the games spur economic development and generate international prestige. I bet you can't wait to do business in Sochi, right? Of course, I didn't know Sochi existed before Russia spent $50 billion hosting the games there. But now that I know it exists? Who gives a ****.

Such claims are based on the idea that the Games can serve as a tourist attraction, a chance to catch the eye of global business leaders and a way to rally political support for valuable infrastructure projects.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/10/magazine/does-hosting-the-olympics-actually-pay-off.html


None of that is true. You want "valuable infrastructure projects," then take those billions and use them to build valuable infrastructure projects. Better that than future rotting stadiums and venues. Tourist attraction? Raise your hand if Sochi is on your bucket list. "Catch the eye of global business leaders"? Boston doesn't need to catch anyone's eye. Half of global business leaders likely studied in the area anyway. And Almati would have a better chance of spurring development if it wasn't situated in an oppressive police state.

So why really agitate for an American city to host the Olympics? Well, business interests clearly see dollar signs. Why wouldn't they love a games that forces government to put up all the costs, yet they reap any benefits? It's the same mentality that cons cities into building billion-dollar stadiums for billionaire team owners. It's absurd, particularly when those public dollars could serve the populace in a million better ways.


(An aside, Field of Schemes is the best blog tracking this craziness. Seriously, go read the site. It'll burn you up.)


http://www.fieldofschemes.com/


Then there are those who are struck by the "cool factor" of hosting the Olympics. Like the guy above. The whole world is watching! So prestigious! Yeah, screw that ****.

So by rejecting Boston, it can't "aspire to join the first rank of cities"? Seriously? Boston is already a world-class city with world-class culture and the top educational institutions in the world. Yes, it is a provincial place, but so what? No Olympics would change that, or deliver its residents anything of real substance. It is a credit to Boston's citizens that they so utterly rejected this boondoggle.

 

[EagleSmack]

I thought it would be cool to have the Olympics here but mostly I am just shrugging my shoulders. The Boston 2024 Committee started off badly by offering to give the former governor to be compensated $7,500 a day to be our Olympics Global Ambassador. At that news the citizens of Massachusetts as well as Boston knew it would be Massachusetts business as usual. The typical state hacks raking in the cash at the taxpayers expense.


Let it be someone else's story now.

 

[Curious Cdn]

Olympic stadias themselves are oddballs and they are too big and the wrong shape to be of much use as professional sports vernues. Anyone who has watched football,soccer or baseball in the Montreal "Big O" Olympic stadium would have experienced their disadvantages.

They are either large radii ovals or circular in shape. That is to accomodate the big surrounding track needed for various foot races and relays. When you superimpose rectangular football fields or soccer pitches on top of a round shape, you are miles away from the field on all sides and you only get reasonably close at the corners. Baseball diamonds are so small relative to the inside of an Olympic stadium designed to seat 80,000 around a circle that you have to shut down half of the stadium and nestle the diamond into one end. It's not a great fit but at least, you are not a half mile away from the pitcher's mound. This is how they managed to play Expos gamnes in the Big O. It was never better than marginally adequate and the much smaller Skydome always worked better. Even the Skydome is too big for Football, etc. and it is about half the size of an Olympic stadium.

Olympic stadia have virtually no utility at all after the game and unless you have a plan and budget of more billions to do radical surgery to it after the games, you might as well bulldoze the monster rather than incur on-going maintenance costs on a useless white elephant.

Some or most of the facilities built for Olympics can have some utility after the games (what the hell do you do with a velodrome?) But the mega-billion $ heart of the games is so much money flushed down the loo.

By the way, Olympics don't bring in millions of tourists spending their money ... 200,000 tops and only for two weeks. That is not a tourist bonanza. If you want to bring in real millions, put on a big "A" class International Exposition like Expo 67 instead (Vanbouver's "B" Expo was about a third of the size.)

 

[coldstream]

I hope some sensible minds in Toronto will cut short any aspirations they have to host the 2024 Summer Games.. after the Pan American Games were held at a reported cost of $2.5 B. This for a relatively modest event using existing sports infrastructure.

The Olympics have become something that has lost all resemblance to the vision of Baron de Cubertain in the 19th Century. They are grossly disentended, engorged and corpulent image of pride, power lust and greed. They no longer represent amateur sport. They are inundated with cheating (in doping), money, commercialism and corruption.

They now cost 10's of billions to host, which is never payed off. They produce almost nothing is economic spinoffs except for crooked contrators and recipients of bribes. and leave deserted or underutilized venues (note Athens facilities, and the state of the Greek economy) in their wake. The IOC is every bit a corrupt as FIFA.