Go ahead: Imagine a torch relay along the Charles River or a dash up Heartbreak Hill with a gold medal at stake. The faintest flicker of the Olympic flame has been lit over Boston.
A private group called the Boston Olympic Exploratory Committee wants to bring the Summer Games to Boston in 2024, and hopes to get Mayor Thomas M. Menino’s blessing to pursue preliminary support from local businesses.
Comments
No! No! No! No! The Olympics are the biggest cluster f**k on the planet! This has got to be Romney revenge at work...
$3 million for the study alone? That just starts the billion dollar process...and how do zillions of people get in and out of the city when thousands of us fail a the attempt every day? ANd we need 3 mil to determine this?
Why should the people of Massachusetts pay for this? Will they impose a special Olympics tax to pay for the prestige? Are they going to level Chelsea to build the village? It would make more sense for Manchester to host the winter games. As for this, I Vote No!
Which Manchester? The one on the North Shore?
Wow, folks here are just so negative, no, no, no to anything new or different. Just the suggestion of trying sets negative New Englanders off. What is wrong with these people?
Anyway, maybe this is a good idea, maybe a disaster, who knows. But the solution is so obvious -- hire Mitt Romney. Seriously, he is really smart, certainly knows what it takes, knows all the players, local and internationally. Give him three or four months to put together a feasibility study, how much it would cost, etc. I would certainly find him much, much more credible when it comes to Olympics and money than any of the local yokels mentioned in this article. I figure he will be opening up his place on Winnipesaukee soon, he'll be accessible, he's got plenty of time on his hands.
I'll save you the cost of the study. It will cost too much. Have a nice day. You owe me one.
@richstan: based on your other postings, you have less credibility than State Senator Donoghue, which is saying something. If Chicago could put forward a plan, why not Boston? Oh wait, I forgot, we're all incompetent here.
Group tries to bring Olympics to Boston in 2024...... And I want to be an astronaut.
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The Olympics are a huge waste of money. The IOC is hilariously corrupt. I'm all in favor of Boston bidding on and hosting large international events, but not something on the scale of the Olympics where the return on investment is so miniscule and the pain to ordinary citizens is so great.
Please, dear God, no.
What a stupid idea. Traffic is already bad in Boston. The metro area would come to a halt hosting the Games. Let's be realistic: Boston is a very nice small city. It is not London, Beijing or LA.
Relax Boston. The way the modern Olympics are run, hardly any of the venues or athlete housing would ever be built in the downtown area. The games would be spread out all over the northeast with soccer games being played in every major stadium in the US, sailing probably in Newport, cycling in New Hampshire, for example. The olympic venues could be anywhere within an hour or two of Logan. Boston would only serve as the official center. However, even if you open the scale to all of New England, this idea does not have the remotest chance of succeeding. Boston is way too small for a development of this scale and it lacks the infrastructure or the potential for expansion for the needed venues and accommodations. Does anyone remember why the Patriots had to build their stadium in Foxborough? Finding a tract of land large enough for the Olympic Stadium alone would necessitate building in rural Maine. The Pease Tradeport would be large enough but would you dismantle a SAC base to build these venues? And assuming it's even built anywhere within 60 miles of Boston who would use this 90,000 seat white elephant once the circus leaves town? Ask the residents of Montreal how their $1 billion Olympic Statium worked out.
Clippercity's suggestion is the only way this would work, but he/she is correct - rare these days that a single city contains all or even most of the Olympics. The idea of a truly regional bid is a pretty cool idea. Sailing in Newport would be amazing. Equestrian events out near Worcester. Biggest problem would be where to build the stadium. There just isn't anywhere in or near Boston that could accomodate it, and then what do you do when it's over?
The condition of the T and relative lack of hotel rooms are really the biggest issues. And unfortunately I only see the T getting worse, not better, by 2024, unless there is some sort of huge investment into it, which isn't coming.
Not that it matters or that my opinion will affect anything, but I vote no. I base my vote on my very lengthy financial research on three words, " THE BIG DIG!" And that just involved one structure at one end of this automobile challenged city. I commented before on this subject that we can expect the Boston "2024" Olympics to be held at the earliest in "2032." Also, monetarily successful as the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics were, the Federal monies contributed added up to between 400 and 500 million dollars.
Yeah, right! This city could never pull it off.....we just aren't capable or equipped to handle something of this magnitude! The logistics would be a nightmare. We can't even get the "T" to run smoothly never mind the Olympics! I'm just a realist, not a pessimist. It's NEVAH going to happen. Don't waste the time or money.
My wife cannot get a train from State St to Wellington Station on an average day. The tranist system in Metro Boston is a mess! Now imagine the confusion when out of towners see "inbound" become "outbound", and vice-versa. Why they dont do North, South, East, and West is a mystery. There are not a lot of hotel rooms, and the number of ~34k may be a stretch. How many are prepared to host a world class event. Now the big issue is the Olympic Stadium. In past Olympics, ATL, LA, etc. These stadiums were used for MLB in Atlanta, and the LA Colosium was home to the Rams, Raiders, and for a short time the LA Dodgers. Who is going to play there? Gillette stadium will be roughly 25 years old, so no use case there. The Red Sox will NOT be moving to Mattapan after the time and expense they put into renovating Fenway Park and branding it America's Most Beloved Park. You cannot build a one and done structure. The Olympic Village might work. You can always be built in a neighboring city, iike Somerville, and be used later for residences. Lastly the people who work in the city. Does the city stop for 2 weeks? I love Boston, but it is not prepared to host an Olympics, today, in 12 years or 25 years. The infrastructure is not there.
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I don't want Menino speaking for my town...Boston can't hold it and I don't want my town or those nearby decimated.
The question shouldn't be if Boston is a good city for the Olympics. Of course this is a God-awful idea that only reprobates, scoundrels, "legal" criminals, capitalist-scallywags and sicko egomaniacal creeps would entertain for more than a split second. The real question is: How do we properly shame these conniving opportunists? Violence is not an oprion. I say cream-pies. Lots of them.
Listen, if Boston can withstand those repulsive, revolting, repugnant, loathsome and offensive "Occupy" miscreants, even the Olympics should pose no problem. This, of course, is not an endorsement of the idea, but if we must have sosmething, I'd prefer the Olympics.
Fenway is private, Gillette stadium is private. Boston/Massachusetts would never build an Olympic stadium, a velodrome, a suitable swimming venue etc. When they last talked about hosting the Olympics in Boston they talked about using mostly existing facilities owned by the local universities and the Charles for rowing events. A city needs to build a lot of public structures. Gillette and Fenway are proof there is little appetite for publicly built stadiums in this region.
Hey Folks, I couldn't help but notice that not one of you addressed the big "C" issue :"COST"!! Besides the fact that you would be hard presssed to find another major U.S. city that is less prepared and equipped to properly host an Olympics than Boston, the London Olympics cost $36 Billion !! (Yes, that's with a "B"). What do you think the event will cost in another 11 yrs.? Likely around $45 Billion (yes that was a "B" again) at least. Anyone want to offer a suggestion as to where that kind of $ will come from? WAKE UP!! This is a joke, or at least should be. PKVS
If the pols believe that the Olympics will provide significant opportunities for bribery, graft and extortion, you can bet that Boston will make a bid.
No, no. we can't afford it and don't want it.....
Boston has a chance to transform itself into a dynamic world site with these olympic games. We can build the neccesary new venues on the east boston waterfront. This is just the jump start that area needs. Connect the north and south station train stations to provide a seamless transfer to any place in the metro area. Traffic can easily be resolved by restricting all public traffic during the olympic games to taxi's, buses, trains and tuk tuks, and of course the neccesary deliveries for businesses. Boston is a walking city and a couple of weeks without any traffic would be great. For those who live outside the city but work in Boston just take public transportation for 2 weeks. The sacrifice would catapult Boston into a major tourist destination for decades.
This idea only works for those who dream of better things and are not afraid to think outside of the box. As Robert Kennedy once said..." I dream things that never were..and say why not"
I'd like to see you present this to the "Shark Tank" with such pie in the sky quotations. You would get shredded. Are you in line to make money of the study?
Boston doesn't have the political will to do this. Boston cannot even build one arena or stadium with public dollars. You really think the additional venues for an Olympics (which are not very useful for anything but the Olympics) and an additional 15K hotel rooms can be had in 10 or so years. Of course it could happen if there was the community support and a huge expenditure of money, but that will never happen here. Expenses to build the venues would also be proportionally large here relative to other places. A poll on one news station last night was 75:25 against.