Bay Area officials take trip to discuss Olympic bid (SFGate)

[petronius]

Mayoral adviser Tony Winnicker will head to Colorado Springs Thursday along with Giants CEO Larry Baer, Olympian and Bay Area native Anne Cribbs and venture capitalist Steve Strandberg to sit down with the U.S. Olympics Committee and chat about a possible 2024 bid for the summer games.

The San Francisco delegation will join representatives from Boston, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles for what's being billed as an informational session, where USOC leadership will fill in the possible host cities on details of a potential bid.

The USOC will decide next year whether it will submit a U.S. city bid for the 2024 games. In the meantime, it has winnowed its list to the four cities invited to Friday's meeting.

Winnicker, who works closely with Mayor Ed Lee, said San Francisco and Bay Area leaders are still figuring out if the region would want to host in 2024. He said the delegation will come back from Colorado with more information to present to leaders around the Bay Area.

--- Snip ---

My wife and I were talking about the Olympics just the other day - we jokingly suggested SF, in the (mistaken) belief that that nobody would be that dumb...

[arcane1]

1. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sorry, I got a little carried away there.

[petronius]

3. Carried away? I'd call that a pretty muted response, really!

Heck, I'm 200 miles away and that's how I reacted...

[NV Whino]

2. Oh please no.

[KamaAina]

4. Tons of hotel rooms, air transportation, and hotel rooms.

The problem is that most of the hotel rooms are in SF, so how do you get people out to outlying venues like Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, 40 miles away? If they'd electrify Caltrain as part of the package, and move ahead with the second phase of the BART extension to San Jose, I'm listening.

[petronius]

6. I admit to not making an in-depth study, but I can't recall reading of

any of these huge events where the host was left with much in the way of useful new infrastructure (aside from stadiums). It seems like the needs/demands of the event are not all that aligned with the long-term needs of the city/region.

Hopefully that will change in the future (at some point it has to get difficult to recruit hosts); it would be great if the planning for something like the Olympics was explicitly geared toward a balanced program of urban development, leaving the host region better-developed and debt-free, but I'm skeptical...

[Starry Messenger]

5. wtf.

Where would they put it? The city is only 7 miles wide or something, right?

[KamaAina]

7. I imagine it would be a Bay Area-wide bid.

Oakland and San Jose have some facilities, as do Cal and Stanford.

[msongs]

8. great news as long as NO taxpayer or public money is spent on them. private funding all the way nt