What If the Chicago Olympics Were Kicking Off Tomorrow?

What Northerly Island Could Have Looked Like if Chicago Hosted the 2016 Olympics

It's hard to believe, but tomorrow is the opening ceremony of the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio.

While you would be hard-pressed to find many Chicagoans who still think hosting these games would be good a thing, the loss still feels bittersweet.

If you're feeling nostaligic, take a look at David Haugh's column in the Tribune:

One of the most demonstrative reactions to defeat I ever witnessed in Chicago occurred when we learned the city lost its bid to host the 2016 Olympics. 

It was Oct. 2, 2009, and thousands of us gathered at Daley Plaza to await the big announcement from the International Olympic Committee's vote in Copenhagen. Satellite trucks from 15 news organizations parked on Clark Street. October optimism — the rarest of things in Chicago — reigned. Anticipation filled the autumn air. One mother pulled her son out of elementary school to experience what she expected to be historic event. And it was.  

It was the day the IOC saved Chicago from itself. 

At exactly 10:32 a.m., then-IOC President Jacques Rogge forever became part of the city's sports landscape with a stunning declaration: "The city of Chicago, having obtained the least number of votes, will not participate in the next round.'' Given Chicago's status as the favorite, this was the equivalent of a No. 1 seed being ousted by a No. 16 on the first day of March Madness. A shocker. 

After hearing Rogge's words coming off the large TV screens, onlookers consoled each other with hugs. Some people cried. Others just shook their heads, amazement matching their disappointment. The Picasso sculpture appeared to be frowning. One local politician, prone to hyperbole, even compared the spirit Chicago would need to recover from this setback to its resilience after the Great Fire of 1871. 

Having originally supported the idea of the 2016 Olympics, this is what I wrote after walking back to Tribune Tower with a sense of dismay: "You have every right to be mad, Chicago. Something smells rotten in Denmark. … This was the most frustrating defeat in Chicago's recent sports history." 

Fast forward to now, days before Friday's opening ceremony in Rio de Janeiro, and that "most frustrating defeat,'' looks more like it was a fortuitous victory for Chicago. 

In retrospect, those groans in the plaza should have been cheers and any rancor toward the corrupt IOC replaced by relief. In texts documenting the city's first decade of the new millennium, you can find the IOC vote indexed under Blessings In Disguise.

Could you imagine what would be happening in Chicago and the Sloop if we were hosting the opening ceremony tomorrow night?

Given the current dialogue in our country and the world we can only imagine the headlines:

"Donald Trump blames Obama/Clinton for $15 billion Olympic Budget Overage"
"Fearing for Their Lives Olympic Athletes Won't Step Outside of Olympic Village"
"Want to Attend an Olympic Event?  ISIS Threat Means Waiting in 4 Hour Security Lines"

and on and on and on...

In hindsight, we still have problems in this city, but hosting the Olympics were only going to exacerbate them.

At the time, we thought the Olympics would have supercharged development in the Sloop (which it probably would have done).  Obviously the Olympics didn't happen, but the development pace has again reached a frenzied pace.

If you've been reading Sloopin for awhile you can attest that we spent a ton of time talking about the Olympics (this is officially our 158th post having to do with the Olympics).  And it's kinda fun to see what we were talking about back then.

But lucky for all of us, most of the "Olympic" posts stopped after 2009.

Chicago 2016 - Still Doubtful, but Maybe?

Roll your eyes (we did), but there could be a tiny sliver of hope that Chicago may still host the 2016 Olympics.  While it seems like we hear about all of the doom and gloom about Olympics building issues every year (just look back a couple months to Sochi), the lastest out of Rio is that it's the worst.

Seems pretty dramatic, but whatever.  NBC 5 provides a report:
So take this for what it is - not much. It's comical that the "Chicago Olympic" story won't die... For some of our coverage on this topic pertaining to the Sloop click here.

No Chicago Olympics in 2020

Not that anyone really thought Chicago was going to bid to host the 2020 Olympics, but according to an ESPN article no US city is going to bid for this round.

So will Chicago bid for 2024? At this point...who cares, that's a long ways away!

2020 Chicago Olympics? Doubtful, but Door Remains Open

A story from the Tribute last week revisits the potential for a US 2020 bid for the summer olympics and of course Chicago is brought up:

Now that the IOC has awarded NBC the rights to four more Olympics -- 2014
through 2020 -- for the princely sum mentioned above ($4.38 Billion), there is the matter of where the 2018 Winter Games and 2020 Summer Games will be.

Next month, the IOC will pick the 2018 Winter host from candidates Munich, Germany; Pyeongchang, South Korea; and Annecy France.

Countries have until Sept. 1 -- less than three months from now -- to submit a bid city application for the 2020 Summer Games. So far, Rome is the only official applicant, with Tokyo expressing strong interest.

USOC chief executive Scott Blackmun told me Tuesday by telephone from Switzerland the first matter of business between the USOC and IOC is resolving the longstanding dispute over the shares of U.S. television rights (12.75 percent) and the IOC's global sponsorship program (20 percent) that the U.S. currently receives. There is tremendous pressure on the USOC to take a smaller cut.

But Blackmun did not rule out a 2020 bid and said he had talked informally to people in a few cities, including Chicago 2016 bid chief Patrick Ryan, about such a possibility.

The thinking is that the IOC would throw a bone to NBC and give them a US based games (since the amount of money NBC would make on that would be higher).

So will Chicago throw it's hat in the ring again? We can't imagine this happening. Would Rahm really want to put his new political capital on the line so soon after taking office? It seems like our city has bigger issues and to be embarrassed again internationally seems unlikely.

Then again, the main advocate for the games - private resident Mr. Rich Daley - has some extra time on his hands these days. Maybe this could become his new pet project?

Doubtful.

(Hat tip: SoloMotorRow!)

Olympic Deja Vu?

We were suprised to see this on the Chicago Tribune website this morning...regardless we doubt it's going to happen:

The United States Olympic Committee has not ruled out a bid for the 2020 Summer
Olympics and the timing of the process makes it likely 2016 loser Chicago would be its most viable candidate.

"I think it would be challenging for any other city to organize a bid in that time frame but not impossible," U.S. Olympic Committee chairman Larry Probst told the Tribune after delivering his state of the USOC address to the organization's general assembly Friday.

Weekend Reading: The Olympic Legacy Revisited; NYT Looks at Condo Boards Issues with Developers

The weather for the weekend isn't looking so hot, so if you're looking for some reading here are two ones that we enjoyed.

First, the Newcity blog takes a look at the Olympic legacy and specifically the Michael Reese Campus that was planned to be the glistening Olympic village in an article titled:

Nolympic Dreams: Six months after the 2016 heartbreack, what's the legacy of would-be glory?
In the architectural renderings, twenty-one high-rises line the south lakefront amid rows of orderly green trees. A newly built pedestrian bridge arcs over the Metra Electric tracks and Lake Shore Drive to connect the shimmering high-rises to the lakefront attractions, which include a new fountain, amphitheater and swimming pool. On the side of each high-rise is visible a symbol that’s slowly sliding from ubiquity to oblivion: the Chicago 2016 logo.

Also of interest was a NYT article (from the Chicago News Cooperative) looks at the problems many Condo boards are facing with their developers who have built crappy buildings:

Unexpected Repairs Rattle Owners of New Condos
The view from Tom and Jane Justic’s eighth-floor condominium in the South Loop — with Soldier Field in the foreground and majestic Lake Michigan behind it — is exactly what they were looking for when they moved from Beverly in 2005.

But the condominium that came with that view has an unexpected and unwelcome additional cost: $850 a month in special assessments for the next five years, to cover the expense of building repairs that were completed late last year.

(Hat Tip: FS!)
(Image from NYT)

Bronzeville and the Olympic Bust

We followed the drama that was the Olympics intensely last year. Although we were big proponents of bringing the Olympics to Chicago, the fact that we did not get them doesn't appear to be changing much in the South Loop. However, go a little further south to Bronzeville (our neighbor to the South) and it's a different story.

Today the New York Times had an interesting read about this issue and some of the problems the area is now facing. It talks about Bronzeville's relationship with the South Loop as well.

(image from creative commons)

Mayor Daley Sounds Off About the Olympics

It's been awhile since we had any Olympic news (since there really isn't any news since it's dead...), so we thought we would take a trip down memory lane.  Today we read about Mayor Daley's 'rant' at the 2016 final group meeting.  Not surprisingly he wasn't happy about the Olympic outcome, but according to witnesses his displeasure was the most obvious its ever been.  The part of the story that we found most interesting was:

"He started by saying we spent $75 million, and the next city was going to have to spend $100 million, and we didn't even have a chance," said one attendee, paraphrasing the mayor, who was the driving force behind the bid. "It was all politics and all money. All politics and all money. (The International Olympic Committee) didn't care about the athletes, and they didn't care about the quality of the bid."

Another attendee said she came away from the 15-minute speech believing the city never understood the depth of its disadvantage. And Daley reportedly told the group that had the city known from the start that the International Olympic Committee was intent on taking the games to new regions of the globe, they never would have spent the time or the money on the effort.

Not Getting the Olympics Good for the Sloop?

We were all for the Olympics for a variety of reasons but mainly because of the infrastructure improvement that would have come to our neighborhood. However, the Chicago Tribune blog, Chicago Tribune 77, has a post today essentially saying that the South Loop will be better off because we didn't get the Olympics:

A healthy, sustainable real estate market requires a balance between supply and demand. Supply includes commercial and residential units available for sale and rent, as well as funding required to buy or lease these properties. This supply would have undoubtedly increased markedly with the increase in demand prior to and during the events. Olympic-related jobs would have provided income for purchase and rent of these properties, and commercial enterprises would have set up shop to serve workers and visitors at a record pace. Following the closing ceremony, however, visitors return home, jobs end, and demand would have dropped off drastically.

This imbalance would have had a significant negative impact on existing property in and around the Olympic venues. Empty commercial space does not indicate a healthy neighborhood to potential buyers, and I wholeheartedly believe that prices of residential properties in both near south and South Loop neighborhoods would have taken a serious hit in pricing. As we have recently seen, high levels of inventory take years to absorb. Nothing good comes of an oversupply situation. Post-Olympic buyers would not have benefited either - there wouldn’t be enough of them to take advantage of the situation.

It's a valid point and an argument we brought up and debated with people a lot. We still think the infrastructure improvements would have improved the neighborhood which in turn would have encouraged more people to come to the neighborhood which in turn would help with retail and real estate.

We still think the neighorhood will grow and flourish, but it will be slower since we did not get the Olympics in our opinion.

Hope we're wrong though.

Moving Past the Olympics Debacle: The 2018 or 2022 World Cup

Now that the fervor around the Olympics has subsided (sort of), it's time to move on to the next bidding process, the US bid for the 2018 or 2022 World Cup. From a technical standpoint, the big difference between the Olympics and the World Cup is where the events would be staged. Olympics would have primarily been in Chicago and other Midwestern cities. The World Cup would be staged at various stadiums throughout the country (think cities with big football stadiums).

With that said, it's pretty easy for the US to stage the World Cup since it has numerous stadiums that could easily accommodate the event. Although in our opinion the World Cup wouldn't have the same affect on the city as the Olympics (in terms of infrastructure and constant world attention), it's a lot less risky since we wouldn't need to build new venues.

It's a good thing for Chicago, so hopefully we get this thing. The decision will come in December of 2010...let the new count down begin.

For more information check out the Chicagoist's post on the topic.

Olympic Hangover Subsides

It was a shocking way to lead into the weekend, but the sting from Chicago's dismissal in the first round of the IOC 2016 Olympic host city voting has passed. We were all for the bid since it would have generated massive amounts of federal funds for improved infrastructure and transit, but as Mayor Daley simply said, "You go on with your life."

The Chicagoist had a post titled "Olympocalypse: What Went Wrong?" which was a good summary with links to various issues that could have factored into the Olympic loss.

For the record, here is our poll leading up to the Olympics:

Chicago Only Got 18 Out of 94 Votes

Amazingly, it seems as if Chicago never really had a chance in the race. The voting numbers have finally come out:

Chicago was eliminated in the first round of the voting and Tokyo went out in the second round. For Chicago, it wasn't that close: The first-round vote totals showed Madrid with 28, Rio 26, Tokyo 22, and Chicago 18. In the second round, it was Rio 46, Madrid 29, and Tokyo 20, and in the last round, it was Rio 66 and Madrid 32.

To sum up:

"We didn't have a natural constituency," said veteran USOC official and IOC member Bob Ctvrtlik. While Latin American countries presumably voted for winner Rio de Janeiro, Asian countries for Tokyo and many European ones for Madrid, only one other North American country besides the U.S. has a vote on the IOC: Canada.

The weird thing is that somehow Tokyo lost two votes in the second round. That means a couple people (at least) that voted for Tokyo in the first round decided to vote for a different city in the second round. Seems strange...could a Rio or Madrid supporter vote for Tokyo in the first round to purposefully knock Chicago out? Regardless it doesn't matter, just some food for thought.

Rio Proves Victorious

As we're sure most of you know by now, Rio De Janeiro has won the vote to host the 2016 Olympics. At the end of the day the fact that South America has never hosted the Olympics probably proved to be the tipping point in the race. It's a powerful argument. Congrats to them.

Although we are disappointed by this news, we take solace in the work and vision of Chicago's team. We don't claim to be Olympic historians, but upon reading thousands of articles about past Olympic plans and the Olympic movement, we feel as if Chicago's plan was still excellent.

We will continue to comb through the massive amount of coverage and try to bring you interesting tidbits and opinions that we read and hear. The 2016 decision is made, but the discourse will continue.

Obama Delivers for Chicago 2016

So we stayed up to watch Chicago's presentation and one thing is clear, the Obama's delivered for Chicago 2016. Overall the presentation was fine, but didn't really move us. Here is some good coverage live blogging from Chicagoist.

We will come back for more thoughts later.

Chicagoist's Defense of the Olympics

We're in favor of the Olympics, but realize many of the concerns people have. However, similar to this solid post on the Chicagoist today, we feel as if the net result of the Olympics would be positive for Chicago:

We're not oblivious to the financial concerns, worries of corruption and suspicion of sweetheart deals for insiders that seem to be the basis for most objections -- but we believe that more serious examinations of the finances prove a net positive for the city. The vast majority of the funds to pay for the games are dollars the city wouldn’t see otherwise - to suggest that they city is spending dollars on venues that it could otherwise spend on schools, clinics, etc. isn’t really the case. On the other hand, additional spending means more tax revenues that the city can spend on other services.

Half of IOC Members Remain Undecided?

There is a lot of info out there about the Olympics, but Sports Illustrated has a good read that interviews various IOC members. The most interesting thing in the article is a quote from an IOC VP about undecided voters:

IOC vice president Chiharu Igaya said "many" IOC members are undecided and will choose only after the cities' final presentations Friday. "The four cities are now neck-to-neck," he told the AP.

"That final presentation, yes, it's going to be crucial," said Willi Kaltschmitt, an IOC member since 1988. He said he believes that half or more of his 105 colleagues remain undecided.

It's hard to believe this considering how long this process drags on, but if it's true we can see why Obama's presence is so critical.

It's also been fun to watch each city continue to jostle each other. In the SI article above, Madrid's VP called Rio's bid 'the worst'. In other silly news, Rio filed a complaint with the IOC about Mayor Daley stating that Rio would have issues due to the fact that Rio is hosting the 2014 World Cup. It's like little school girls calling each other names and tattling on each other.

In our opinion the biggest news in the Olympic Soap Opera is that Rio had to cancel a World Cup swimming event next month due to a lack of funding. Talk about bad timing, if you can't find funding for a minor international sporting event, how can you seriously be considered to stage the Olympics? Whether IOC members care about this is another story. Our guess is that Chicago, Madrid and Tokyo officials will be reminding IOC members of this during their schmoozing sessions.

Let the games (ie - Soap Opera) begin...

Olympics Effect on Real Estate

NBC's website had an interesting article yesterday looking at the effect of the Atlanta and Salt Lake City Olympics on their local real estate markets. From the sounds of it, Atlanta has had more success than Salt Lake post-Olympics. However, Chicago's real estate market is much much different then either of those cities, so it's tough to get a solid comparison.

However, it's an interesting subject, because the thought across our city (and specifically in the South Loop) is that it would be a big boost for real estate throughout Chicago. We've also heard the theory that it would be negative because it would drive development and over saturate the market (again!). Although there is merit to both arguments, to us the benefit of the Olympics is the signal it will send about the cities intentions for the South Side of Chicago.

Although enhancements have already been happening in and around the Sloop, more emphasis would be put on capital and infrastructure improvements. Businesses, restaurants and shops would see this as their chance to jump on the bandwagon and take advantage of an emerging neighborhood.

Sloopers please don't be offended by this. We love our neighborhood as it is right now and we know you do too, but it ain't perfect. Improvements will happen eventually, but we're confident that the Olympics would speed up the process and in our opinion that's a good thing.

Transit Improvements With the Olympics?

It's been assumed that Chicago will receive vast transit improvements if Chicago wins the 2016 Olympics even though it is not explicitly stated within the official bid book. The Sun-Times looks at potential issues with the Olympics and transit improvements in an article today. They make it sound ominous, but we still feel like it's a slam dunk if we get the Olympics.

Obama Confirms Copenhagen Visit

The vote for the host city of the 2016 Olympics is just 5 days away and one of the final pieces of the puzzle finally was confirmed this morning. President Obama will be traveling over to Copenhagen on Thursday night to lobby for Chicago and address the IOC during Chicago's final presentation. Two weeks ago, it looked as if this wasn't going to be the case, however the president changed course and Chicago's bid backers have to be pumped.

The WSJ states that this could be Obama's successful going out party (that is if he is re-elected in 2012):

Obama wants the Chicago Olympics to top off his presidency in style. If he wins re-election, he’ll be handing over to a successor six months or so after the Games are held. By the summer of 2016 he will hope business is booming again and he can then present the Chicago Games as his crowning glory and a symbol of recovery on his watch.

He's got a ways to go before that will happen, but we could see this logic.

Anyway, this should be an interesting week for Chicago. We will do our best to keep you covered on interesting Olympic info.

The Olympic Host City Voting Process; Rio's Empty Promises

As we wait to see if Obama is going to Copenhagen for the Olympic vote next week, there is a ton of articles about the race. Although most aren't new news, today we found a good read on ESPN that summarizes the voting process and offers some insight on conventional thinking:

Ninety-nine of the IOC's 106 members are eligible to vote in the first round (members from countries with bid cities can't vote while their candidate is still in contention).

The city receiving the fewest votes is eliminated after each round until one candidate secures a majority. The vote is expected to go the maximum three rounds.

Some members tend to vote out of sympathy in the first round, which can produce some surprises. The key to victory is picking up votes from the cities which go out.

If Tokyo were to go out in the first round, it is believed many of its votes would go to Chicago. If Madrid goes out, the consensus is they would go to Rio.

The last sentence is interesting and is something we just read for the first time. We think they're implying that Asian countries have less animosity towards the United States then European ones, but who knows.

Anyway, it's safe to say that experts are predicting that the race is between Rio and Chicago. At this point, if you don't know the criticisms of Chicago's bid, you must be living under a rock. However, we don't hear as much about Rio's negatives. Time magazine's website has an interesting article on the empty promises of Rio's 'successful' 2007 Pan American games:

Winning the 2007 Pan American games was considered a big, if sometimes chaotic, success for Rio. To triumph over rival bidder San Antonio, officials used the same argument that this was Rio's turn. To back that up they promised to transform the city with a new ring road system, something called a "via light" railway (presumably a light railway), a new state highway and 54 km of new metro line.

But none of the roads and not one kilometer of proposed metro lines was built. Authorities also promised to clean up the Guanabara Bay, the fetid body of water whose smell assails visitors driving into town from the international airport. Although hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent, the stench persists and the bay remains a stinking eyesore.

If you think Rio has it in the bag, read the article. Neither city is perfect...we're looking forward to the coverage next week.

(Olympic image from 121st IOC Session & XII Olympic Congress in Copenhagen website)