Confession: I want the Olympics, just not these Olympics
Despite what you might have heard, I support the Olympic movement.
I’ve always wondered about the possibility of a backyard Olympiad, playing the admittedly amateurish game of where each event might be held throughout the region. It’s really the same rush of ideas our good friends at Boston 2024 brought to the table in the early stages of their hotly-debated plan to bring the Summer Games to Massachusetts, making many an assumption and promise along the way.
Beach volleyball on the Boston Common, anyone?
The difference is, my proposal of holding downhill skiing at Sugarloaf, in Maine, or badminton in the Meadow Glen Mall parking lot, is a personal pipe dream, not part of a plan that proved to be an embarrassing first step for the Boston Olympic boosters, who have never recovered in the matter of public opinion.
Yet, I have to admit, I’m a sucker for the glossy photos of a conceivable Boston future post-Rings. I’m fascinated by the prospect of leaving behind Legacy Park once the Olympic Stadium is torn down in the cringingly-bad Boston 2024 determination of the “Midtown’’ neighborhood. Treating Buzzard’s Bay as a sailing destination on par with the best in the world is an idea long overdue anyway. I haven’t even seen any real concept for how the state plans to improve the MBTA infrastructure and I already love it because it isn’t the current one.
Essentially, I really do want the Olympics.
Just not these Olympics.
Boston 2024’s shape-shifting between Dudley Do-Right in front of the cameras and Snidely Whiplash behind closed doors have brought a level of mistrust not easily replaced by optimism and civic pride. But is there a middle ground?
Can you still want the Olympics to come to Boston and somehow have any semblance of faith that those in charge of the process won’t put the state in financial ruin?
That’s a nearly impossible tightrope to walk, particularly given that when we last left the Olympic Franchise Four of chairman Steve Pagliuca, CEO Richard Davey, COO Erin Murphy, and Elkus-Manfredi architects founder and principal David Manfredi in a tiny room following the group’s breathless, shiny, and much grander and controlled presentation of “Plan 2.0’’ at the Boston Convention Center, there were no assurances of financial insurances for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
And they didn’t give a damn.
“Suffice to say, we’ll get the details out,’’ Pagliuca stammered, dismissing repeated questions about the insurance details surrounding the bid for the Games late last month.
So, what would it take for me to get on board with Boston’s Olympic plan? Let’s begin there.
Boston 2024 has spent untold millions and countless hours in drafting its revised plan (aka, the one not roundly mocked, yet (ahem) good enough to land the bid from the United States Olympic Committee earlier this year) but paid no attention to the concerns of the taxpayers, other than to make a cute video with David Ortiz telling everybody the Olympics were nifty. Hmm. I mean, he’s a Boston legend and all, but Ortiz hasn’t been involved in something this secretively kept under wraps since his leaked steroid test positive from 2003, the one he told us six years ago now he would get to the bottom of and…well, whatever.
Boston 2024 wants Massachusetts to trust them? Present the state with a detailed look at the group’s budgeted $128 million for taxpayer insurance purposes. Where? Why? How?
How will they protect taxpayers from cost overruns and revenue shortfalls? Exactly, how?
It remains the top square on the billion dollar pyramid. And all Boston has gotten in return is a push to dream big.
Fine.
But dreaming big comes at a cost. I don’t take the family to Disney World without knowing what the hotel is going to cost, what the weather is going to be, or how long I’m going to have to wait in line to get an autograph from some college girl dressed like a “Frozen’’ lass. Why in the world should any Bostonian or resident of Massachusetts — remember Western Mass., you’ve got rowing to pay for — fall in line with everything Boston 2024 is trying to shovel without any sense of what the bill is going to be?
It isn’t only the “cool’’ factor (ooh, T-shirts) of hosting the Olympics. What they leave behind can be different and unlike the wasted promise of Athens, Atlanta, and whatever the hell is to become of Sochi. I think in some ways, Boston 2024 has done a much better job of presenting that than we give them credit.
But until they give you the truth about your risk, why would you ever pony up your support?
Possible Olympic venues
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