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Olympics proposal calls for public to be shut out of key parts of the city

The Globe reports Olympics backers have come up with a "compact" Olympics plan that would involve shutting off a number of large public venues for the athletes and the rich people who will jet into Boston to watch them.

The marathon would end on Charles Street by the Public Garden. Franklin Park would transform into an equestrian venue.

The proposal does not include plans for a separate Olympic Park, O’Connell said. The city itself would fill that role.

The Globe notes that putting on the Olympics would cost $4.5 billion - and that DOESN'T INCLUDE THE COST OF REQUIRED INFRASTRUCTURE UPGRADES, such as the fast and expanded subway service that organizers are counting on.

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Another reminder for those who are for the Olympics in Boston in 2024; "the Olympics would cost $4.2 billion - and that DOESN'T INCLUDE THE COST OF REQUIRED INFRASTRUCTURE UPGRADES, such as the fast and expanded subway service that organizers are counting on." Another reminder, THE STATE IS BROKE and so is our Federal Government.

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Not withstanding the costs, etc., of having the Olympics here in Boston, that whole idea sounds crazy!
Boston is way too congested to have the Olympics here. It would be a disaster, imho.

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Um, no. That's actually a plus for a big event - Atlanta's infinite metastatic suburbs meant a lot of busing things around.

I take it that you have never been to places like Montreal or Barcelona ... or even Vancouver.

This is a stupid idea for a lot of reasons - such as the people who live here being shut out of jobs and possibly their homes, the fact that there would be no upgrades in reality just like the Big Dig ate the transit budget, etc.

Being a tightly packed city is actually a feature.

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I've admittedly never been to Barcelona or Vancouver, but I have, however, been to Montreal, which is not only way bigger than Boston, but, despite its congestion, is very much more spread out in some places, as well. Montreal's size is beneficial in that respect. Boston, on the other hand, is way too truncated...and too small.

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Not sure what planet your Montreal and Boston are on, but here on Earth:

Montreal: 2011 Metro 3.8 million/1650 square miles
Boston: 2010 Metro 4.5 million/4500 square miles

Note that it is the Metro area size that counts, not the size in city limits, as Boston never swallowed its neighbors to the extent that most other cities (including Montreal) did. Also, the metro area is the resource base for such a large event.

The Boston area has a bit more people in a lot more area.

Barcelona has a similar population and density to Montreal.

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"Boston never swallowed its neighbors to the extent that most other cities (including Montreal) did."

Therein lies the rub, SwirlyGrrl. The fact that Boston didn't take in afew more towns nearby and incorporate them into the city is a huge part of the problem, imho.

This:

"Not sure what planet your Boston and Montreal are on, but here on Earth"

was totally uncalled for, SwirlyGrrl, and your sarcasm and insulting manner is rather sickening at times. Moreover, I'm not the only poster on here who thinks that, either, as other posts to you have indicated, even in the not-so-distant past.

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Collins said organizers assured lawmakers that no public money would be required for construction projects directly related to the event, such as stadiums and housing for the athletes. Legislators, he said, would summarily reject any requests for taxpayers to foot the bill for these basic operations.

“If the private sector isn’t going to pick up those costs, we’re not going to have these Games,” Collins said. “It was made very clear the public was not going to pick up the tab.”

I (and no one really) knows for sure if the above claim will actually pan out, but why are we not even mentioning it in this discussion? If no public money is spent, I'll support the games. Why not? If it is, sure, I'll personally be lighting the torches and handing out the pitchforks. But please, can we at least be fair and have an adult discussion about the pros and cons of the Olympics, and not Chicken Little over it?

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Yes, you are right that they're saying that the stadiums, housing, etc would be privately paid for. But they also specifically say that infrastructure like transportation would be a public expense.

Not that I believe the first statement but that's their story.

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We should indeed spend public money on infrastructure, regardless of the Olympics. It almost isn't even a discussion point on the 2024 question.

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We shouldn't even be having a conversation about the Olympics until we have the necessary converstations about how public transit is extremely popular right now, but unreliable and falling apart.

If we want better infrastructure, we should do that. Screw the Olympics - better transit will have its own economic benefits that do not require messing up large areas of the city.

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None of that is feasible. None. Of. It.

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Adam, you quote $4.2 billion in (NON-INFRASTRUCTURE RELATED) cost, and the article says $4.5 billion. Fastest budget inflation ever? By Sunday it should be in the trillions.

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In this case, it was just a stupid typo. Fixed, thanks.

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I am envisioning a Running Man style set up with barbed wire and explosive neck collars to keep the public confined.

Prima Nocte will be in effect.

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Think of the security that goes into a modern Olympics. Now apply that to what is, geographically, a fairly small city, in this bid that envisions that city as the Olympic village itself.

The marathon ends on Charles Street? How many blocks around will have to be shut off to ensure proper security? Now multiply that by, oh, 26.2.

Franklin Park becomes a venue for the horsey set? Will the animals have to be evacuated from the zoo, the patients from Shattuck Hospital? What happens to Blue Hill Avenue?

A new Olympic venue along I-93? You think they're going to let normal traffic flow on a highway right next to a major Olympic site during the Olympics?

What about the subway stations nearest the Olympic venues? Can you imagine the security issues surrounding them? And what about the capacity? Yeah, we'll theoretically have new trains on the Orange, Red and Green lines by then, but imagine Kenmore Square when a Sox game gets out - only now with heavily armored and armed troops and security checkpoints everywhere.

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Get real. They will overrun other budgets, fail to upgrade the system, then decide for security reasons to bus people everywhere AND dump the cost of that on the MBTA.

I'd say just watch, but I'm betting there will be insurrection if these idiots prevail.

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however, what you've said about the marathon gives me pause.

This city has hosted a marathon every year for well over a century. Plans for that event are well, well refined, and are an "off-the-shelf" thing.

The fact that there is some idea that we would alter that plan (e.g., by implementing a "little" change and having it end on Charles St. rather than on Boylston) tells me that some of the people pushing this are not looking at this realistically.

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The Olympic marathon course would not follow the Boston Marathon course, which has too much net downhill for the Olympics.

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The Boston Marathon is downhill and down wind. It doesn't meet international standards for setting records. The Olympics would never allow it. On top of that, the marathon is the "city" event that runs past all the cool views in the city for the cameras to showcase the city. Running from the suburbs to Boylston doesn't pass anything but Fenway (sorta) to show off.

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We can't even watch the fireworks on the Fourth of July in peace without the provincial cops going bananas and blocking off large swaths of public space, never mind host a horseshoe tossing event on the Common.

This is just one, big corporate charity event sponsored by the taxpayer.

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At last someone, I say, someone in these heah parts is standin up for the taxpayuhs! Now lessee some more of that kinda talk, son!

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Where does it say anywhere in the article that the public will be barred from anywhere? This is HuffPo/Buzzfeed/Fox News style click bait headline writing. There are plenty of real reasons to be against the Olympics. You don't need to make up fake ones.

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And by "public," I mean people who actually live and work here. Given how this city prepared for the post 9/11 Democratic National Convention and the post-Marathon July Fourth fireworks, it just doesn't take much to imagine exactly what sort of security measures would be put in place for the Olympics. They had surface-to-air missiles on roofs in London for their Olympics, for Christ's sake.

So, yes, while the Globe doesn't mention cordoning off large parts of the city, it's really painfully obvious that for the two weeks of the Olympics and probably many more weeks beforehand, life as we know it in our quiet little burg simply will not be the same. I'd rather have that discussed now, along with all the cheery Globe stories about how we're going to get faster trains on the Orange Line.

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Discussing security and public access is more than fine, it's a necessity. But your headline is stating your OPINION that security will mean the public will be barred as a FACT. It's not, and it's bad journalism to claim otherwise. I love your website, but sorry, the headline is bad.

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If you aren't in the city for the express purposes of the Olympics, you will be ejected from inside of the city limits, unless you're one of those icky poor people, in which case you'll just be jailed or shot or something.

We all know that's more or less the end result of the Olympics, as per London. Why bother pretending otherwise? Let's be up-front about it.

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I'm so sick of this elitist BS. They do the same thing during the Boston Marathon. Only VIPs are allowed to sit in front of the finish line. The more I hear about this olympis plan the more I dislike it.

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Yes, the finish line is heavily (but not entirely) elited up, but there's 25+ miles along the rest of the route where you can just walk right up and enjoy the race (and for many people, the fun is watching the middle and end of the pack runners, anyway).

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.

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"fast and expanded subway service"

HAHA

I thought Comics Come Home was tomorrow.

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Is there some point John Fish doesn't understand? No Summer Olympics in Boston. No means no. I don't care about Team Handball when I will be Team Handjobbed to pay for this.

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Surely this will convince the public that having the Olympics is a bad idea, like starting a land war in Asia.

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From the Globe article:

Among the ideas: An Olympic stadium could rise out of a dingy industrial stretch beside the expressway near South Boston, with a half-mile boulevard escorting spectators from South Station. Athletes might bunk at an Olympic village by UMass Boston, and beach volleyball would come to the Boston Common.

A "dingy industrial area" presumably has industries in it. Where people work. So, let's put some hundreds of people out of work for the purpose of having the Olympics.

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My guess is it is the Newmarket area, which is more or less the blood and guts of the City's food service industry (pun intended), where most of the metropolitan area's meat, cheese and egg markets are located. Unless they mean the Southampton yard, which is the major maintenance and turnaround facility for the northern terminus of Amtrak's Northeast Corridor (as well as for the Lake Shore Limited to Chicago and Downeaster, to a lesser extent). They may be industrial, bit those areas serve a very important role int he workings of the city.

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There is a great reason why a lot of the food service companies stay in Newmarket and Chelsea; Close access to the city, but also close access to cheap, usually immigrant labor. Where are these business going to go? There is not a lot of virgin land out there to handle this vital need.

If you move the food service companies to say Wilmington, which is already happening to some extent, do these workers now have to clear out of Roxbury and East Boston and move to keep their jobs?

The trickle down of the Olympics will be a white Roxbury in 20 years and a decrease of immigrant communities close to a 4 mile radius from City Hall.

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I think the site they're talking about for the stadium is Widett Circle, which the T has expressed interest in taking over via eminent domain for a train layover yard, and has also been proposed as a location for a new recycling center. Only tenent over there right now is the New Boston Food Market, which employs around 700 people and any one of those three projects would probably mean the end of those jobs.

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This is nothing other than an ego trip for the wealthy and connected. The rest of us schmucks are just here to pick up the bill.
I don't believe our city will benefit from this for one minute. We'll hear about bookings for hotel rooms (corporate entities), restaurants (same) and the all important tourist trade and tax revenue.
I've just sort of run out of the ability to take anything that we're told as even remotely believable.
It's a bag job.
Have a great weekend one and all.

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I was excited for a change in the mayors office but this is super disappointing. Just a hook up for construction unions and the well connected for no benefit other than garbage 'prestige' reasons.

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The change in the Mayor's staff has been disappointing. Veteran Services has a Commissioner who is out getting ready for running for public office instead of serving veterans. We need a Commissioner who is 100% committed to serving veterans!

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John Fish is the face of this, but seriously, is the cost of this bid coming from his pocket? Clients of Suffolk Construction may want to know if their bills are being padded to cover the cost of Suffolk staff and technology that's being flogged in the press releases that the Globe is dutifully reporting. If not him who else? Curious minds want to know.

Also, I'd be interested in knowing how many former Patrick staff are using this committee as a high salary landing pad now that they need to find jobs.

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But this Olympic Committee thinks they know better than the entire country of Norway. That's (expletive) amazing. And the Olympics that Norway rejected are half the size of the Games that these Bostonians want!

Ironically, a New England Winter Olympics would come across as a far less asinine (but still bad) idea.

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Less asinine, indeed!

I, for one, would love to see some Olympic events down Nosedive or other trails at Stowe. It's not gonna happen though, at least because I do not believe that there is enough vertical at any NE resorts to accommodate and Olympic downhill.

I could, however, see the Olympics going back to Lake Placid at some point.

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at least because I do not believe that there is enough vertical at any NE resorts to accommodate and Olympic downhill.

Narrow Gauge at Sugarloaf is an FIS World Cup course.

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has ever spent any time downtown, at the waterfront, etc. during any time from spring through fall, they know that we do not need this. We have more tourists than many of the attractions can accommodate ( we were "bumped' from a harbor islands ferry mid summer). Would the normal tourist be replaced by more monied people that we paid billions to attract? Why? They're here already, we don't need to spend billions to get tourists to our beautiful city.

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I look forward to voting against every politician who supports this proposal.

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just schlep this whole Olympics idea off on Providence. They'd (read: RI pols) would love it.

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If you're being snarky, that's one thing. If, on the other hand, you're serious, Providence is also much too congested, and the same thing holds true for cities here in the Northeast, generally, including NYC, Philadelphia, etc.

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How Providence is "too congested" relative to London, Barcelona, Paris, Seoul, Tokyo, etc.

Olympics have been held in far more densely populated cities than any city in the Northeast, including NYC.

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Providence, like Boston, is also too small, and, in both instances, I stand by my opinion that both Boston and Providence are also way too congested (as well as being way too small in size) to hold the Olympics in.

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Boston is plenty large enough to hold the Olympics. It's merely a historic quirk (the strong home-rule tradition that dates back to colonial days) that the actual city of Boston is only 600,000 or so people and not 2 or 3 million.

Whether it should host the Olympics is another matter.

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I don't see anyplace in Boston proper where the Olympics could be held, let alone hosted. If the Olympics ever were to be held in the Boston area, they'd more than likely have to be held at Foxboro's Gilette Stadium, or someplace like that, and even then, the idea might not go over so well with nearby residents in the area, either.

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As somebody else has noted, my headline basically gave away my feelings on this whole idea.

But if you read the Globe story, you'll see the organizers have come up with a number of proposed venues - including Foxboro. It can be done. That doesn't mean it should be done, but Boston isn't quite as small as you think, especially since the organizers' definition of "Boston" goes considerably beyond the actual city limits.

As for the giant opening/closing stadium, the thing that would be great for two weeks and then become a fantastically expensive white elephant that the city doesn't need at all - there's this sizable piece of land near the Amtrak/Red Line yards in South Boston called Widett Circle that would be just perfect, aside from the fact you'd have to tear down places where several hundred people currently work so a bunch of global 1%ers can watch several thousand local college students dance for their entertainment before athletes escorted by some lucky native Bostonian girls dressed in giant frames that make them look like Christmas trees or something march in.

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I think that the organizers should simply abandon the idea of holding/hosting the Olympics here in Boston altogether. It would be more trouble than it's worth, considering security costs, crowdedness (which Boston has enough of, considering its small size), and the MBTA system would be strained even more than it already is, given the fact that it's gotten much worse, the costs are rising, and that certain lines (most notably the Green Line), are problematic to begin with.

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I'm thinking of the 38 Studios fiasco, where Provi put all their economic development eggs in one, very poorly planned and illogical basket - not too dissimilar from the current claims of "injection of cash and investment" into Boston you hear from Olympics boosters.

Also my family is from Westport/Fall River so a chance to give RI shtick is too much fore me to pass up.

To your point about congestion/density; an interesting take on just what the IOC wants from a host city.

Edit: now with link: http://bluemassgroup.com/2014/10/has-anyone-else-here-worked-on-an-olymp...

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I'm grossed out that there is even money being spent drawing up these bullshit fake plans that are in no way feasible.

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should probably start building isolated stadium compounds in the middle of nowhere. Start from scratch: hotels, venues, an airport, and no nearby locals to be disturbed (except maybe some poor squirrels or lizards or Dogs of Sochi.)

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We've already been conditioned with the inane, insulting shelter-in-place orders following the Marathon bombings. Whatever you say, sir.

Instead of just snorting at BOSTON STRONG tees, we can go with Olympics run-up ones of BOSTON TIMID or BOSTON SOFT.

We know how to not cross the official lines.

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Two things that need to be done.

1. A KickStarter campaign needs to be started to raise funds to both bribe the IOC to place the games somewhere else and help other "deserving" world class city.

2. There needs to be civil protest to bringing the Olympics along the lines of the Critical Mass bikes rides meets the old Citizens for Limited Taxation rallies, Throw in the occu-pods on the Rose Kennedy Greenway for good measure.

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The idea "they" have been waiting for: let's have ALL the events ON the Greenway.
Right near some hotels and the waterfront and the carousel and the North End and everything.
We can have the equestrian events by the carousel.

(I refuse to call it the RFK Greenway).

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Make sure you have them before the deal with the IOC is made. In London, protests were forbidden. The police tore down banners complaining about the Olympics on private property. The IOC does not care about freedom of speech or that Cradle of Liberty stuff, and they make repression of speech a condition for getting their franchise.

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Don't waste money bribing the IOC. Instead, spend that money exposing them and their enablers as grasping grifters. Make the Olympics the third rail for Boston politics. Look at the fallout in Norway when the IOC list of "suggestions" was revealed. Have researchers, journalists, publicists reveal who is supporting this nonsense and what they get out of it.

Take advantage of the resources that we have here. There are a whole lot of creative people in this city who could do some amazing things to get the word out. Use that money to have some contests for best PR, videos, research pieces, ads, and letters to the editor. Assign them as class projects. Have a film festival. The possibilities are endless.

Want to make Boston a "world class" city? Then let's come up with a template that other cities can use to chase the Olympics away. Let's get Boston cited by everyone else as the model for stopping this nonsense cold.

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Would that include the cost of surrounding Dorchester and Roxbury with police crime scene tape during the Olympics??

Last time I checked, Urban Gun Fire is NOT an Olympic sport...

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Why would they do that?

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A) You realize you're talking about two of the most rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods in the city? Funny thing I've learned since moving to Roxbury: plenty of people who don't live there or in Dorchester swear they're still the crime-infested, White-hating areas from the '80s; plenty of people who do live there are complaining about being priced out left and right by White yuppification.

B) Hub on Wheels goes off without a whimper every year despite rolling through some of the, ahem, less-than-desirable parts of Dorchester and Mattapan.

C) Roxbury and Dorchester have very viable access points, via road and public transit, to Franklin Park, which would be one of the major venues. Some even if we went with your loony theory, what's the plan--shuffle everyone in and out through JP?

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The only thing "rapid" is the gun fire every night not to mention the stabbings. Buy yourself a police scanner and listen to just C-11. Adding Roxbury is too much to listen to. You might need to get a Valium IV drip. Last night, as with most nights, dirt bikes and four wheelers rule the road. Doing wheelies, passing on the right, running stop signs, etc. Sometimes in a pack of 20-30. For about the past two summers, BPD has done nothing to stop this.

Not every shooting, shots fired, stabbing make the press.

I can see the Olympics now. The press focusing on these punks and the shootings and stabbings. These won't away just because the circus has come to town...

Hate to bust your ballon!

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The Olympics aren't coming to Boston, boys and girls. I like Mayor Marty. I voted for him. But he needs to focus, and stop wasting time on the Olympics that are not coming to Boston.

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The official web site has a list of Principles that includes "transparency." Yet I don't see a list of committee members or sponsors. I don't see this presentation. I do see a lot of links to fawning Globe stories. www.2024boston.org/

How about letting the rest of us, the ones who will foot the bills, see this plan?

If I've missed it, I'm happy to be corrected and would appreciate a link.

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Transparent? What a joke!

Do a Whois request for 2024boston.org. The domain owner is listed as Domains by Proxy LLC.

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In a sensible, budget minded world, the infrastructure and tranportation upgrades would be
completed first, see how they work out for a few years, and probably do some more upgrades.
Then, maybe, just maybe, this world would entertain the idea of this "world-class city" event.

I can see it now - "T upgrades still behind schedule/way over budget as Olympic events begin tomorrow." "Fingers pointed at various state officials for missing deadlines", etc. Oh, brother.

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Totally against the Olympic bid, but there is a giant gaping underdeveloped part of Boston that just opened up - Suffolk Downs. It's close to the airport and loads of hotels in place with the space to build more. The Blue line is the newest and most reliable of the lines. Boston doesn't treat Eastie as a part of the city anyway, so it could isolate Olympic-related problems to that side of the water and still say that the Olympics are "in the city".

Still would be a terrible idea. Traffic is awful already, and the casino proposal only highlighted how much worse it would get with a large venue out at Suffolk Downs. The Blue is fine, but not enough to accommodate millions of people. The airport doesn't have nearly enough hotels, or ones of high quality. Eastie is the red-headed step child of Boston, so if anything Olympic-related would be place ever here, it would be half-assed as anything else around here. And if the community didn't want a casino, why would they support a bid to bring a sports campus that would take a decade to build, be in used for about a month, and then into a ghost town à la Athens?

No matter how you slice it, none of this is a good idea.

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How long do the Olympics last; isn't it just a couple of weeks?

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But it's not like some carnival that just shows up in the middle of the night and opens the next morning. This will affect the city for weeks beforehand (years, actually, if you include all the construction).

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...are those who will directly make huge money off of it, like the construction guy who initiated the proposal, along with consultants and palm-greased politicians.

I did see some statements in support of Olympics in Boston on a popular social media site recently, but they came off as a really stilted exchange between sockpuppet accounts, which wouldn't have flown in even the '50s. Like the Boston nepotism urge was too strong, and someone hired their incompetent nephew's buzz marketing firm.

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and the rich people who will jet into Boston to watch them.

Uh, really? A rich person's thing?

A few months ago, a Globe sportswriter explained it well. It's a matter of scale, and Boston is just too small for type of event the IOC demands of its host cities. We'd be overwhelmed.

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