News   Nov 12, 2024
16 Storey Tower Proposal South of Warden Station Grows to 27 Storeys
 869     1 
News   Nov 12, 2024
News Roundup for November 12, 2024
 571     1 
News   Nov 12, 2024
Financial Core Nightlights
 684     0 

Toronto 2024 Olympic Bid (Dead)

aquateam said:
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.
Click to expand...

Montreal was basically trying to pull a Beijing (of its' time) and hired a Starchitect for the job - and stuck with the scheme until it's too late. They're basically trying to build a Skydome AND a CN Tower (plus a whole bunch of specialized venues) in one blow. Poor oversight and corruption reared its' ugly head in that one.

AoD
 
aquateam said:
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.
Click to expand...

The 2.4billion figure wasn't net at all. PWC simply added Olympic spending and construction and incremental tourism together. It was a study of Real GDP impact, so of course any spending would count. If Toronto spent 10 billion dollars building an elevator to nowhere, our GDP would go up by 10 billion dollars by definition.

Of course, if you simply start counting "costs" as "benefits" it all looks pretty great. Nor did the PWC study really do much to account for substitution effects (if Vancouverites spent more on Olympic related events, did they spend less elsewhere?), crowding out and a host of other effects.
 
Two winter Olympics and a summer Olympics from 40 years ago don't really hold up when considering the summer Olympics today. Presumably corruption levels in the UK are more or less the same as in Canada, so London 2012 is a better example to examine. The costs, successes and failures are well-documented, and the best one can say about the London 2012 is that the results and reviews were mixed. For the price, the results and reviews of a Toronto Olympics had better be nearly uniformly stellar. How is Toronto's governance structure any more equipped than London's to produce better results? I don't mean just how is Toronto different from London, but exactly which differences would produce a better result, and by what process, exactly?
 
The contrast between this thread and the NIMBY thread is striking. We should probably start calling this the SIMBYH forum (Stick it In My Back Yard Hard).
 
I think the yay and nay sides are so entrenched in their beliefs (I for example can't even see the nay side's perspective) that we should just agree to disagree.
 
TOperson said:
Two winter Olympics and a summer Olympics from 40 years ago don't really hold up when considering the summer Olympics today. Presumably corruption levels in the UK are more or less the same as in Canada, so London 2012 is a better example to examine. The costs, successes and failures are well-documented, and the best one can say about the London 2012 is that the results and reviews were mixed. For the price, the results and reviews of a Toronto Olympics had better be nearly uniformly stellar. How is Toronto's governance structure any more equipped than London's to produce better results? I don't mean just how is Toronto different from London, but exactly which differences would produce a better result, and by what process, exactly?
Click to expand...

The "bad" side of using London as a comparator is that any positive impact they've experienced will likely be smaller - London already has the tourists, the name recognition, the infastructure, etc. One should also consider that London is also a notoriously expensive city - and that will be reflected in among other things, the cost of construction.

And yes, the one summer Olympics in 1976 shouldn't hold up? Remind me when that example is dragged out again as an example of cost overruns without regard to that context. I am happy to own that example as a case study of what ought not be done instead.

AoD
 
Last edited:
AlvinofDiaspar said:
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.
Click to expand...

Do you happen to have the breakdown for the Pan Am Village by units? The wikipedia page breaks it down by building only but I don't think all buildings are the same size.

"Six buildings compose the Athletes Village, two intended to be luxury condominiums, two intended to be low income houses, one intended to be a dormitory for students of nearby George Brown College, and one run by the YMCA, intended to serve as a men's hostel."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Pan_American_Games_Athletes'_Village
 
Last edited:
rbt said:
Do you happen to have the breakdown for the Pan Am Village by units?

I believe there were 2 public housing buildings, 1 YMCA hostel, and some (unknown to me) number of condo buildings; but that doesn't say much about the size of each.
Click to expand...

According to the UT DB entry:

A new 82,000 square-foot YMCA recreational facility, which will function as training facility during the Games, then serve the West Don Lands and surrounding communities following the Games;
George Brown College’s first ever student residence, which will be used during the Games to support athletes and officials, and will subsequently provide housing for 500 students;
787 units of market housing, which will be used temporarily for Games accommodation, then converted for permanent occupancy following the Games. Once converted, up to 100 units representing five per cent of the total residential units will be reserved for affordable ownership;
253 units of affordable rental housing, representing 24 per cent of the total residential units being built in time for the Games, which will be used temporarily for Games accommodation, then converted for permanent occupancy following the Games

http://urbantoronto.ca/database/projects/pan-am-village-west-don-lands

AoD
 
I am really, really divided on 2024, and despite the polarized debate so far, I can't imagine I'm the only one on UT who feels this way.
 
January is the go big or go home date. The formal document would be submitted with the required support from all 3 levels of government.
 
You must log in or register to post here.

Back
Top