Los Angeles' Olympic boosters might not want you to know this, but yesterday London, the host of the 2012 Olympics, finally revealed their projected budget for their games. And the magic number is...drum roll please...9.3 billion pounds, a new Olympic record! Now, before you shout "holy fucking shit!," please remember that number is in UK pounds. In US dollars, that's $18 billion.
Okay, now feel free to scream "holy shit!"
LA seems to have a very good chance of becoming the US representative to host the 2016 games, but here's one person who prays that someone, anyone, gets the Olympics instead of LA. Yes, team LA has been touting the city's Olympic readiness as one of our most alluring factors, but I'm not drinking that Kool Aid.
Let's say our "Olympic readiness" means we only need half or one-third the budget of the London games. Is $6 billion a reasonable amount to spend simply to make our traffic worse for a few weeks and get a shiny new polish on the Coliseum?
Here's the thing, the infrastructure improvements that Olympics occasionally spawn (see Barcelona and Atlanta) are already underway here. Regarding mass transit, the Gold Line is online, with the new East Side extension scheduled to be completed by 2009. The Expo Line is also under construction, which will bring the west side into the fold a year later.
Despite being the object of scorn to so many in California, throughout America and abroad, the fact remains that Los Angeles is a superstar city, with no end in sight to the rise in property values. Despite our much publicized gang problems, the city is gentrifying at a dizzying rate.
Most importantly, we don't have any second city syndrome, and we don't need the Olympics to prove our global worth. Chicago's a great city. It's cleaner. The people are nicer. It's more walkable. It's a world-class city. It's streets are paved with platinum, the water in Lake Michigan is the fountain of youth and Chicago police officers have been rumored to shit rainbows. Please please please let them spend the money to host the world for the 2016 Olympics. There are so many things we could be spending that kind of money on. Attracting more whiny, complaining tourists to Hollywood and Highland shouldn't be one of them.
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if we get it they better make downtown look halfway decent and fix wilshire
I truly hope that Chicago gets the Olympic bid as well. Los Angeles already had it's shot--and as we can see from past years the games are targets for terrorism. Not to mention we don't need the make the traffic worse!
For the LA bid, as opposed to Chicago, no public money is involved at any stage in the process. All the money spent would be raised by licensing and broadcasting fees, as well as ticket sales.
Furthermore, LA managed to turn a profit the two previous times it held the Olympics.
Seeing as though the Games could be a coronation of the effort to revitalize downtown and an opportunity to host a wonderful event that brings the entire world together, we shouldn't let London's utter mismanagement of the Games affect our opinions.
this is such an ignorant article. London's stadium isn't $16 billion, they're pretty much building everything from scratch and infrastructure such as new subway lines. Neither LA or Chicago have to do this, so stop comparing apples and oranges, and.. holy crap what am I doing at this website I need to get a life.
You're an idiot. The greatest traffic flow Los Angeles experienced in the last 50 years was during the 1984 games. Which, by the way, turned a profit, shit for brains.
The only venue to be built is a temporary aquatics center. Try and spend $6B on that.
P.S. I'm not even sure how I found this moronic site to begin with.
We in Chicago don't want the stupid Olympics either. Let's all support a non-US bid.
Ricky Rat
NotChicago.com