I’d have to do more research but I think the olympics did wonders for Atlanta. It seems like US cities handle the olympics far better than international ones. The only facility I can think of that ended up in ruins was the Tennis center. Other than that it accelerated Atlanta’s growth and cemented its spot on the world stage. It’s also looked back on as shining moment in the city.
But I’d have to agree, the level of upgrades in infrastructure needed to support that here would be literally insane and not with it. It’s not like we have major teams we can even hand the facilities down to after.
You’re correct, I was reading about that yesterday. Most of the American cities benefited from the games but other smaller countries didn’t have enough money to maintain the facilities, redevelop the park into something useful, or rent out enough apartments. In ATL the Olympic stadium is currently being used by Georgia State, however, it was redeveloped twice before now to decrease its capacity. Also most of the buildings have been demolished or converted into residential buildings for nearby universities. Plus the hotels are still being filled due to events, music festivals, etc.
From what I understand, the IOC is a big part of the problem. I believe Sochi had a lot of budget issues and some were brought on by IOC demands so countries thought twice about submitting bids afterward. The 2022 host countries were between China and Kazakhstan because no one else wanted to host.
Yes - same thing with the summer games. Paris and LA were the only ones bidding so they gave 2024 to Paris and 2028 to LA. They can’t attract bids anymore because just about every city loses money on the games.
Honestly they need to have permanent host cities for Summer and Winter games and just have them in the same location every time. Similar to what College Baseball does with Omaha. There is way to much money going into facilities that will be used for 2 weeks and then never again.
The IOC recently changed how they award cities. Now they use two stages of dialogue. One is the initial stage where they chat with interested cities/countries, and then they make what is called the “Preferred BID,” and any city that has passed the first stage moves to targeted dialogue that expects them to prepare a full bid. This was done to weed out BIDs that would stand no chance due to geography or capacity well before they spend the $$$ needed to create a full bid.
The first games to go through this are the 2032 Games, in which Brisbane, Australia is expected to be named since it was the preferred BID and the targeted dialogue stage gained approval.
Yes , This came from a strong , strong source ! I did not get any details except that a meeting Monday with Coach Avent asking him / others for a list of what they wanted @ Doak ?
Weird. Ewingcole has been working on this for a year and just now asking for input? And weird timing - Avent should be pretty busy at the CWS for the next week (and hopefully longer).
I got this information this morning . This is just my opinion . Coach Avent really wanted a new stadium & I think covid 2020 season put the stop to this , but like I said , JMO .
I am late to this party, but it’s hard to even quantify how many billions of light years Raleigh is from being able to host the almost unfathomably massive undertaking that is the Summer Olympics.
For starters, you would need a stadium built to athletics (track and field) specifications that could seat at least 50,000 and would probably cost at least $1 billion. An athletics field is way bigger than a football field or a soccer pitch, leaving the question of what you do with it after the Games are over. You certainly can put a soccer pitch or American football field inside of a track, but it leads to a poor fan experience because the seats are so far away from the field. Atlanta got around this problem, so to speak, by converting their athletics venue into a baseball stadium. That worked okay for a while, but within 20 years the baseball team left and they had to re-reconfigure the stadium, so it’s debatable how well that worked in the long run.
You also need a swimming venue that can seat 20,000. You need separate venues for gymnastics, basketball, and volleyball. You need an indoor velodrome (cycling arena) that seats thousands. You need a tennis facility with a center court that seats thousands. And on and on. There’s a reason the Summer Olympics cost billions of dollars and always lose money and generate white elephants after the Games are over, and why they’re best left to global mega-mega cities like London, Tokyo, Paris, and Los Angeles. (Also, even the other huge U.S. cities like New York or Chicago, if they ever revive their Olympic ambitions, would also run into the problem that Los Angeles is hosting the 2028 Games, and the IOC is highly unlikely to come back to the U.S. until at least the 2050s, and probably longer than that.)
I was at the Atlanta Games as a spectator, and I can tell you that the secret ingredient that held the whole thing together was the Georgia World Congress Center, which is 25 times the size of the Raleigh Convention Center and is still even now the third-largest convention center in the U.S. At the time there were 26 Summer Olympic sports (there are 28 now), and the GWCC hosted seven of them. (And a bunch of the other sports were held at venues that were actually far away from Atlanta, because Atlanta has no rivers or oceans.) Without the GWCC, the Atlanta bid never would have been feasible.
I actually ended up chatting with the coach for a quick beat working on a smaller project around the stadium and I’m pretty sure he already has his list of wants typed out and laminated haha!