Boston
Summer Olympics 2024! Ready, set, GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
C’mon people! Get psyched for the Olympics, THE OLYMPICS, right here in Beantown!
Athletes from around the world. Our fair
city showcased in splendor for all humanity to see! Massachusetts,
a true Hub of global sports competition in less than ten years and
counting! Basketball at the Hall of Fame
in Springfield!
Golf in Brookline!
A brand new 60,000 seat Olympic Stadium in South Boston!
It’s time to get the bandwagon rolling!!!
(Cricket sounds…..)
I’ve tried but I just can’t get excited about the
possibility that the Olympics might land here in 2024. I’m supposed to get pumped up and filled with
civic pride. That’s what the Boston 2024 Organizing Committee wants us Bay
Staters to do. But our hearts are not in it, not even close. The collective response thus far to Boston being selected by the International Olympic Committee
as the United States’
candidate for 2024? Meh. In a recent WBUR
poll of 504 registered Massachusetts
voters, support for the Olympics is at 36 percent and falling. Fifty-two
percent oppose the games, a bronze medal at best.
Why the big collective yawn?
It could be that the Olympic cheerleading committee is not
exactly stocked with a “who’s who” of recognizable people, unless you’re inside
the very inner circle of eastern Massachusetts
politics and influence. The Chair is John Fish, head of Suffolk Construction. A
very competent guy, great at what he does but can he whip up support among the
citizenry? When Boston 2024 did finally bring in a “big name”, former
Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick as an “Olympics Ambassador”, it made the
disastrous public relations mistake of deciding to pay him $7,500 a day as a traveling consultant. Patrick now says he’ll work
for free but the damage is done. For such a potentially huge public-private
enterprise, this lack of high profile leadership is troubling. Where’s the current
Governor? Our Congressional delegation?
Local sports stars? Are any of them on board?
Our Olympic apathy might be the product of still digging out
from the record breaking winter of 2015.
If you had the misfortune in the past seven weeks of trying to ride the
“T” or the commuter rail, you’re right to ask how these aging and suspect transportation
hubs will do in 2024, moving tens of thousands of athletes and fans around the
region. Ever been on the Pike on a rainy
Friday night or Route 128 at rush hour?
Can we really handle the huge strain the Olympics will place on our
transportation system? Maybe we first need to figure how to make sure that next
winter, the trains run on time.
Perhaps our Olympian malaise is born of legitimate fears
about how much recent Olympic Games cost, like Beijing,
China (summer 2008, $44
billion) or Sochi, Russia (winter 2014, $51 billion).
It helped that each country’s autocratic governments were able to bully through
the Games, public input dismissed. Staging the Olympiad is not some amateur
operation. (Ironic, huh?) It’s big, big business and big, big money. The 2024
Committee has proposed a budget of $9.1 billion, and promises that it will come
from corporate sponsors, developers, broadcast fees, ticket sales and the
federal government. Can the Olympics
really be staged at Building 19 prices? Will the numbers hold true for the
next decade? Can anyone say “Big Dig”?
I hate to be a kill joy. The Olympics are an entertaining
diversion for two weeks every other year.
And I do love Boston, my birthplace, the
regional gem of New England, a cultural and
economic center for innovation, higher education, the arts, professional
sports, and health care. Boston is a world class
city, and with much effort I suppose we could
stage the Olympics. But no one’s asked
or answered the most obvious question. Should
we go for gold?
Is this Olympian effort worth it? How about we organize an
Olympic level brain trust to tackle issues which really matter to Boston and the region:
growing income inequality, or the lack
of affordable housing for the poor, working class and young professionals?
Where’s the Olympic fanfare to fund and fix our roads and bridges, which are
among the worst in the country? Where are corporate and civic leaders to rally
around boosting public education? That would be a real victory, far beyond fourteen
days of fun in some far off summer.
The Olympics in Boston…it
sounds like a good idea, in a press release or at a press conference or on a
flashy website, but the reality? For this loyal Bostonian, I hope the 2024
Olympics end up happening somewhere else.
That would be a real victory.
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