Chicago is lucky to have missed out on the disruption and expense of the Olympics. Having just experienced three days of disruption for the G-20 (thanks Mr. President!), I can only imagine what two weeks of the Olympics would be like.
As far as the expense: $4.8 billion was the official estimate, which was complete crap. London is looking at significant overruns over its £9.3 billion budget (that’s $14.8 billion!) The City of Chicago would be on the hook for any overruns, having signed an unlimited financial guarantee. The bid itself cost $100 million. (Balanced against the cost would be a benefit as small as $4.4 billion by one independent estimate, and as large as $19.2 billion according to its proponents.)
Accordingly, the public soured on the bid. A recent poll showed Chicagoans evenly divided on whether to hold the Olympics, but 84% agreed that public money should not be spent. (Which, without a doubt, would absolutely have happened.)
Non-Chicagoans can be happy too, because a Chicago Olympics would also have cost billions in federal dollars. (This was even used as an argument to Chicagoans in favor of the games.)
Andrew Stuttaford celebrates the bid’s failure this way:
Chicago is a fine city and a place that I always enjoy visiting. It deserves better than to have the Olympics foisted upon it. What I cannot understand is why President Obama is joining in with the effort to bring this scourge to his home town. The Olympics after all, is a festival of bureaucratic arrogance, financial irresponsibility, internationalist vacuity, and politically correct blather.
Oh . . .
UPDATE: More here. London’s costs may reach $40 billion. Athens spent three times their projected amount. Montreal just finished paying off the 1976 summer games in 2006! (Via Instapundit.)
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