Why Boston said no to the Olympic Games
The Calgary Bid Exploration Committee recently sought the opinion of Chris Dempsey, the co-chair of a citizen-led group that helped kill Boston’s 2024 Olympic bid.
“We spoke to the Boston anti- Olympic movement, which was successful in overturning an actual decision,” committee chair Rick Hanson told Postmedia on Monday.
“That’s part of our mandate. We need to look at all the sides.”
Dempsey, who is co-authoring a forthcoming book about why cities are rejecting Olympic bids, presented a 74-slide PowerPoint presentation to Calgary’s committee and answered questions in a conference call.
Q No Boston Olympics formed in 2013 and majorly shaped the public debate surrounding Boston hosting the 2024 Summer Games. How did the group get started?
A We started in a living room, in Boston. There were initially three of us, all of whom were young professionals in their early 30s, with backgrounds in business, politics, government and communications. We had seen the boosters, the supporters of the bid, putting out this idea that the Olympics would bring all sorts of benefits, and limited risk, and this was a good idea for Boston. They had been pushing that message without anyone in an organized fashion asking if that was true and making the case maybe this wasn’t a good public policy to pursue.
Q How much money did No Boston Olympics spend over the course of that debate?
A We spent less than US$10,000. Our single largest expenditure was $700 to rent the meeting space of a church for our first meeting.
Q How much did the Boston 2024 group spend exploring the bid you opposed?
A They spent about US$15 million.
Q What ended up happening with Boston’s Olympic bid?
A Despite that mismatch of resources and spending, we felt like we had the facts on our side. When the U.S. Olympic committee chose Boston on Jan. 8, 2015, over Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., people in Boston started paying very close attention to this issue. In the early polling, there was a lot of excitement. Bostonians were open to the idea. But, as they learned more about the bid, the downsides and the risk, they started to realize this was not a good deal.
For example, and this would be the same in Calgary, the bid requires a taxpayer guarantee. The mayor of the host city signs a contract that says the city is responsible for any and all cost overruns and the IOC (International Olympic Committee) bears no responsibility for those.
Thinking about essentially writing a blank cheque to the IOC is troubling. As people learned more about the IOC and the process and saw the boosters were focused on winning the bid, not what was best for Boston, the support declined over time.
Q
How did that conclude in July 2015?
A
At the end of July, as support stayed low, the United States Olympic Committee pulled the bid, saying they realized there wasn’t enough public support. In September, they sheepishly went back to Los Angeles and awarded them the bid.
Q Why was No Boston Olympics so against a bid?
A We felt the Olympics were going to put some of the things we liked about Boston at risk. We felt they were going to be a method for spending a bunch of money on things that were not important to us, like a new stadium, a new velodrome, a new aquatic centre.
Also, for us, there was an enormous opportunity cost component.
I had worked in government and saw the leadership being pulled in a million different directions. If we chose to pursue a bid, that would have meant seven to 10 years of our civic attention being focused on the bid, focused on questions like, ‘ Where does the velodrome go?’ and, ‘ Will this look nice on television?’— questions that weren’t important to the future of our city.
Q How did your presentation and conversation with the Calgary Bid Exploration Committee go?
A There was some good back and forth. I do worry that around that table they’ve gotten caught up in what you might call Olympic fever. That they’ve started to think about their job as making sure the bid can advance and the bid will be successful, rather than asking the question, ‘ What is really best for Calgary?’
I know they would disagree with that, if you asked them, they’d say they have Calgary’s interests at heart.
But, it becomes very hard for these exploration committees to separate the excitement of the games and the fact they’d get to be involved, from what’s really needed, which is a sober and truly independent analysis.
Q It’s still early in Calgary’s process, but what strikes you as the similarities between the Calgary Bid Exploration Committee and the group that explored a Boston bid?
A I see a lot of similarities and some are very striking. The Boston 2024 bid process had a very similar committee to the Calgary Bid Exploration Committee. It was called the feasibility commission, and it included people from the sports world, the tourism world and the civic world. It had a lot of similarities in the way it was commissioned by the government and filled with folks from certain backgrounds and industries.
What happened with Boston’s commission, they really were just setting the pretext for a bid. I’m not saying the folks in Calgary are biased that way, but I will say their members come from a lot of the same industries. In the case of Boston, the people on the group were predisposed to saying a bid would be a good idea. Also, in Boston, multiple economists, with backgrounds in sporting events, were eager to be on the commission and the commission had no economist. I noticed Calgary’s doesn’t, either.
Q What differences do you notice between the two groups?
A I’ll give the Calgary committee credit for having me in to talk. I spent about two and a half hours with them and that’s not something the feasibility committee in Boston did — get input from the other side. And, Calgary, of course, has hosted the Olympics before and Boston hadn’t. There’s no doubt Calgary knows it’s something the city could do. In Boston, some people literally doubted whether the city could handle the bid. Of course, Calgary can do it, but the more important question is, ‘Should Calgary pursue this? Is it really a good public policy idea?’
Q There are people in Calgary who say another Calgary Olympics will be different than extravagant recent games because of Agenda 2020 and Calgary’s previous history hosting a profitable Olympics. Do you buy that?
A There are certainly some cities better prepared to host an Olympic than others. Look, it may be that Calgary is one of those cities. But I do think Calgarians should actually read the Agenda 2020 reforms and understand the Games have ballooned in size since Calgary hosted in 1988.
It’s not as simple as slapping on a fresh coat of paint to the ski jump. You’re going to have to invest as a city hundreds of millions of dollars in facilities.