Chicago's 2016 Olympic bid planners have shifted their vision to having only one stadium, a temporary 80,000-seat structure, as the venue for both Opening and Closing Ceremonies and the track and field competition.
The decision to drop the unprecedented idea of having dual Opening and Closing Ceremonies in two stadiums, Soldier Field and an adjacent temporary structure, was made after an Aug. 9 meeting with U.S. Olympic Committee officials, the Tribune has learned.
Mayor Richard Daley and Patrick Ryan, who is chairing the city's bid effort, insisted immediately after the meeting that a two-stadium plan was still alive, but it since has been shelved for two principal reasons.
One was advice from USOC officials, who said the dual-ceremony idea would not fly internationally. The other was the realization that Soldier Field was unsuitable even as a single-ceremonial venue—with track and some soccer matches in the temporary Olympic stadium—because its seating capacity and field size are insufficient and would need costly renovation.
"We're not giving up on the idea of using Soldier Field, even if it cannot be for ceremonies or track," Ryan, the executive chairman of Aon Corp., said in a telephone interview Thursday. "It might be as a light venue—a place where people can come to watch the ceremonies on Jumbotrons and be entertained in other ways."
Ryan also said Chicago's Olympic bid will continue even if Daley chooses not to seek re-election next year. USOC leaders have cited Daley's presence as a major asset to the bid.
"I'm not speaking for the mayor, but I don't expect that to happen," Ryan said of the possibility of Daley not running again.
The main stadium issue is one of the areas Chicago planners must address in the 52-page questionnaire they were given last week by the USOC delegation, which included Vice President Bob Ctvrtlik. Chicago must respond to the 26 questions in the document by Sept. 22.
The USOC advised Chicago to reconsider the number of sports it was planning for a relatively small stretch of the lakefront as well as its plans for an aquatic center on 31st Street.
"We don't expect at the end of the questionnaire phase that cities will have a rock-solid plan," Ctvrtlik said by telephone Thursday. "But we do expect them to have taken major steps in that direction."
No decision
The USOC has yet to decide whether to have a 2016 bid city, and there is no firm timetable for the next phases of the domestic selection process, which would end in late March or early April 2007.
Last month, however, the USOC eliminated two of the five cities that had expressed interest in bidding, Philadelphia and Houston. That left Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco in contention. The cut was made based on results of international polling and evaluation of 15 areas each city addressed in a preliminary bid plan.
Chicago scored highest in the international polling and domestic evaluation, according to sources familiar with the results. The significance of that is diminished because the results were very close and because the USOC made it clear none of the finalists' plans was acceptable without considerable revision.
The international polling asked 48 International Olympic Committee members, who would vote on the 2016 host, and 52 other international sports leaders whether the time was right for a U.S. city to serve as Olympic host and which city might have the best chance to win the bid.
The USOC weighed the international part of the evaluation four times as heavily as the domestic part, which covered such things as the Olympic stadium, Olympic Village, security, transportation and finances.
While Chicago is pushing the advantages of having a compact Olympics in the heart of the city, a congregation of sports in one lakefront area also could create transportation and crowd-management issues. A similar feeling led Beijing, the 2008 Olympic host, to change some of its venue plans.
"The USOC asked us to look at crowd concentration, and we are," Ryan said.
Cluster idea pushed
Chicago's preliminary plan called for 12 sports to take place in the north, south and west pavilions of McCormick Place: badminton, basketball preliminaries, fencing, rhythmic gymnastics, team handball, judo, modern pentathlon (fencing), table tennis, taekwondo, volleyball, weightlifting and wrestling.
Some of those events almost certainly will be moved to other locations in the next iteration of Chicago's bid plan. Having two or three clusters of venues is a more workable idea, which, Ryan confirmed, might lead Chicago officials to make more extensive use of the University of Illinois-Chicago facilities than originally planned.
Chicago proposed extensive use of McCormick Place not only for compactness but financial reasons. Fitting out the convention center for Olympic sports would undoubtedly be the least expensive way to stage them.
Chicago has proposed funding all its sports venue construction with about $700 million in private funds. That included $200 million for the temporary Olympic stadium, $127 million for a permanent aquatics center on 31st Street between State Street and Michigan Avenue and $93 million for temporary work at McCormick Place, including a warmup track on the roof of the Lakeside Center.
The Chicago plan also called for private developers to build a $1.5 billion Olympic Village to be used as commercial and residential space after the Games.
The experience of New York's failed 2012 bid, when the USOC felt it was blindsided by politicians' 11th-hour rejection of the Manhattan stadium plan, means USOC officials will assure a 2016 bidder has all its financial ducks in a row.
"They don't want to have a repeat of New York," Ryan said.
In an interview this spring, USOC Chairman Peter Ueberroth said the main Olympic stadium and Olympic Village must be "existing or fully committed to" in any city that wants to be selected U.S. bidder for 2016. Chicago must also identify and guarantee revenue sources for all its other venue construction.
"We have left the exact configuration of the guarantees up to the cities," Ctvrtlik said. "We told them the international community and the USOC won't be falling for any gimmickry. We need solid guarantees that give a level of confidence that the various places will be built."
Chicago officials already are scaling back plans for the aquatics center, the Tribune has learned. Rather than have several permanent pools, there could be a permanent swimming pool and a diving well and temporary pools for warmup, water polo and synchronized swimming.
"We are looking at legacy application of an aquatics center and what will be the appropriate location," Ryan said.
Financing questions
One gray area in the funding of Olympic projects involves how much of Games-generated revenues—from sponsorship, TV rights, licensing, marketing and ticket sales—can be used for venue construction.
Atlanta's decision to use $550 million of its $1.7 billion operating budget for construction, including the Olympic Stadium that became the Braves' Turner Field, long has been a sore point internationally especially because many believe that money might have solved the transport and technology problems that plagued the opening days of the 1996 Olympics.
"Funding coming in for sports should be used to put on the Olympics," Ctvrtlik said. "We don't want funding for Games organization going into rebuilding a city in ways that won't have a sporting legacy."
phersh@tribune.com
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