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BREAKING:BOSTON ENDS 2024 BID


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By need, I meant that the city wants it so bad that it seems like they need it.

Does the city of Los Angeles really want an NFL team that badly? I've said it here before.. the feeling I get about Los Angelinos and the NFL is ambivalence. They'd be happy to have a team. They're perfectly happy without one. And as much as the NFL talks about wanting a team in LA, seems like they're doing just fine without one. Plus, there's an aspect of the situation where I think they're happy to NOT have a team in LA so that cities and franchises can use LA as a threat to leverage cities to build a brand spanking new stadium.

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Interesting there is an athletics stadium which did successfully convert to a football type stadium

Manchester's Commonwealth Games Stadium, aka the Etihad Stadium

Here they took a 38,000 seat horseshoe configuration and after the games, removed the track, dug down a level, filled in the horse shoe and brought the other end in, to leave a 48,000 seat football stadium, now being expanded to 62,000 seat.

What you might to do is scale this up so built a 65,000 seat athletics stadium with the notion of converting it into an 80,000 seat football stadium?

Interesting, but this form of conversion doesn't solve the problem that the majority of seating is still ridiculously far away from the field. This would infuriate NFL fans if they had to put up with that kind of distance. And it wouldn't surprise me if any US city wins a bid with the intent to do this to their new NFL stadium, they'll more than likely propose a new stadium within 2-3 decades.

Soldier_Field_Chicago_aerial_view.jpgsoldier.jpg

They basically did get a new stadium.

Wow what a f**king mistake! That looks hideous! I mean I saw a lot of this in Toronto, new architecture elements above an old building that wants to retain its old facade, but for a stadium this looks so cheap and embarrassing!

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Interesting there is an athletics stadium which did successfully convert to a football type stadium

Manchester's Commonwealth Games Stadium, aka the Etihad Stadium

Here they took a 38,000 seat horseshoe configuration and after the games, removed the track, dug down a level, filled in the horse shoe and brought the other end in, to leave a 48,000 seat football stadium, now being expanded to 62,000 seat.

What you might to do is scale this up so built a 65,000 seat athletics stadium with the notion of converting it into an 80,000 seat football stadium?

Interesting that you think that's interesting. Because you've told us about this before. Just because it worked then does not unravel the complicated layers of what would be necessarily to get such a project to work in the United States. Good for Manchester that they pulled it off, but considering a new NFL stadium these days costs over $1 billion, how much would it cost to build a stadium that would work for athletics during the Olympics and then be able to transform it into something acceptable for an NFL franchise. Much easier said than done, Manchester or otherwise.

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Another option that might not work right now but for other US bids in the distant future is let an NFL stadium build their new stadium to their standards, but keep it opening/closing ceremony capable. Then instead of immediately demolishing the old stadium that's being replaced, renovate it to host the athletics events. It's what Houston proposed during their bid for the 2012 SOGs for the Astrodome. It would have been the first indoor track & field stadium. The purpose of converting the Astrodome to a track & field was more to save it from demolition, which after 13 years of not having a permanent tenant, is still around just sitting there.

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The problem is nobody wants or needs an 80k track and field stadium. And nobody's going to spend $billion on a compromised design.

The best idea is to build the cheapest possible 100% tear down. But I don't see the IOC going for it.

It doesn't have to be a 100% teardown. I'm sure there are cities with some big colleges that would gain from having a track and field stadium. So it can be teared down from a 80k seater to a 10k seater.

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The idea of reducing an 80,000 seater to a 10,000 seater just isn't feasible. London couldn't do it. Incheon couldn't do it. What do you do with all the infrastructure that's removed? The costs simply outweigh the benefits

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The idea of reducing an 80,000 seater to a 10,000 seater just isn't feasible. London couldn't do it. Incheon couldn't do it. What do you do with all the infrastructure that's removed? The costs simply outweigh the benefits

London couldn't do it because of the mess of finding a permanent tenant for the stadium and going back and forth on whether or not to remove the track. They did a poor job of finding a permanent future use for that stadium. And I could be wrong but I thought I read somewhere that the removed infrastructure would have been recycled and shipped off to another city for use of building their own stadium.

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  • 1 month later...

classy finish

Olympic bid left debt of millions-bostonglobe

When the bidcolapsed this summer, the nonprofit bid committee was confronting more than $4 million in outstanding payroll obligations and unpaid invoices — with just $571,000 in cash on hand, according to the internal committee documents, which were obtained by the Globe.

The committee estimated outstanding invoices at the time at $3.92 million, though one person familiar with the numbers says the estimate came down once some mistakes were corrected. The documents say $1.27 million was owed to Elkus Manfredi Architects, a key firm in the design of the committee’s Olympic venue plan; $550,000 to Interpublic Group, the parent company of public relations specialist Weber Shandwick; $377,000 to the transportation and civil engineering company VHB; $290,000 to Teneo Strategy, an international sports consultant; $396,000 to the advertising giant Hill Holliday; and $181,000 to Jon Tibbs Associates, a specialist in international relations and communications.

A representative for the David Ortiz Children’s Fund said Boston 2024 has still not paid the $7,500 it had committed for a table at a gala in June to benefit the organization, which works to provides pediatric health care in New England and the Dominican Republic. Ortiz, the beloved designated hitter for the Boston Red Sox, was a volunteer member of the bid committee’s board of directors, and starred in a Boston 2024 Web video endorsing the bid.

Facing shortfalls at the end of July, bid leadership decided to prioritize payments to small vendors, according to one person familiar with the committee’s plans. Boston 2024’s July 30 documents includes a list of 19 “high-priority” vendors, each of which was owed less than $21,000, according to the documents. One of those high-priority vendors, Color Copy Center, of Boston, was owed about $12,000 for a rush print job in June. After sending several notices complaining about the late payment, the copy business ultimately did get paid, said its owner, Jon Goose, in an e-mail exchange with the Globe in August.

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LOL!

What's so funny about that? Debts are owed. What's left of the committee does not seem to be shirking from their obligations; and starting with the small businesses first...becuz they would hurt the most with unpaid bills. That, I say, is the sign of a conscientious and professional organization who will sincerely attempt to honor their outstanding obligations.

I don't really fault the Boston organization. I fault the USOC Board of Directors who did not perform their due diligence.

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LOL indeed! I mean why spend all that money when it wasn't necessary? It's not written in stone that you HAVE to have your bid plan ready by the deadline, this deadline coming up Tuesday is just to formally announce you are putting in a bid for the games.

True, but Boston still had to prove to the USOC that they were worthy of their nomination. So they did have to have more in place well in advance in order to impress the USOC. And to baron's point, shame on the USOC for buying what Boston was selling. Maybe part of the thought process was that they thought Boston had the goods because they were the best prepared back in January. We see what that got them. Shame on Boston for thinking this was a good idea in the first place and allowing piss poor management to sink it, but that's their problem to deal with now. Thankfully for the USOC they're more easily able to move past the mistake.

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  • 4 months later...

Just came across this and thought it might amuse some people here. Boston is scheduled to host an IndyCar race on Labor Day Weekend this year (replacing a race previously in Baltimore around that weekend). It's a street race to be held in the seaport district of South Boston. And apparently there is some opposition to holding the race. The name of their website may sound somewhat familiar..

http://www.noindycarboston.org/

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