Update from No Games 2016 Chicago

Group vows to fight bid as questions are raised about costs

By MICAH MAIDENBERG
Editor, Chicago Journal, Feb 4, 2009

Last year, criticism of Chicago's bid for the 2016 Olympics was muted, even as aldermen committed vast sums of public money - a $500 million guarantee for operations, $86 million to purchase the Reese Hospital site for an Olympic Village, possible new TIF districts - to support the effort.

Some community groups and labor organizations quietly pushed for a benefits agreement that would accompany the Olympics. Park advisory councils held several meetings about the impact of the games on city parks.

But there were few signals of direct opposition to holding an Olympics in Chicago.

If a new organization has its way, however, that acquiescence will soon vanish. On Saturday, the group No Games Chicago kicked off what members say will be a fight to stop Chicago's Olympic bid.

The group flew in Chris Shaw, a Vancouver-based activist fighting that city's 2010 Winter Games, to speak on a panel about the impact past Olympics have had on host cities, and to stir dissent against the Chicago bid.

During discussion and questions from a generally supportive audience, Shaw and other panelists said an Olympics in Chicago would displace low-income residents and saddle the city with debt and white elephant athletic venues. Some feared a security lock-down, and its impact on minorities and the homeless. Many were angry at funds the city has already devoted to the bid. Shaw told them the Olympics have transformed into something more than mere sport.

"At a local level, it is always about real estate. It's always driven by real estate developers because they have projects that they've wanted to do for a long time, that they could not sell to the taxpayer ... and they want you to fund it for them," Shaw said of Olympic bids. "It's always development driven."

Shaw held up a recent edition of the Vancouver Sun that reported the 2010 Winter Games will cost the city $6 billion in taxpayer money.

"Our mayor at the time said it won't cost you a penny," Shaw said.

Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and members of the bid committee have said the games won't cost Chicago taxpayers.

Last Tuesday, for example, John Murray, chief of bid operations for Chicago 2016, told members of the Union League Club and visitors that "taxpayer money is not being used for the games."

"The misconception out there about the games is they cost more than they bring in," Murray said.

Ticket revenues, sponsorship fees and television dollars would ensure the games profitability, he said.

Asked by reporters about funding after he addressed the Union League, Murray said he was referring to tax increment financing dollars during his presentation, a program "the city has used, as you know, for many years to facilitate development in areas, working with developers to provide incentives - those funds, are funds generated by the development itself, not using taxpayer dollars."

Tax increment financing is a special tool used by the city of Chicago, through which property tax dollars may be used for economic development in specifically designated geographic areas.

At the Union League event, Murray said the games would not displace existing residents. A fund for neighborhoods would be established to support local projects, according to Murray, and 315,000 "job years" would be created.

Saturday's No Games panel was attended by a number of bid supporters. Chicago 2016 spokesman Patrick Sandusky and Arnold Randall listened in during the first part of the discussion.

Randall recently left a powerful city job as commissioner of the Department of Planning and Development - now called the Department of Community Development - for a position as Director of Neighborhood Legacies for the 2016 committee.

Asked about cost overruns in host cities like Vancouver and London during a brief interview, Randall said "every Olympics bid in recent history makes money." If cost overruns were challenged in previous bids, "we need to learn from them," he said.

Shaw said context matters when the final accounting happens.

"Occasionally they do make a modest profit, but it never takes into context the whole thing you have to do before that," he said, including security costs, venue construction and infrastructure work.

The panelists didn't sway Olympics supporters who attended.

"I just believe the Olympics are an opportunity for Chicago to say, hey, look at us. We beat the odds. We're not like every other city," said Monica Akins, a West Side resident. "We run things differently. They can set the bar, they can set the standard. They do it in every other aspect.

"I think Chicago has the opportunity to set the standard for the legacy the Olympics can leave behind."

But members of No Games Chicago have a very different idea about the legacy of an Olympics. Some vowed action.

"Let me assure the City of Chicago, the mayor, the Olympic Committee, all the supporters in this room," said J.R. Fleming, of the Coalition to Protect Public Housing, "We will organize. We will protest. We will embarrass. We will humiliate. We will fight, we will fight, we will fight until there's no games, 2016, in Chicago."

The International Olympic Committee will visit Chicago in April, and render a decision this October.