Shirley Leung channels her inner Mickey Rooney

Also, Ms. Leung? The Big Dig might not be the best argument for proving Boston's suitability to host an Olympics, not when people are already worried about who gets to foot the bill for the inevitable cost overruns.

And we got to keep the road when it was done!

I just cannot believe how all these politicians can support this. This is a horrible idea. Oh well, any pol that supports this boondoogle will surely not be re-elected.

the media attention and the page clicks that an Olympics in Boston would produce! I also don't know where Ms. Leung resides,but I have a feeling it's nowhere near a site that will see much disruption from Olympics construction.

And yes, Ms. Leung, please put John Fish through the ringer. You know, they way you've been it doing so far?

Maybe the Olympics would be great, maybe not. Maybe they would pick the taxpayer's pockets, maybe not. Maybe they would provide the broad public benefits our city needs, maybe not.

The problem is that Boston 2024 doesn't seem to think we're smart enough to look at the details and decide for ourselves. As McCrea's article points out, the lack of transparency and accountability in the bidding process thus far has been appalling. Worse has been the complicity of our elected officials, who supposedly represent us but have refused to talk to us about the bid. The one exception was in Cambridge, where the City Council voted in opposition. I appreciate that they take their responsibility seriously, because my mayor and city councilors evidently do not. They will not get my vote again.

http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/blog/2014/12/09/cambridge-city-counci...
http://www.timtoomey.org/2014/12/23/op-ed-olympic-bid-lacks-transparency...

As for Shirley's article, it's just another example of the Globe being asleep at the wheel during this whole debate.

It's déjà vu all over. Years ago outsiders changed Boston. The status quo was toppled, neighborhoods changed forever, and it cost .The Boston I knew and worked in was of rail yards and warehouses and factories and working class jobs for the working class residents. Sure , you had your sprinkling of education and medical, but most people had caluses.Then the change , and Boston raced to get global.
Well, now another opportunity as seen by some is knocking on the door, change is coming.Guess you just have to roll with it , it's been done before. Nothing lasts forever. My personal advice , buy real estate.

Ultimately our leadership will have to explain the costs and where the money comes from and our best math wizards will report whether or not it makes sense, but what is the profitability and who stands to gain the most? These are questions that are harder to answer.

During the DNC we were all told that people from all over the country would show up and spend their money. They did not. Restaurants, retailers, hotels, tourist based businesses should have a huge pay off but it isn't guaranteed. The Mayor needs to structure a plan so that no one can argue the benefits. There doesn't seem to be a single instance of a host city ever cleaning up during the Olympics. Where are the numbers?

Can locals really rent out there homes and charge people to park on their driveways? I seriously doubt it. Can the fried dough guy stay in his current spot and charge 5 dollars for a fried dough all month? I doubt it.

The security alone will put a huge strain on our day to day existence. They will close roads, search bags, create lines to get on and off all public transit. What happens to entire businesses when the street they are on gets closed to all traffic. Remember after the Marathon bombings?

There are many issues to be covered here and there are years to do it. We will all know pretty early on what kind of leaders Mr. Walsh and Mr. Baker are. They love the word transparency. When they start using that word on the first day especially after they have been all BUT transparent so far it may be time to get a little concerned. We shall see.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_bid_for_the_2012_Summer_Olymp...

Possibly the greatest legacy of NYC2012 has been large-scale development of areas of New York City that underwent rezoning in order to move forward with the NYC2012 bid. Manhattan's Hudson Yards and Brooklyn's waterfront in Williamsburg and Greenpoint both underwent rezoning revisions which were in part due to the region's planned roles as Olympic venues, including the controversial West Side Stadium. (The 7 Subway Extension, which was originally planned for the 2012 Olympic bid, was revised to serve the Hudson Yards Redevelopment Project.) The development of the once industrial Queens West neighborhood on the East River may also have origins in the bid, as it was initially slated for development as the planned site of the Olympic Village. Following the Games, the site was to be bought by private developers and converted into condominiums.

After the Olympic bid failed, the construction of Citi Field in Queens, now designated as the new home of the Mets, went on as scheduled; the Mets played their first game in the stadium in April 2009.

Upon the USOC reaching a new revenue sharing agreement with the IOC in May 2012, New York had been mentioned as a potential candidate for the 2024 Summer Olympics, but its bid was declined in May 2014.

Now, I don't know much about these areas of NYC prior to their redevelopment, but were these improvements or the conversion of public/other areas into private/corporate hands for profit?

In other words, let's assume we don't get the selection by the IOC. We STILL will have started processes for redevelopment of the places we claim we're going to put things and *then* we're going to have to decide what to do with them when we lose. Since we'll have been burning money getting the locations/zoning/etc. ready, we're going to feel compelled to sell everything off to recover the losses for whomever invested in the redevelopment (city, federal, state, private donor). If that means we're taking perfectly functional infrastructure (DPW work yard), moving it to a worse location for DPW, and then selling it off in the end to make condos...then have we really won?

Now we can look forward to even more john fish puff pieces by Leung and the globe for the next 9 years

Someone might go to jail somewhere down the line. And then
the Globe will shake its collective head sadly and self-righteously and intone: "Nobody could have predicted the moral and fiscal disaster Boston's ill-fated Olympic bid would become..."