My instant reaction to the thread title’s question: “Where would it put them?”
I think it does address the question. If the IOC looks at the bid and then sees that the bidding city refused to fund a new stadium and is getting pushback from the locals, they will choose to go elsewhere.
As to the location, not much would actually happen in NYC – in the winter Olympics, events take place many miles apart. You could do the same thing with the summer Olympics, or use the many pro stadiums and arenas, and the various school facilities as well.
On top of the obvious money drain of hosting the event, you would also have a logistical nightmare. WHERE would you construct all the various venues? They couldn’t be in the city proper, so that means they would be scattered all over the place. Travel would be a nightmare to say the least.
Oooh, that explains why they relocated from Rio following widespread protests by Brazilians who wanted their city’s very real problems addressed instead of a fancy sports competition.
I can’t tell if this is sarcasm or not. I don’t follow Olympics politics that closely.
Did those protests happen before Rio won the Olympic mandate?
No question about the travel. I don’t know how many venues the summer Olympics normally has, but they could get access to MSG, Pru Center, various pro- and semi-pro baseball stadiums, lots of college facilities (including Rutgers, a D1 school with D1 facilities). I don’t know if they would even have to build any new facilities.
Tokyo, London and Paris are also popular tourist destinations. Did they “need” the Summer Olympics? Yet they all hosted/will host the Summer Olympics.
I think at least since Montreal in 1976, hosting the Games was seen as a boondoggle, with Montreal left with debt for a long time. But was it seen as such before that? Some of the early Games were relatively cheap. Heck, St Louis hosted once. By now, many of the major world cities have hosted; London, Paris, Rome, Tokyo, Moscow, etc, some more than once. So I have wondered why NYC never hosted in the first hundred years.
BTW, one reason the cities may have hosted is that the national governments covered much of the cost. Perhaps it’s a recent thing to expect the local city to shoulder that burden.
Is there really that much though? I’d imagine there’s at least one velodrome, multiple olympic-sized swimming/diving centers, stadiums, arenas, etc… within 40 miles of NYC that could be used.
I thought that was the point of v. large American cities being interested in hosting the Olympics- for the most part, they already have a lot of the infrastructure in place for the Summer Games and wouldn’t have to build new.
Do the Jets/Giants need a new stadium? How about the Yankees/Mets? Remember that the main stadium for the 1996 Summer Olympics only held four track & field events - a test event in 1995, the US Olympic Trials, the Olympics, and the Paralympics - before being converted to a baseball stadium for the Braves.
Pretty much everything else can be held in existing stadiums - play the basketball at Madison Square Garden, for example, and the volleyball or gymnastics in the Nets’ home arena. The only thing that really needs to be built from scratch is the velodrome, although they may need to build, or at least expand, a building for the swimming events, which could then be used by, say, NYU or Columbia.
And an Olympic Village. The NYC bid pledged $1.5 billion for construction of the village and that was in Queens. The cost of putting it in Manhattan would have been ridiculous. The Mets Citi Field (also in Queens) was offered as the Olympic stadium. Kinda small and right in the middle of baseball season. Not ideal.
I’m originally from the NY area. While it’s difficult to imagine the road situation there being much worse, I have no doubt the Olympics would create unimaginably bad conditions for everyone.
The trouble with traveling around NY is, apart from general congestion, the bridges. To get on and off Manhattan, Long Island, Staten Island and in / out of NJ requires a bridge crossing. When my parents lived on LI it was a straight line distance of less than 50 miles from me. Took two hours to drive it, typically.
I don’t see how anyone could commute to work around there with an Olympics going on.
Every time there is a Yankee Home Game or a Presidential visit NYC traffic goes from terrible to gridlock. Also parades, fireworks, big concerts in the Park, etc.
The Olympics would be 17 days of epic gridlock most likely. At least the Yankee Home Games are localized and only a few hours of gridlock from before the start and just after the game ends.
We live in suburban Chicago, and I work in the Loop. When Chicago made it to the finalist stage for consideration for the 2016 Summer Games, my wife and I agreed that, if the Olympics were held here, we’d leave the area for the duration of the Games, just due to the colossal logistical cluster-frak it would be.
The 1980 Olympics were held in Lake Placid, NY which is a resort area in the middle of nowhere, relative to other venues.
(And don’t get me started on the 2014 Sochi games; Sochi is actually in a semitropical climate and most of the outdoor events had to be held elsewhere.)
I have relatives in Atlanta, and that’s exactly what they, and a lot of other people, did. IIRC, at least one of them did rent out their house to someone they knew who was in town for the games in 1996’s version of Air B&B.
Yeah, I think they basically built it all from scratch. I think it’s only one of two places to train for bobsled in the US.
I don’t remember meeting anyone who was in favor of Chicago getting the Games. It would cost a ton of money and screw up travel for months.
London 2012 is generally considered to have been a major success. The Olympic park has created an excellent amenity in what was a run-down part of London and the ‘village’ has been repurposed into homes.
I am sure that if there was sufficient will. NYC could do the same. There must be parts of the city that would benefit from an investment like this.
As for gridlocked traffic - that was expected to happen in London but in the event traffic was actually lower than normal. This was due to a combination of good management and the fact that many Londoners chose to make themselves scace for those two weeks.
Also, if I am looking at the satellite image right, it would be impossible to put a running track inside of it as currently configured. Even if they could, they would need to install one, and have at least one “test event” months in advance to make sure everything was working properly, so who knows how many months the Mets would have to play away games, or “borrow” Yankee Stadium (and I can only imagine what the Yankees owners would say to that).