If the right pieces fall into place, Bostonians could witness the Olympic torch blazing down Commonwealth Avenue in 2024.
“The benefits could be enormous,” said District 6 City Councilor Matt O’Malley at a council meeting on Wednesday. “We have the hotel rooms, the dorms. The locations of sporting events would not just be in Boston proper. It could be 200 miles north, south, east, west of Boston. We could be talking about the New England region. Another strength we have is the city could hold the summer or winter games. When you apply for both your chances are exponentially heightened.”
The United States Olympic Committee announced March 8 that they sent out bid invitations to the nation’s 25 largest cities, including Boston, and 10 other cities that had expressed interest in hosting the 2024 Summer Olympics.
Corey Dinopoulos, co-founder of the Boston Olympic Exploratory Committee, said in an email that the committee is now taking a deeper look to see if Boston would be able to host the Olympics in the future.
“Our effort is to lead a feasibility study for Boston and New England region that would be funded entirely by private organizations,” he said. “Not [by] the state or taxpayers.”
This would not be the first time public funding became an issue for an Olympic bid in Boston. In 1992, another committee formed to look at the possibility of hosting the Olympics, but fell apart when it was announced that taxpayers would be responsible for any economic losses as a result of the games.
In an effort to introduce the idea to Massachusetts Legislature, BOEC recruited Mass. State Sen. Eileen Donoghue to sponsor a bill that would create a nine-person committee within the legislature to investigate the potential costs, benefits and popularity of the games.
“It’s difficult to say one way or another that [hosting the games is] definitely a good idea or it’s a bad idea until you really have some hard data on what’s involved — the cost, the feasibility,” Donoghue said. “That’s really the key in terms of how it would be approached. We need to have that information, and that’s why a study [by the legislature] is really important.”
The USOC sent out bid invitations Feb. 19 to mayors across the country to gauge interest in what cities would want to hold the Olympics and would be able to financially support it. One of the requirements for cities is to have a public transportation system that would be able to bring people to and from the venues, according to the letter.
“The MBTA needs an Olympics-like effort to stabilize its finances,” said Kelly Smith, spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority, in an email.
The MBTA has an overall debt of $8.3 billion, making it the most indebted public transportation system in the nation.
Donoghue said the games could be a reason to renovate the MBTA.
“That’s one of the areas where the government comes in to play,” she said. “There’s no question, some would say, that our transportation system is more 19th century than 21st century, and this is a way, over the next ten years or so, of bringing it into the 21st century, which would also help the bid quest for the games.”
Boston Mayor Thomas Menino told WBUR on March 5 that the Olympic bid idea is improbable and the costs to apply can range from $6 to 8 million that could be used for other services in the commonwealth.
“At this time, I think it’s a far-fetched idea, and just wish that I knew about it before it was in the paper,” he said. “Especially in these economic times, with what’s happening in Washington today and what could possibly happen in the state, I need every penny I have to make sure we continue the services to the people of Boston.”
Apart from funding for public transportation Donoghue said Boston already supports enough tourism to adapt fairly easily and to profit from an international event.
“Tourism in Massachusetts is big business,” she said. “I firmly believe an Olympic location here would enhance that, not just during the games, but before and long after the games. I think it would be beneficial to us worldwide in terms of our tourism.”
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