Chicago’s Olympic Dreams

Update Appended: Sept. 28, 2009

Whether you’re one of those Windy City residents who favor Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics or you believe the whole project is just ripe for Capone-style corruption, know this: when you’re standing on the shores of Lake Michigan, it’s easy to imagine an idyllic Olympic experience. With Grant Park and the tip of the Willis (né Sears) Tower at your back, gaze out at the site of the planned rowing venue. Instead of the geese you hear honking, imagine coxswains barking at their boat mates. A comfortable breeze blows in your face on a sun-splashed Saturday afternoon. “Look around,” says Casie Piejko, an Olympic supporter and a 30-year city resident, during a break from biking along the lake. “It’s beautiful.”

(See 10 things to do in Chicago.)

Chicago learns its Olympic fate on Oct. 2, when members of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) meet in Copenhagen to award the 2016 Games. Madrid, Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo are the other contenders, and boosters say the Second City has a fighting chance. First, it offers a compact proposal: about 90% of the athletes would compete within a 15-minute drive of the proposed Olympic Village site, not far from Chicago’s downtown. Many events would take place in city parks, and most new facilities — including the 80,000-seat Olympic Stadium, scheduled for the South Side’s Washington Park — would be temporary, a strategy intended to avert the Olympics’ worst legacy, expensive venues that sit idle for years. And then there’s the Obama factor: the leader of the free world calls Chicago home and will personally travel to Copenhagen to pitch the IOC.

(See 100 Olympic athletes to watch.)

What’s attractive to well-heeled fans and Latvian weight lifters, however, doesn’t always help a host city or its residents. Critics of the bid say that while the Olympics might provide construction jobs and an influx of revenue, any boost would be short-lived. “To make a city prosperous, it’s about brainpower, not block parties,” says Tom Tresser, an organizer for the opposition group No Games Chicago. Though Mayor Richard Daley has promised that local taxpayers wouldn’t pay a dime of the Games’ estimated $4.8 billion cost, he’s also signed an agreement with the IOC that puts the city on the hook for any excessive cost overruns — an Olympic tradition as common as crying. London, the 2012 host, is already on pace to spend more than $13 billion, nearly triple its original budget.

As the decision day approaches, Chicago is covered in Olympic hype. Banners are draped around downtown, and Olympic athletes are even delivering prerecorded pro-bid messages on Chicago’s buses. But overall, support for the effort has slipped: just 47% of residents favor hosting the Games, according to a poll taken in late August, compared with 61% in February.

(See highs and lows from the 2008 Beijing Games.)

Some Chicagoans seem not to want the hassle. Construction of the Olympic Stadium would make much of Washington Park inaccessible for at least six months. “I love this park,” says Aaron Fonville, 42, while watching a neighborhood baseball game on a recent Sunday. “I don’t want to see anyone messing with its preservation.” The $1 billion Olympic Village, meanwhile, is scheduled to replace a set of historic hospital buildings designed by famed German Modernist Walter Gropius — a plan that Jonathan Fine, executive director of Preservation Chicago, calls “cultural vandalism.”

Such Olympian angst may be moot. IOC insiders believe Rio’s bid is gaining favor (South America has never hosted an Olympics). Around the Rings, an American publication that exclusively covers the Olympic movement, tagged Rio as the favorite in its final “Power Index” ahead of decision day. “Rio has been able to deliver an emotional edge to its appeal that other bids haven’t matched,” says Around the Rings editor Ed Hula. Perhaps the President can up the ante. After insisting that health care business would prevent him from trekking to Copenhagen to personally lobby the IOC, on Monday White House officials announced that Obama, a de facto Chicago native, had changed his mind. Fellow Windy City superstars, his wife and Oprah, will join him.

This move could indeed put Chicago over the top: eleventh-hour schmoozing by Tony Blair and Vladimir Putin helped secure wins for London and Sochi, host of the 2014 Winter Games. So expect Republican griping that Obama can’t keep his priorities straight. But this flip-flop could land those rowers in Lake Michigan.

See the long history of Olympic politics.

See pictures of Chicago.

(The story was updated to reflect President Obama’s decision to fly to Copenhagen to lobby the IOC on Chicago’s behalf.)