February 15, 2010
Beijing fills Bird's Nest with slush in attempt to lure suckers visitors
More evidence that Olympic stadiums are hopeless white elephants:
The "Happy Snow and Ice Season" will run all winter at the stadium where Chinese directors staged a stunning opening ceremony for the 2008 Summer Olympic Games and Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt set world records. Now slushy mounds of machine-made snow and a single ski slope occupy the grounds.
It's a long way from Olympic grandeur for the Bird's Nest, meant to symbolize China's decades of vast economic growth and status as a new world power.
With a price tag of $450 million, the world's largest steel structure has been called a potential white elephant, a big, expensive building that no longer serves a purpose. Its maintenance costs are $15 million a year.
Since the Olympics ended, the stadium has hosted an opera, an Italian soccer match and a Jackie Chan concert. Stadium management is also wooing Spanish soccer team Real Madrid to come play a game.
Both attendance and reviews of the Happy Fun Ball Snow and Ice Season have been bad, with visitors complaining that the attractions don't live up to the ads, and about the $26 admission fee with additional charges added once you're inside. Best quote, from a Beijing dad who drove an hour to the stadium with his 12-year-old son to the stadium:
Ma [Tianjun], who drove an hour to get to the park, said he realized too late how expensive it would be. "Once you board the thieves' ship, you can only go forward," he said, using an old Beijing saying.
January 13, 2010
Vancouver library mandates Olympics-only ads
Speaking of the questionable benefits of sports mega-events, here's another one: Public libraries forced to cater to Olympic advertisers!
An internal memo obtained by The Tyee advises Vancouver Public Library branches to protect Olympic sponsors.
"Do not have Pepsi or Dairy Queen sponsor your event," read guidelines sent to VPL branch heads and supervisory staff last fall. "Coke and McDonald's are the Olympic sponsors. If you are planning a kids' event and approaching sponsors, approach McDonald's and not another well-known fast-food outlet."
VPL marketing director Jean Kavanagh added that the ban extends to such things as audio-visual equipment made by non-sponsors: "I would get some tape and put it over the 'Sony.' Just a little piece of tape."
The city of Vancouver says this is the library's call, but given that it already passed its own legislation banning "unauthorized" signs near Olympic venues, it's kind of abandoned the moral high ground here.
September 08, 2009
Chicago council to sign off on Olympics blank check
The great Chicago Olympic contract hullabaloo looks like it's ending with a whimper, not a bang: A Chicago city council committee has voted this afternoon to approve signing the official Olympic contract that makes the city the stopgap for any cost overruns, and the full council is expected to approve it tomorrow, according to GamesBids.com:
The contract would require the city to cover cost overruns beyond the $750 million already backed by the city and the state. The Chicago Tribune reports Olympic organizers say insurance policies would protect the public, making it unlikely they would require the $750 million.
The contract was the main hurdle to Chicago's 2016 Olympic bid (not counting the competition from Madrid, Tokyo, and Rio de Janeiro), which will be decided on October 2. (New York City never officially guaranteed cost overruns with its 2012 bid, either, but it ended up with bigger problems.) The winner gets to be on the hook for billions in dollars worth of velodromes and infrastructure; the losers get to watch on TV for free.
July 06, 2009
Mayor Daley does the Olympic funding flip-flop
I'm back from Chicago, where I was met at the airport by the disembodied voices of minor Olympians (I think we got a synchronized swimmer) welcoming us to one of the contenders for the 2016 Summer Games.
I was also met by this article in the Chicago Reader, detailing how Mayor Richard Daley first promised that despite the International Olympic Committee's requirement that host cities guarantee to pay for any cost overruns, Chicago wouldn't be on the hook for extra cash; then caved and admitted he'd have to sign the IOC contract "as it is"; then insisted that even though he'd promised to pay any cost overruns, the city wouldn't have to pay any cost overruns. It was nice of them to make me feel like I was back at home.
For more on Chicago's Olympic bid mess, it's worth checking out the Reader's archives, which include a story about how the city is about to tear down a swimming pool it just built in order to build a velodrome that will have a new swimming pool trucked in from across town after the Olympics are over.