Report Says New York Bid Cost Could More Than Double

An exclusive New York Post report says that should New York win the bid to host the 2012 Summer Olympic Games, it would cost $6.5 billion, more than twice the $2.4 billion projected by New York’s 2012 bid committee.

The newspaper says that the bid is packed with massive, publicly financed projects, including a $1.5 billion West Side transit hub, which would “rack up a mountain of debt as the city faces its worst fiscal crisis in 30 years”.

According to NYC2012 financial documents obtained by the Post, additional funded development will be needed to host the Games, adding on $4.1 billion.

The proposed projects include $1.5 billion to build a transit hub, $1.6 billion for an Olympic stadium which would also host the New York Jets and could be used by the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, $1 billion to expand the Javits Center which would be the venue for several Olympic sports, and $229 million to create an Olympic Plaza park.

Most of the funding for the project would come from the sale of bonds, including a $1.5 billion transit bond backed by the promise of increased tax collections on future development in the area.

The newspaper reports that NYC2012’s own projections show that the final bill for repaying the $1.5 billion transit bond alone will top $5 billion once interest payments are included.

Lynne Weikart, a professor of public policy at Baruch College and a budget official under New York’s former Mayor Ed Koch and former Governor Mario Cuomo said, “it’s enormous, the odds are that the city would have to bail it out if there’s not enough development to pay off the bonds”.

The newspaper reports that the city’s Independent Budget Office (IBO) is now “crunching the numbers” on the bond proposal to determine if it’s feasible. “There’s no precedent for anything on this scale in the nation”, said IBO spokesman Doug Turetsky.

The scale of development needed to generate enough taxes to pay off the bond would be about 20 million square feet of office and commercial development, almost twice the size of the World Trade Center. But Jay Kriegel, the director of NYC2012, said the sweep of construction would be good for the city with or without the Olympics. “The Olympics is the catalyst for getting things done. We’re not talking about building things just for the Olympics”, said Kriegel. Write or read comments about this article

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