Olympic Ponderings

I'm not going to lie: my soul is a little stirred by King Richard II's Olympic proposal. Stirred in the sense that I'm still not quite sure what to think about it. Da mare says that there will be no tax increases for the Olympics, that corporate entities will be kicking in a hefty chunk of change, and that the project can already be demonstrated to have a budget surplus.

Call me skeptical, but a surplus in a years away project built into a proposal which is, when contextually considered, a sales pitch isn't something that settles my fears about biting off more than the city can chew. These fears are fairly well grounded. Summation of them can be found over at Beachwood Reporter, but once the legitimate fears are done in that article, you need only keep in mind - Rhodes is a cynic. I'm a skeptic.

By the way, taxpayer dollars are already being used in time and manpower spent by city officials and the mayor's office preparing the bid. And if you think taxpayer dollars won't be spent as a matter of course - fixing streets and sidewalks and providing police officers and security measures - I have some beach front properties in Indiana I'd like to talk to you about. No money down!

Oh dear. We're going to be putting tax dollars towards ::gasp:: fixing streets and sidewalks! Good god. What if Richy Daley decides to put money into the CTA, which as we all know is nothing more than a vast network of death traps. Daley, corruption to blame .

If I didn't believe that the Olympics would serve as a catalyst for urban renewal, I wouldn't even consider supporting such an idea. However, the history of this town has been to take such events and use them as starting points for bringing back dead or dieing areas or create new landmarks in the city. Being a native Midway type, I saw first hand exactly how the city spending money in the area can revitalize the neighborhood. The city spent significant amounts of money cleaning up the area around Midway airport, reworking the streets surrounding it, some additional hotels sprung up. This, coupled with the then coming of the Orange Line, eventually contributed to the fully functional neighborhoods just west of Midway today even despite the fact that a previous retail center, Ford City Mall, was then well along it's way of becoming a gang infested cesspool.

Money spent on infrastructure, regardless of the catalyst, is never poorly spent.

My skepticism really sits largely in the fact that such a large plan over such a long period of time guarantees budget overruns. As the Second City Cop points out, these things have a historic tendency to run well over budget, leaving the host city often in debt:

How about the fact that NO Olympics in the last 30 years has made money aside from Los Angeles in 1984? Montreal just paid off its Olympic debt from the 1976 games last year. Britain is suddenly on the hook for FOUR TIMES the original cost estimate for the 2012 Games.

Once again, that refers to the host city - many businesses make money hand over fist. Hell, anybody with even a modicum of entrepreneurial spirit could probably make a mini-fortune should they decide to enter the fray, or even a homeowner who doesn't mind taking a vacation while renting their house out to some Euro types.

Of all the criticism, I do see some particular validity in something that Harold Henderson goes over the top on. I believe that the Olympics can be used as a good catalyst for urban renewal, but I would clearly state that using it for white urban reclamation is definitely bad. One of the things Daley has premised this whole Olympic idea on was that he would spread venues and places of interest throughout the city, particularly to some of the south side predominantly African American areas. An obvious result of this, that these areas will see a lot of gentrification - leading a great deal of the residents to do what many black folks find themselves doing when neighborhoods start getting white: Head south.

We already have an astounding problem with the South Suburbs becoming the Second City's Second City. I feel very little need to contribute to the problem.

When the Olympic proposal story first broke, a lot of the calls for the venue placement to be in African American neighborhoods were from the African American community. Why they're asking for their own undoing, I haven't the slightest. On the other hand, gentrification is going to happen one way or the other. Having the Olympics might speed it up and help it worm it's way into places it might otherwise have difficulty penetrating; though not having the Olympics isn't going to stop it.

Should Chicago be selected by as the host city, I'm thinking the biggest concern should be a lot of oversight of the Olympic project as to avoid the city being permanently placed in debt.