picard102
Senior Member
And on the balance, hosting the Olympics is an exercise in excess and greed that rarely pays off.
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Toronto 2024 Olympic Bid (Dead)
- Thread starter Southcore
- Start date
And on the balance, hosting the Olympics is an exercise in excess and greed that rarely pays off.
animatronic
Senior Member
But where do we draw the line? Next thing you'll be saying is that we should be able to shop on a Sunday.
AlvinofDiaspar
Moderator
Perhaps you should ask Sydney or London how they felt about it. Certainly they didn't have much by the way of regret. Funny how little buyers regret there can be if it was well planned and well run.
Yeah, and how much navel gazing did THAT took?
AoD
Filip
Senior Member
Alright, let me spell it out for you.
Scenario: Toronto is awarded the 2024 SOG.
1) Transit: LRT would need to be built along the waterfront, into the Portlands. GO RER would have a set date for full operations, and other incremental improvements would be made. All within a reasonable, 9 year deadline.
2) Housing: We have a significant subsidized housing shortage in the city. 10,000 athletes need to be accommodated for the SOG, and these units can be 75% transferred to TCHC and the difference to market-rate condos.
3) Public Realm: I don't need to add anything to this.
4) Brownfield regeneration: Portlands completed by 2024. Current timeline ~30 years from now (2045).
4) Intangibles: pride, marketing, etc... The Panams have really boosted Torontonians' pride in their city. Some of you like to minimize and trivialize this, but it's incredibly important.
When watching the closing ceremonies from Humber Bay Park (mostly for the CN Tower fireworks) EVERYONE around me was yelling THAT'S MY CITY!!!
Juan_Lennon416
Senior Member
The 2024 Summer Olympics will come to North America. Just a matter if it is Toronto or, say, LA
AlvinofDiaspar
Moderator
All of it depends on the plans of course, but this is a big one - it will put an end to all the delaying for serious transit (QQE), and commit operational RER within that timeframe.
I think we need to be realistic - any OV will be mixed income post-games; cost recovery will require that the public/private mix to lean more towards to private side (and besides, you wouldn't want a neighbourhood with 75% RGI housing anyways). We are probably looking at 20% affordable, which is still a good number.
That one is a given.
Full timeline is less of an issue than a firm commitment to actually follow through with the LDL EA - that's the critical elephant in the room without which nothing else can happen. The rest of the Portlands should proceed at its' own pace.
I tend to agree with this - given the urban/suburban split and how there seems to be a similar level of support for hosting the games, this is something that can be leveraged on as a regional city building exercise.
AoD
picard102
Senior Member
Cool, two examples of cities that didn't get entirely fucked over by the IOC, and came out a few pennies ahead despite local industries shutting down for the duration of the games.
So waste billions to get two things done a little bit faster, Great deal.
So more condo's. Your big hope for the games is to have another condo village, next to high end stadiums, for the poor of course.
What do you even think will happen here? Some sculptures around stadium parking lots? What a boon!
Again, cut off our noses to save time.
Got any studies to show that?
Everyone was yelling that, or was this another fever dream?
Tuscani01
Senior Member
That is one thing I mentioned elsewhere about why I really thought the PAG were a success. For the first time in years, Toronto and the GTA felt like one city.
That in itself was worth it, as the pride suddenly made people question why we aren't doing more to make our city something we can all be proud of.
animatronic
Senior Member
Don't forget that the clock doesn't start ticking until the decision in 2017 so there are only about seven years and change to get everything done.
If we must bid then ideally we'd get moving now on make infrastructure and then keep going after Paris or LA wins. That's what Madrid did.
If we must bid then ideally we'd get moving now on make infrastructure and then keep going after Paris or LA wins. That's what Madrid did.
diminutive
Active Member
My point was that what we got (again, worth ~12billion dollars) was actually far more substantial than what was actually planned for the Olympics. The constant mantra that THE ONLY WAY TO GET THINGS DONE IN THIS CITY IS TO HOST THE OLYMPICS is just wrong. Look at the recent Scarborough by elections; senior levels of government were tripping over themselves to throw money at transit. Ideally we could get them to throw money more wisely, but it beggars logic that using a two week party would do that.
Juan_Lennon416
Senior Member
To get things done in Toronto...not elect people like Ford as Mayor, not give majority governments to people like Harper and the Conservatives and stop re-electing has-been Councillors.
Riverdale Rink Rat
Senior Member
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Because that's what was in the article we are talking about.
diminutive
Active Member
The CN Tower was built by a private company that quickly made up the costs. It may be hubristic, but at least it could justify itself economically. That'a a world apart from the ridiculous pageant of multi-billion dollar aquatics centers and velodromes that are inevitably abandoned post-games. Our Sydney Opera house would probably be the Skydome; massive public investment, poor practical results.
Sure, it's 'all about balance,' but literally spending billions of dollars on unneeded and unwanted sports stadiums to speed up construction of a 250m LRT (as Fillip so helpfully suggested) is not balanced at all. There are plenty of ways the our City can have 'grand gestures' without succumbing to the vortex of Olympic over-building. We need a new Courthouse, many of our public realms are shabby, existing TCHC housing stock has a huge maintenance backlog. And we do have several recent examples of 'grand gestures;' the AGO/ROM/RCM/Gardiner, Union Station revitalization, all the stations on the TYSSE, several parts of UofT, and Terminal 1 at Pearson. All of those gestures also served bona fide public purposes in a way that yet another gargantuan and poorly situated aquatic centre wouldn't. I'd say the Regent Park Aquatics centre is actually a much better example of a 'grand gesture' that works for the people.
AlvinofDiaspar
Moderator
Geez, if you don't mind, I'd rather get examples and lessons from everywhere.
AoD
aquateam
Active Member
With the Olympics, there have been a lot of huge overruns and massive expenditures ($50 billion for Sochi?!) but I don't think it's fair to compare sporting events held in developing countries, with lots of corruption, with what would be held in Toronto. If we win the olympic bid, I would expect/hope that it would all use existing venues that we built for the panamerican games, not giant stadiums in the middle of nowhere like what Brazil did for the World cup.
Of the Olympics held in Canada, there was:
Montreal 1976 Summer Olympics - This, financially, is probably the worst-performing Canadian olympics. On the whole though, the city is still very proud of having hosted the olympics (see this article from a few weeks ago). The olympic stadium wasn't completed in time, it isn't fully functional, and it doesn't have any sports teams as tenants so it is heavily underused. Montreal was in the habit of building white elephants at the time (Mirabel airport comes to mind) and there was a big problem with corruption in construction that continues to this day. This is pretty much a worst case scenario.
Calgary 1988 Winter Olympics - Most expensive olympics ever held at the time, but somehow managed to get an unheard of $309 million broadcasting contract from ABC, so the games were debt-free (for the organizing committee). I'd say this is an unqualified success, or a best case scenario.
Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics - Vancouver got the Canada built for it. PWC tallied operating costs at $1.84 billion and on budget, and stated net benefit to the provincial economy at $2.4 billion, so it was reasonably successful.
Of the Olympics held in Canada, there was:
Montreal 1976 Summer Olympics - This, financially, is probably the worst-performing Canadian olympics. On the whole though, the city is still very proud of having hosted the olympics (see this article from a few weeks ago). The olympic stadium wasn't completed in time, it isn't fully functional, and it doesn't have any sports teams as tenants so it is heavily underused. Montreal was in the habit of building white elephants at the time (Mirabel airport comes to mind) and there was a big problem with corruption in construction that continues to this day. This is pretty much a worst case scenario.
Calgary 1988 Winter Olympics - Most expensive olympics ever held at the time, but somehow managed to get an unheard of $309 million broadcasting contract from ABC, so the games were debt-free (for the organizing committee). I'd say this is an unqualified success, or a best case scenario.
Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics - Vancouver got the Canada built for it. PWC tallied operating costs at $1.84 billion and on budget, and stated net benefit to the provincial economy at $2.4 billion, so it was reasonably successful.