Candidate Cities to host 2012 Olympic Games

[EKE BBB]

Guess Moscow is at the bottom of the favorites...

From what I´ve heard, Paris is the main rival to Madrid... do we need any more chaos here?

The only "but" to Paris is that I had planned to go there again in the summer of 2012...

[EKE BBB]

A month and a half until the final decission.

Go Paris!!!

(sorry, brownie, but now I AM SURE I don´t want them here)

Edited May 31, 2005 by EKE BBB

[Alfred]

[sidewinder]

I voted for London too. It needs the extra congestion and the huge expense to the citizenry.

[brownie]

The only good thing about France casting a NON in the EU referendum may be that the Olympic committee might decide - in retaliation - to select a non-French city for those 2012 Olympics

[Jazzmoose]

Just hope that it's not going to be Paris! The Olympic Games are a pain for the locals who are

not involved with them.

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Amen! Please, no Olympics in the San Francisco area. And no more Superbowls at Stanford. I don't even want to see the PBA here...

[Christiern]

As log as it isn't my hometown, New York, I really don't care where they hold it, but Madrid looks good on television, so I cast my choice accordingly.

[BbM7]

I'm still smarting about the whole Moscow/2000 incident. 25 years. Get over it Bb.

New York? Not another US Olympics. Hell, they (Americans) are already taking over the world.

France? Nothing personal, but it just doesn't float my boat.

[BruceH]

Just hope that it's not going to be Paris! The Olympic Games are a pain for the locals who are

not involved with them.

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Amen! Please, no Olympics in the San Francisco area. And no more Superbowls at Stanford. I don't even want to see the PBA here...

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Agreed!

Bay Area to world: Forget that we exist!!!!

[EKE BBB]

According to the first paragraph in the brief reports of the Evaluation Committee made public yesterday, Paris and London candidatures are of "a very high quality", while Madrid´s is of "high quality".

Olympic Games are further!

I´ll say it again, brownie: Go Paris!!!

[brownie]

Go London!!! I say...

[EKE BBB]

Go London!!! I say...

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You, bad patriot!!!

[7/4]

June 7, 2005

Olympic Bid Hurt as New York Fails in West Side Stadium Quest

By CHARLES V. BAGLI and MICHAEL COOPER

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's nearly four-year quest to build a Manhattan football stadium that could spark the redevelopment of the West Side and lure the Olympic Games to New York was defeated yesterday when two of Albany's leaders refused to approve the $2.2 billion project. The decision threw into serious doubt the city's bid to bring the 2012 Olympics to the United States.

By far the most contentious development project proposed for New York City in years, the stadium became a victim of the city's and state's clashing rebuilding priorities after the World Trade Center attack.

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who held veto power over the stadium, said yesterday that he could not support the project on the West Side, along with the large commercial redevelopment plan the mayor has proposed, because it would undermine the redevelopment of Lower Manhattan, his district.

"Am I supposed to turn my back on Lower Manhattan as it struggles to recover?" Mr. Silver asked at an Albany news conference. "For what? A stadium? For the hope of bringing the Olympics to New York City?"

Joseph L. Bruno, the Senate majority leader, also declined to support the project, saying he had not been given enough information about it. He tried, but failed, to win support for a plan to authorize the stadium only if the city won its bid for the Olympics.

Yesterday's decision, by the state's Public Authorities Control Board, makes it far more difficult, if not impossible, for the city to guarantee the construction of an Olympic stadium, a prerequisite to its bid. Just hours earlier, the International Olympic Committee released a report generally praising New York's bid, but calling attention to the stadium's uncertainty. Paris's proposal drew unqualified praise. In less than four weeks, the Olympic committee plans to pick Paris, London, Madrid, Moscow or New York for the site of the Summer Games.

"I had not been able to persuade him," Mr. Bloomberg said after Mr. Silver's announcement. "As for our Olympic bid, rejection of the stadium will seriously damage our chances at winning the 2012 Games." Those who opposed the stadium would have to explain why they were against jobs and economic growth, he said. Aides to the mayor added that he was furious at Mr. Silver, believing the speaker had failed to negotiate in good faith after promising to do so over the weekend.

The vote also raises questions about Mr. Bloomberg's ambitious plans to redevelop the low-scale industrial neighborhood on the Far West Side and expand the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center. The mayor had planned the stadium as the centerpiece of a huge commercial and residential development in the old maritime district along the river, including a subway-line extension and broad new boulevards.

Mr. Bloomberg, along with the Jets, the city's construction unions and some business groups, had said the stadium would help create thousands of new jobs, new tax revenues and a new commercial district.

"Without it, we won't have the catalyst for the growth of this neighborhood, and we'll have to revise our plans to make up for it," Mr. Bloomberg said. "This delay will be measured in years, not months." He said the vote would also mean a loss of millions of dollars to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which had planned to sell the stadium site to the Jets.

In his pursuit of the stadium, the mayor failed to reckon with the power of the little-known state board, which is controlled by Albany's three leaders - Mr. Silver, Mr. Bruno and Gov. George E. Pataki. Without a unanimous decision from the board, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority could not transfer the land, and the state could not contribute its half of the $600 million public subsidy. Because Mr. Silver and Mr. Bruno each ordered their representatives on the board to abstain - the equivalent of a no vote - the project cannot go ahead.

Mr. Bloomberg could not overcome Mr. Silver's determination to fight for his downtown district, which has never recovered the economic vitality it held before the terrorist attacks. Aides to the mayor, saying they were baffled by Mr. Silver's vote, said they had offered him any number of incentives to keep businesses downtown, including commercial rent tax exemptions and penalties for moving from downtown to the West Side.

The proposals, offered in last-minute negotiations over the weekend, were met by stony silence from Mr. Silver, the aides said.

Mr. Silver objected to the 24 million square feet of development that City Hall envisioned for the West Side, saying that the administration's fever for the area would inevitably have hurt downtown's growth.

"The 2012 Summer Games are being used as a shield to hide another goal: to shift the financial and business capital of the world out of Lower Manhattan and over to the West Side," Mr. Silver said. To get his vote supporting a stadium, he said, it would have to be built somewhere other than the West Side - ideally, near Shea Stadium in Queens - and the big development project for the West Side would have to be stopped.

Many of the city's largest civic groups, many economists and West Side neighborhood groups agreed with Mr. Silver's opposition, though sometimes for different reasons, saying the stadium would hurt development by discouraging office tenants and residents who would not want to work and live next to it.

"This was never an economic development project," said Robert D. Yaro, president of the Regional Plan Association, which opposed the stadium while favoring the redevelopment of the West Side. "Virtually every independent observer concluded that the impediment to the redevelopment of the West Side was the stadium."

Many in the real estate industry had warned Mr. Bloomberg and his deputy mayor, Daniel L. Doctoroff, the former investment banker and architect of the city's Olympic bid for the last decade, that the stadium would be the Achilles heel of the Olympic bid.

At a founding meeting of the pro-stadium Hudson Yards Coalition four years ago, Jerry I. Speyer, a developer and a minority owner of the Yankees, warned the group that building over the West Side railyards was folly because of community opposition, potential lawsuits and environmental regulations. He was not the only one. "Everyone in town gave the Olympic organizers that advice," Mr. Yaro said.

At the time, though, no one predicted that James L. Dolan, whose family controls Cablevision and Madison Square Garden, would come to view the stadium as competition and begin an all-out effort to stop the project, hiring lobbyists and spending millions on television ads.

The Jets had proposed building a $2.2 billion stadium, nearly quadruple the $630 million cost of the most expensive stadium in the United States, the new Soldier Field in Chicago. The Jets promised to pay $1.6 billion themselves, more than any other professional team, while the city and state were to invest a combined $600 million.

The team designed the stadium to double as an exhibition hall, to work in conjunction with the Javits convention center, but that feature did little to blunt criticism of the project.

The Jets will probably stay in New Jersey, Mr. Bloomberg said, and the state's acting governor, Richard J. Codey, said he was confident the team would remain there in a new Meadowlands stadium.

The meeting of the Public Authorities Control Board, which usually meets in out-of-the-way rooms in the Capitol and draws only a handful of mild-mannered observers in pinstripe suits, met in a large convention room yesterday, and drew hundreds of angry union members, some in hard hats, who noisily called for the stadium.

The tensions reached a boiling point when State Senator Thomas K. Duane, a Democrat who represents the West Side, went over to talk with the stadium opponents. Suddenly he was swarmed by stadium boosters who began screaming at the opponents. The standoff was defused when several state troopers entered the room, and some of the cooler-headed union members urged their colleagues to sit down.

After the vote, a moan went up in the crowd of ironworkers, who got louder. The members of the board were escorted into a back room.

One ironworker shouted, "We'll see Silver in the morning." As the members of the board filed out, the ironworkers chanted, "Silver's got to go! Now!"

Charles V. Bagli reported from New York for this article and Michael Cooper from Albany. Al Baker, in Albany, and Jim Rutenberg, in New York, contributed reporting.

[EKE BBB]

IOC RELEASES 2012 EVALUATION COMMISSION REPORT

06 June 2005

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) today released the report prepared by the Evaluation Commission following its visits to the five Candidate Cities to host the Games of the XXX Olympiad in 2012 - Paris, New York, Moscow, London and Madrid1. The full report is attached in Adobe PDF format and can also be found on the IOC website at www.olympic.org. 2

The report is a technical analysis of the five Candidate Cities, which is sent to the IOC members ahead of the vote, which will take place on 6 July during the 117th IOC Session. The Commission, chaired by Nawal El Moutawakel, IOC member from Morocco and well known athlete, spent four days in each Candidate City (see dates below) to conduct on-site analyses and assess their ability to stage the Olympic Games.

The dates of the visits were:

Madrid: 3-6 February

London: 16-19 February

New York: 21-24 February

Paris: 9-12 March

Moscow: 14-17 March

The Evaluation Commission will give a final report to the 117th IOC Session in Singapore on 6 July 2005 following the presentations of the five Candidate Cities and preceding the vote for the election of the Host City of the Games of the XXX Olympiad in 2012.

Further information on the IOC members and the election procedure is available on www.olympic.org.

1 Cities are listed in the order of drawing of lots.

2 For ease of downloading, maps are not included in the PDF file but can be viewed in the on-line report.

[EKE BBB]

Full report here (just in case you want to read 126 pages)

http://multimedia.olympic.org/pdf/en_report_952.pdf

[ejp626]

I think Paris will get it, but I voted for Madrid since it is much further away from where I am now (the UK!!!). I hadn't heard that Silver vetoed the stadium plan. Really glad to hear that, since NY needs the Olympics (or the stadium) like a hole in the head.

On a semi-political level, I've been traveling a lot and noticed that the US has added even more barriers to foreigners traveling to the US (most of them are stupid and only serve to humiliate travelers). Why anyone in the US honestly thinks they have a snowball's chance of getting the Olympics is beyond me. It's not just that the world hates us, though that is certainly enough, but that US officials seem determined to make life miserable for people trying to travel (to say nothing of study or work) in the US.

Edited June 7, 2005 by ejp626

[7/4]

Really glad to hear that, since NY needs the Olympics (or the stadium) like a hole in the head. 

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Damm straight.

[EKE BBB]

Less than seven days to go!

[brownie]

Celine Dion offered her version of the song 'A Paris' (To Paris) for the Paris bid for the 2012 Olympics. The song would become the official theme of the Paris Olympics.

One more good reason to hope that London will be the chosen city!

Go London, Go

[7/4]

anywhere but NYC

[EKE BBB]

Celine Dion offered her version of the song 'A Paris' (To Paris) for the Paris bid for the 2012 Olympics. The song would become the official theme of the Paris Olympics.

One more good reason to hope that London will be the chosen city!

Go London, Go 

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Shakira gave a concert to promote the support of LatinAmerican countries to Madrid´s bid!

Go Paris and/or London, GO!

[ejp626]

Shakira gave a concert to promote the support of LatinAmerican countries to Madrid´s bid! 

Not even close -- I would choose Shakira over Celine Dion any day of the week.

[JohnJ]

Shakira gave a concert to promote the support of LatinAmerican countries to Madrid´s bid!  

Not even close -- I would choose Shakira over Celine Dion any day of the week.

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You mean to listen to?

[EKE BBB]

And the winner is.....

(three hours to go)

[Free For All]

I wouldn't wish this logistical nightmare on anyone, but if you want them to choose Madrid, EKE BBB, I wish you luck.

I'd actually be interested to see Paris as the choice, just to see what kind of job they do.

EDIT: Just checked out the latest poll results. Other than national pride, do we really want this event to take place in New York? I think it's time to let someone else deal with it. The security forces in NYC don't really need this extra stress right now, do they?

Edited July 6, 2005 by Free For All