Bostonians skeptical of Olympics

Christian Science Monitor  -     Boston was selected Thursday as the US city to bid for the 2024 Summer Olympics, but the response from many Bostonians was far from celebratory.


"What I've heard is that [the Olympics] doesn't usually help the [host] city," says Daniel Diamond, a graduate student at the New England College of Optometry, in a Monitor interview.

"Usually it just gives the city more publicity, more exposure," adds Mr. Diamond, who has lived in the city for two years. "Boston doesn't need that publicity or exposure. I'm not sure [the Olympics] is that necessary."

The average cost of hosting a Summer Olympics is $15 billion, according to No Boston Olympics – roughly the cost of Boston's infamous Big Dig highway project, which took some 16 years to complete.

No modern Olympic Games has come in under budget, and claims that the increased costs are offset by increased tourism revenue are shaky at best. Bostonians are also worried about spending millions of dollars to construct large stadiums that then go unused once the Games leave.

Hosting the 1976 Olympics left Montreal $2 million in debt, and it took the city three decades to pay off the construction of its Olympic Stadium, which is now largely unused. In Beijing, site of the 2008 Olympics, tourists can ride a Segway around the Bird’s Nest stadium for $20, according to the Times.

Many cities have even spent millions of dollars just putting failed bids together. Chicago spent $100 million on a failed bid to host the 2016 Games...

Some Boston communities have said their neighborhoods are being considered for Olympic sites without their input. In late November, some community leaders told the Jamaica Plain Gazette that Boston 2024 has proposed to build equestrian event facilities in Franklin Park, and to rebuild the park's White Stadium, without permission or input from the community.

A June 2014 poll by The Boston Globe found that 47 percent of Massachusetts voters supported a Boston Olympics and 43 percent opposed it.