Results tagged “olympicmoneypit”

Barrack, Michelle, and The Big O aren't the only Chicagoans in Denmark for the big IOC love-in this week. According to a press release from No Games Chicago, a "delegation of Martin Macias, Jr., Tom Tresser and Rhoda Whitehorse" are in Copenhagen to "deliver our message on behalf of the people of Chicago that we do not want the 2016 Olympics."

The Tribune has discovered that Michael Scott has more of an interest in the Olympics than civic pride. Scott, a Chicago 2016 committee member, president of the Chicago Public Schools and a "friend of Richie", also served as a consultant to a condominium developer near the proposed Olympic Village site, a deal that could result in the project being worth far more than it currently is. For his part, Scott says that there's no conflict, given the depth of his role in the project. "I had no financial interest. I didn't do any real work," Scott told the Tribune. This, of course, is all in addition to the story from earlier this summer that Scott owns land located near the proposed Olympic cycling venue, something that Scott and others have said was not a conflict of interest.

Mayor Daley dismissed an independent analysis of the economic potential of the 2016 Olympic Games on Thursday, first with an ad hominem attack on the state of Michigan, and then with a less-than-nuanced economic retort of his own. The report, which was prepared by the East Lansing, MI-based Anderson Economic Group, shows that the 2016 Summer Games would result in "a net economic impact of more than $4.4 billion," far less than the $19 billion Olympic boosters have projected. "We have individuals coming from Michigan, telling us what to do. Telling us how bad our economy is," Daley said at an event in Pilsen. "We know how bad our economy is, they wish they had the Summer Olympics. I feel sorry for the people in Michigan, in Detroit and all over Michigan."

Mayor Daley spent a little quality time with our favorite City Hall reporter, Fran Spielman from the Sun-Times, to reassure jittery Chicagoans that they won't have to worry about having to foot the bill for the IOC's summer sports extravaganza, should Chicago get the 2016 Summer Games. “They have been very, very fiscally responsible in regards to their presentation. I really believe that. Unless … ,” Daley told Spielman, before ominously leaving his sentence unfinished. “An earthquake or something or a tornado,” he responded when pressed for an answer.

We got a copy of an email appeal to support Chicago's 2016 Olympic bid off the Chicagoist Tipline yesterday (thanks, Michael!), and the sender makes a really good point.

In a possible compromise over the level of transparency of Chicago's 2016 Summer Olympics bid, an independent auditor will review the city's bid, analyzing the numbers behind the bid. L.E.K. Consulting, a London-based strategic consulting firm, will be doing the counting. The organization has experience in sports and marketing, including a 2007 analysis of the Rugby Football Union. The firm was criticized for its excessive fee structure and its uncollaborative approach. The report called for radical reforms in the sport.

Aside from American President Barack Obama showing up in Copenhagen, shaking some hands and and mugging for the committee, another IOC member is now saying that the U.S. will have to come through with some cash and guarantees to secure the summer games for Chicago in 2016. Juan Antonio Samaranch Junior, Spain's IOC member, told South Africa's Mail and Guardian Online that Obama will have to have some skin in the game.

With the IOC Evaluation committee out of Chicago and on to other conquests, we've been granted a (brief) reprieve from the grandstanding, outrage, promises and protests that come with the city's bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympics. But come October, we may find ourselves in the midst of more drama.

Blair Kamin, the Chicago Tribune's architecture critic, reported last week on the city's plans to issue a Request for Qualifications from demolition contractors to dismantle the Michael Reese Hospital campus. The city plans to use the site for a proposed Olympic Village should Chicago win its bid to host the 2016 Summer Games. Chicago's RFQ raised the ire of local historic preservationists, who claim that the city plans to demolish nearly all of the buildings on the campus, including those designed by Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius, as well as the prairie-style main hospital building, constructed in 1907. Those plans have now attracted national attention in an article published yesterday in the New York Times (via the Trib).

Now that the International Olympic Committee's Evaluation Committee is out of town, new information is coming out regarding the IOC's concerns about Chicago's bid. On the last of their visit to Chicago, the IOC met with several groups that oppose Chicago's 2016 Olympic bid. Among the concerns raised by No Games Chicago and Housing Bronzeville is the possibility that the games might displace Chicago residents, especially around the proposed sit of the Olympic Village.

          

Have you seen the new wing of the Chicago Art Institute? Yesterday evening the International Olympic Committee, along with city officials and visiting dignitaries got a private, behind the scenes tour of the venerable institution's Modern Wing as part of the Evaluation Committee's visit to the city. Besides meeting with such luminaries of Chicago as Oprah Winfrey and Barack Obama confidant Valerie Jarrett, the IOC was greeted by an angry crowd of about 50 protesters from No Games Chicago and Little Village Environmental Justice Organization. The group of community activists met up at the Bean in Millennium Park and, escorted by a group of (not unsympathetic) Chicago police on bicycles, headed south east to the rear entrance of the museum, where media were lined up along a barricade next to a red carpet, awaiting the arrival of Patrick Ryan and other Olympic boosters.

Late Friday afternoon Governor Pat Quinn signed into law a bill that guarantees the state will back the 2016 Olympics - up to $250 million - if Chicago loses substantial operating cash and uses up its other guarantees for the games. That's in addition to the $500 million the city has already guaranteed.

Thursday's news that Chicago's Olympic bid committee had reached a community benefits agreement that would set aside affordable house and increase minority contracting appears to have been premature. Both the Reader's Ben Joravsky and Progress Illinois took a harder look at what came out of the city council's Finance Committee last week, and found some decidedly un-Olympic games being played.

The Chicago Tribune is reporting that the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7 is considering a picket line next week when the International Olympic Committee arrives in town to evaluate Chicago's 2016 Olympic bid. Although FOP President Mark Donahue "acknowledged that a picket line of cops while Olympic officials are in town... is 'being discussed'", the union hasn't made a decision yet. But according to "multiple police sources familiar with union activities," informational picketing is being considered at City Hall, but the exact location is among the issues still being worked out.

As state lawmakers began to contemplate the hard decisions they faced with the governor's new budget proposal, Illinois Senate President John Cullerton indicated he was willing to entertain an approach that has been used during previous economic downturns: a temporary state income tax hike. Twice in the 1980s Governor Jim Thompson signed temporary tax increases into law, although the second increase, passed in 1989, became permanent under Governor Jim Edgar. "So that's something which could be suggested, if people were actually willing to vote for it, if that's the condition that helps get the 30 votes we need to pass it too," Cullerton told the Tribune, referring to the number of votes needed to pass the state senate.