As Boston City Council members began the first of four sessions Monday at which they will grill backers of a 2024 Olympics bid, Boston 2024 CEO Richard A. Davey Jr. assured them 2024 will meet a deadline next month to release a detailed plan.
Boston 2024’s initial plan has come under fire for being cooked up in secret and proposing moves that outraged neighborhood and parks groups, such as taking over Boston Common for beach volleyball and Franklin Park in Dorchester for horse racing and pentathlon events.
Under pressure from Governor Charlie Baker to make clear what they’re now proposing to build, where, and how they’ll pay for it, Davey said late Monday morning, “We expect to be releasing a second version in june for public comment."
Davey said when Boston 2024 leaders travel to Lausanne, Switzerland, to meet with the International Olympic Committee next week, they’ll be pushing for IOC help, too. "We're going to ask the IOC more questions about: Can we be creative with our venues? Can we look at other cities? Can we look at opportunities to continue to reduce the costs?"
That could, Davey said, include getting other big U-S cities to host and pay for some Olympic events, with an eye towards reducing 2024’s costs and boosting its profits. "If we did some preliminary venues, say, for men's and women's basketball in New York, Chicago, Washington D.C., there's probably a real opportunity to increase our revenue -- corporate sponsorships, TV rights" through using giant venues like Madison Square Garden and the United Center alongside the TD Garden.
Mayor Marty Walsh's new chief Olympics watchdog, Sara Myerson, executive director of the city’s Office of Olympic Planning, assured councilors they will enforce 2024's promise that city taxpayers do not get put on the hook for any costs for a Boston summer games. "Our utmost concern is making sure this makes financial sense for the city of Boston,’’ Myerson said, “and so the mayor's office would only want to move forward with a plan that makes financial sense."
Amid several hours of official testimony and questions and answers, Kathleen Collman of the Back Bay was one of just a few regular citizens testifying.
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Her question for councilors: "Why do we need the Olympic Committee to define the future of Boston? Why are we not doing that?" Collman said she resents that the Olympics bid is supplanting diverse citizen efforts to discuss, debate, and decide what kind of city Boston should seek to be.
Collman did come, however, with the benefit of just having visited the city that hosted the last summer games, in 2012. "My husband and I and our dog just spent 7 weeks in London,’’ Collman told the councilors. “I cannot tell you that we met one single citizen that applauded the Olympics. Not one. ... Not a single one was glad the Olympics was there or felt that they benefited from it."
Former hockey gold medalist Angela Ruggiero, now a member of the International Olympic Committee, told councilors there is “no guarantee” the U.S. Olympic Committee will come Sept. 15 give Boston the nod as its preferred candidate to host a games in America in 2024. (There have been persistent rumblings that Los Angeles, which made it to a final round of consideration along with San Francisco and Washington before Boston got the tentative nod as the preferred U.S. city candidate, is being kept in the wings as a backup U.S. candidate should opposition to the Boston games prove insuperable.)
But, Ruggiero said, she’s confident the USOC “wants Boston to succeed” and Boston “has the solid backing” of the committee.
Davey said 2024 is working to make sure neighborhood, civic, business, and labor leaders from all around the city feel enthusiastic about the bid and confident it can be good for the whole city. “At the end of the day, the Games have to include everybody in the city, and if they don't, they will fail. They will fail," Davey said.
In a statement from Scott Blackman, CEO of the USOC, Blackman writes, "We are 100 percent behind Boston’s bid to host the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Boston can deliver a great Games. There is no truth whatsoever to the rumor that we have asked them to stand down, or that we are considering going to another city."
He added, "We are working arm in arm with our partners Mayor Walsh and Boston 2024 to deliver the best possible bid for the city of Boston and the Olympic and Paralympic movements.”
But along with several other councilors from all over the city, Matt O'Malley, who represents a Jamaica Plain/West Roxbury district, told Boston 2024 they've got a lot more selling and persuading to do.
"The closed process and lack of concrete detail that we've seen up until this point has given me a lot of pause,’’ O’Malley said. “I'm not convinced yet that it is a great idea, that we should indeed go forward."
