Olympic Dreams, Olympic Nightmares

Will Chicago’s bid for the 2016 games adorn the Windy City in beautiful rings or lock it in handcuffs?

Mindful Metropolis, September edition


Imagine two glorious weeks of summer when the entire world comes to nearby Chicago — which is our local city, judging by the number of Illinois license plates in Leelanau County during the summer. Imagine August whitecaps on Lake Michigan and sunbathers on North Avenue Beach, and hearing those attractions described in countless languages. Imagine kings and heads of state, Brazilian soccer gods and Greco-Roman wrestlers shopping together on Michigan Avenue. Imagine the world’s greatest amateur athletes pursuing the pinnacle of their dreams, in our city. Imagine President Barack Obama, his hair turned a wise grey, returning home to Hyde Park with only months left in his second term, to ring in the 2016 Olympics.

Like that night in Grant Park last November, and like the World’s Fair in 1893, this metropolis on the lake would once again command the world’s attention. The Olympic torch, that symbol of progress and sport, would pass so close that we’d feel its heat. We’d smile when the Parisians admired our lakefront, the Scandinavians took photos of our solar panels and rooftop gardens and the New Yorkers admitted that perhaps they had underestimated “flyover country”.

But then imagine opening your eyes to a hazy, Dickens-like scene. It’s the dead of winter and the snow is falling, wet and heavy. Weary and disgruntled Chicago citizens are plowing their own streets, filling their own potholes and policing their own neighborhoods. The city is broke, and no longer provides these services. Families are packing up and moving further west, unable to afford to live in the once-working-class neighborhoods where Olympic venues were built. The few who still go downtown carry bags of quarters with them, to pay the parking meters, the toll collectors on Halsted, the lifeguards and the attendants at Millennium Park. The city lost so much money back in the summer of 2016 that City Hall was forced to sell off assets and privatize everything. The 21st century equivalent of Tiny Tim can no longer visit the beach, bike what’s left of the Lake Shore Trail or play in the park.

Imagine that all the money Mayor Daley promised would flow into the city’s coffers from corporate sponsors, advertising, ticket sales and tourism never came close to what Chicago spent to build the venues and Olympic Village, cater to the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) needs and provide security for the world’s stage. To balance budgets in the aftermath, the city shut down bus lines, schools and hospitals.

You get the picture. Two pictures actually — two opposite visions of what winning the right to host the 2016 Olympics would mean for Chicago.

A giant door will either open wide or slam shut for Chicago when the IOC gathers in Copenhagen on October 2 to choose between the Windy City, Tokyo, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro. That decision will forever change one of those cities.

Blue-Green games

The webpage, Chicago2016.org, lays out the city’s vision for the Olympics in visceral, convincing fashion. Glamorous pictures of Millennium Park with skyscrapers in the Loop lit up with the numbers 2016, and other iconic shots of downtown flash across the screen.

A voice reminds us, “We may not all be fleet of foot, but each of us can be part of the Olympics, for the games touch us all …” And then Obama, himself, the would-be master of ceremonies, comes on the screen to announce that the White House fully supports Chicago’s bid for the Olympics.

A series of Olympic athletes with Chicago roots take the baton and lead us on a tour, from Buckingham Fountain, where the relay race would begin, north to the tennis center in Lincoln Park, back south to the hockey arena in Grant Park and Monroe Harbor for rowing events, to Soldier Field for the football (soccer) finals, to McCormick Place and the United Center, and finally to Washington and Jackson Park on the South Side. We even see computer animations of the posh apartments along the waterfront where the athletes would stay.

“This is our vision for Chicago, along the shores of a great Lake, a city that will welcome the world in 2016,” proclaims Brian Clay, a decathlon champion in the 2008 Beijing Games.

You’d have to be heartless not to get at least a little excited about the prospect.
(My local friends and I have joked that, if Chicago wins the games, we’ll draw straws and whoever draws the shortest one would host everyone else in sleeping bags on their floor for those two weeks. We’d share the money we’d make from renting out our apartments to rich Belgians and Japanese visitors.)

But first, Chicago must prevail over the other contending cities.

The Windy City boasts many assets in its favor: five large historic parks and a beautiful lakefront; a giant local media market; venues that are already available, such as Soldier Field, the United Center and the UIC Pavilion (79 percent of sports would be staged in existing or temporary venues); an Olympic Village that would house 90 percent of athletes within 15 minutes of their competition venues; McCormick Place, North America’s largest multi-use facility, and the fact that this continent hasn’t hosted a summer games since Atlanta in 1996. According to that line of thinking, Tokyo is out because Beijing hosted last year, Madrid is out because London gets it in 2012, and slum-ridden Rio de Janeiro could be a gamble. (No South American city has ever hosted the Olympics, which could also make it a sentimental favorite.)

Dubbed (by itself) the greenest city in America, Chicago is already touting its 2016 bid as the “Blue-Green Games”. The Windy City has teamed up with representatives from 30 environmental, architectural, engineering and governmental entities, and organizations as important as the Sierra Club, to create a sustainable vision that includes a carbon management program and a focus on water issues.

The Chicago 2016 committee pledges that all electricity used to power the games will come from renewable energy sources, and all generators supplied for the games will run on biofuels. The Blue-Green games would be the first in history to incorporate athlete and spectator travel in its carbon offset model, and a “green fleet” of low carbon vehicles will be used for all games operations. The committee also claims it will reuse or recycle 85 percent of the materials used for the Games and expand the city’s green spaces after the Olympics.

Let’s not forget Obama, the feather in the Chicago 2016 Committee’s hat and perhaps the most popular man in the universe when the IOC delegation made its official visit to Chicago in April. Obama senior advisor Valerie Jarrett still sits on the Chicago 2016 committee and corresponds often with committee president Lori Healey despite her current perch in the White House. A recent New York Times Sunday Magazine story depicted Jarrett as Obama’s closest advisor, which means there is all but a direct link between the Oval Office and Chicago’s bid for the games. Ben Joravsky, columnist for the alternative weekly, the Chicago Reader, wrote that Jarrett will convince Obama to fly to Copenhagen in early October to court the IOC — much like former British Prime Minister Tony Blair did in the eleventh hour to snatch the 2012 Games away from Paris.

“Greatest disaster since Chicago fire”

Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Olympics has already cost No Games Chicago organizer Tom Tresser a pretty penny, and he doesn’t even work for Mayor Daley. Tresser and others have paid out of their pockets (including plane tickets to Europe) to convince the International Olympic Committee that awarding the Games to Chicago would be a very bad idea.

No Games Chicago rented a room at the downtown Fairmont Hotel in early April just to gain access to the exclusive IOC, which was being wined and dined by the 2016 committee and entertained by Chicago celebrities including Oprah Winfrey and Michael Jordan. In June, members of the grassroots group paid their own way to Lausanne, Switzerland, to deliver 150 copies of a copy shop-produced book (“No Games Chicago: Book of evidence for the International Olympic Committee — Why Chicago should NOT be awarded the 2016 Olympic games.”) to the IOC and to international journalists.

Tresser, who teaches student engagement in public policy at DePaul University, considers himself a “good government geek” and says he’s obsessed with sound public policy and transparency. But he hasn’t seen that from the City of Chicago. When I met with Tresser in his Lincoln Park home just after the trip to Switzerland, he rolled off a list of deceptions and projects that far exceeded their original costs which the city has forced on its inhabitants over the years: the skyway bridge connecting Indiana and Illinois, the Burge police torture case, the international airport terminal, Millennium Park, Block 37, Soldier Field, the Monroe Street parking garage, not to mention the recent parking meter debacle.

Tresser simply doesn’t trust the city to handle the Olympics, nor does he believe that Mayor Daley will spare taxpayers from funding the games or protect public assets such as parkland before and after the games.

“The Park District passes along our precious public parks without comment to the 2016 Olympic committee to do as they will —destroy them, build whatever they want,” says Tresser. “The City Council passes a $500 million guarantee at a time when they’re laying off 1,000 people from the public schools and 1,500 city workers. The Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) faces $45 million in cuts, and the Park District cuts back the hours you can swim in the damn lake! The City of Chicago is $300 million in the hole today, falling to pieces all around us, and yet they have $500 million to guarantee for the Olympics.

“Every day there’s a new case of egregious abuse of the public trust. All the while the mayor is saying that taxpayers won’t pay a dime. Unbelievable, it’s incredible. … We’ve determined that the Olympics would be the greatest disaster to befall our city since the Great Fire of 1871.”

The reasons that No Games Chicago opposes a Chicago Olympics are 1) lack of finances 2) lack of competence 3) lack of infrastructure and 4) lack of public support.

“We’re broke,” exclaims Tresser. “The 2016 committee estimates their total expenses at around $5 billion. We think they’ve underestimated by at least 50 percent if not 100 percent, based on how these things really play out and based on Chicago’s horrible record in managing massive construction projects.”

He adds that revenues from an Olympics games won’t total the amount promised by the city.

Grassroots groups worldwide that are wary of their city hosting an Olympics often point to a 2006 study by Victor Matheson from the College of Holy Cross, titled “Mega Events: The effects of the world’s biggest sporting events on local, regional, and national economies”. No Games Chicago provides this article on its website.

Matheson writes: “While most sports boosters claim that mega-events provide host cities with large economic returns, these same boosters present these figures as justification for receiving substantial public subsidies for hosting the games. The vast majority of independent academic studies of mega-events show the benefits to be a fraction of those claimed by events organizers.”

“We’re corrupt,” says Tresser. “The mayor has put his henchman in charge of major departments who are not skilled at those areas. Over and over again we see the massive corruption and self-dealing where a few families use the city as their private ATM.”
Chicago politics are known nationwide for reeking of corruption, and names like Blagojevich and Burris are only the latest punch lines. Tresser floats the notion that if the IOC awards the Games to Chicago, it may be dealing with people who are headed to jail in the future.

Moving down the list of judgments, Tresser adds, “The city is falling to pieces. You’ve got citizens down in Austin paving their own roads, mixing up their own tar to fill potholes. The CTA just announced another $30 million in cuts and can’t meet the needs of citizens today. How can you meet the needs of hundreds of thousands coming to the games?”

As for local public support, Tresser says that three out of every four Chicago residents oppose the games if they have to pay for them at the expense of schools, roads and city services. “If you just ask people, ‘Hey, do you like the Olympics?’ they’ll say, ‘Oh yeah, little girls doing gymnastics, and brilliant swimmers and the joy of sport.’ ‘OK, how much do you want to pay for that party? A billion, two billion, five billion?’ Seventy-five percent do not want public money spent on the games. People think we have better uses for our funds.”

“Make no small plans”

This year is the 100th anniversary of Daniel Burnham’s 1909 Plan of Chicago, which called for expanding streets, public parks and civic buildings. Foremost among the plan's goals was to reclaim the lakefront for the public. “The Lakefront by right belongs to the people,” wrote Burnham. “Not a foot of its shores should be appropriated to the exclusion of the people.”

The plan recommended expanding the parks along the Lake Michigan shoreline with landfill. Of the city's 29 miles of lakefront, all but four miles are today public parkland.

Many of those opposed to Chicago’s Olympic bid claim that the city is attempting a land grab that would take away much of the precious public lakefront that Burnham gave us. A proposed Olympic Waterfront in Monroe Harbor, a Lake Michigan Sports Complex at McCormick Place, an Olympic Village where the Michael Reese hospital currently sits, and the construction of new venues in Lincoln Park to the north and Washington and Jackson Parks to the south (in Hyde Park) would require closing those areas to the public — not just for two weeks in 2016, but for years beforehand. And because of the heightened security required by the games, the construction zones themselves have to be secure, turning those areas into no-go zones for years.

Fears also run rampant within the minority, working-class communities on the city’s south and west sides, whose parkland and civic buildings would be sacrificed for the 2016 games — namely Washington, Jackson and Douglas Parks.

Washington Park would undergo serious changes. That park was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, whose resume also includes Central Park in Manhattan. Thousands of people currently use Washington Park every year, and they may be denied use of it. The Chicago 2016 committee has proposed a $400 million temporary stadium for the opening ceremonies and track events, as well as a $100 million aquatic center with four pools, all on an open meadow designed by Olmsted. Listed on the National Registry of Historic Places, Washington Park occupies 1,000 acres — one-seventh of the city’s parkland — and features baseball diamonds, football and soccer fields, all of which would be closed to the public for years before the games.

According to Arnold Randall, director of neighborhood legacy for Chicago 2016, the stadium would shrink to a 2,500-3,500-seat amphitheater after the games, and all of the pools would be dismantled except one, which would replace the existing pool at Dyett High School in Washington Park. In other words, the Olympics would not destroy the park.

Erma Tranter of Friends of the Parks points out that other U.S. cities that have hosted the Olympics have added parkland. Not so with Chicago, which is last among the nation’s 20 largest cities in park acreage per person, she points out.

In nearby Jackson Park, Chicago 2016 wants an Olympic field hockey venue, which would replace a world-class track and football field next to Hyde Park Academy. One of only three regulation tracks at Chicago schools, according to a Community Media Workshop report, the track and field opened just eight years ago and was funded by a community-led drive which raised over half a million dollars. “It’s eight years into a minimum 35-year lifespan,” says Ross Petersen, president of the Jackson Park Advisory Council.

At a July 18 community meeting in Washington Park held by the Chicago 2016 committee, the Hyde Park Herald quoted one woman as saying, “Oprah and all those people who gave money do not speak for us. I hope I’m not bursting your bubble, but you’re not getting your Olympics.”

Not everyone at the Washington Park meeting was opposed to Chicago getting the games, however. “We are excited, and we encourage the Olympics coming to Washington Park in 2016,” the Herald quoted Hanna Andersen. “Bring on the Games!”

In Lincoln Park on the north side, an Olympic tennis facility would replace the Jarvis Bird Sanctuary, eight acres of protected forest that’s on an international bird migration route.

Meanwhile, in Douglas Park on Chicago’s west side, a recently rebuilt gymnasium and pool at the Collins High School campus, which cost $30 million, would give way to a $37 million velodrome for bicycle racing. Chicago 2016 promises to convert the elite outdoor venue into a year-round “multisport facility” after the games.

“Communities that need good educational facilities will lose them,” says Tom Tresser of No Games Chicago. “Land speculators will come in when these projects happen and buy up land. Property taxes will rise, and that will push out the people who lived in those neighborhoods.”

Chicago 2016 has introduced a “Memorandum of Understanding” with communities that — nominally at least — addresses construction, community enhancement and affordable housing, as well as guaranteeing that minorities and women will get their fair share of jobs generated by the Olympics and building venues for the games.

Members of Communities for an Equitable Olympics 2016 — a coalition of community and labor organizations from around Chicago — pushed for the city to commit to a more specific “community benefits agreement” before the IOC’s visit in April. But City Hall ultimately declined to offer a legally binding agreement that would reserve a certain amount of jobs, housing, and minority contracts for neighborhood residents.

Workers in Washington, Jackson and Douglas Parks want more than just jobs selling hot dogs and tickets during the games. They want a promise of construction jobs in the years leading up to the Olympics. And if Chicago is to make money on these games, they want a piece of the pie.

Douglas Park residents attending a Chicago 2016 community meeting on August 3 expressed fear that their park, their high school and their community assets will be taken away from them, that real estate prices will rise and they’ll no longer be able to live in Douglas Park, and they’ll have very little to show for their hardships.
The crowd that turned out to question the Chicago 2016 presentation included a multi-ethnic mix of local workers, activists with connections to No Games Chicago, students defending the architectural legacy of Chicago’s old buildings, and even a teacher. Mrs. King brought her eleventh grade class from nearby North Lawndale High School to ask pointed questions of Lori Healey and other Chicago 2016 representatives. At one point the question and answer session gave way to a tense standoff between Alderwoman Sharon Dixon of the 24th Ward (who supports the Olympic bid) and a boy from Mrs. King’s class. Dixon clearly felt uneasy that one of her constituents dared rock the boat and question the city’s grand plan.

“Make no small plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood,” Daniel Burnham famously quipped. But when it comes to Chicago’s ambitious Olympic bid, are those really the best plans for the city’s residents? Can a broke and notoriously corrupt city afford the 2016 Games? And is the International Olympic Committee listening?

Jacob Wheeler is a freelance journalist, editor and teacher who also publishes the season Glen Arbor Sun newspaper (GlenArborSun.com) in northwest-lower Michigan.