Now if only we could do that in the modern day, with support from the IOC, and turn them into something positive. For example turn them into schools, homeless shelters, libraries, something along those lines.
Even better, hold the Olympics in places where there are already facilities that can temporarily be re-purposed for the Olympics, and then go back to their normal purpose.
That's what happened for the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. For housing the athletes they used student housing at the University of Southern California. If Los Angeles gets the 2024 Summer Olympics they plan to use student housing at UCLA for athletes and coaches, and student housing at USC for media housing.
For athletic venues, only two needed to be built. They built a velodrome and a swim center. For the rest they were able to use facilities already present: LA Memorial Coliseum, LA Memorial Sports Arena, Dodger Stadium, The Forum, Long Beach Convention Center, Rose Bowl, Long Beach Arena, Anaheim Convention Center, along with the athletic facilities at several colleges and universities (UCLA, Cal State LA, USC, Loyola Marymount, Cal State Fullerton, East LA College, Pepperdine).
The combination of low construction costs from being able to use so much existing infrastructure, and the use of corporate sponsorship to pay for the things that did need to be built (it was the McDonald's swim stadium and the 7-Eleven velodrome) resulting in the 1984 Olympics running a profit of more than $200 million.
I was living in Pasadena at the time. I had expected the Olympics to be a pain in the ass due to increased traffic...but it turned out to have no negative effect that I could see.
In retrospect, that should not have been too surprising. There are times of the year where the pro baseball, basketball, American football, and hockey seasons overlap, along with various college sports seasons. One could easily have a day with several team sporting events going on that will each draw a large crowd. On top of that you could have a major concert or two going on.
In other words, Los Angeles already can handle many simultaneous major events. The Olympics is bigger than that, but not by anywhere near as big a factor as it would be in cities that do not have so many popular pro and college team sports and so many world class concert venues.
The city installed red light cameras, and there is a bribery scandal going on regarding that deal. The city leased the parking meters for a billion dollars, but the contract is almost an object lesson in what not to do as a city. Rates for parking more than doubled, and now Chicago has the highest parking rates in the nation. The city is forced to pay whenever a spot is unavailable or is removed, for the entire duration it is unavailable. If the city wants to put in a bike lane, they have to pay something like $26k per parking spot vacated. If they want to close a street for a festival, they have to pay as if the parking spots were at 100% occupancy for the entire duration of the festival. The city gave up a massive amount of city planning ability as a result of that deal. [3] (added as an edit)
Furthermore, both Illinois and Chicago failed to pay into the pension plans they have promised their workers, leading to a massive budget crisis. Chicago and Illinois are basically forced to pay for pensions as they come up rather than paying with money that had been gaining interest over the length of the employees tenure. On top of that, Illinois is one of the few states that do not tax retirement income, compounding the problem. (Which makes sense, cause retirees vote, but I digress)
On top of that, Chicago has the third-highest number of police per-capita in the nation, after Baltimore and Washington DC. Our police have routinely been caught lying under oath. Our former States Attorney, Anita Alverez, (who is actually the mother of a friend, unfortunately) was a joke, who refused to charge police officers for lying under oath. She otherwise took a tough-on-crime policy, and pursued harsh sentences and supported the policies that basically set the police at odds with minority communities in the city. She would bend over backwards to defend convictions that had been overturned, once suggesting that a man cleared of rape may have been engaging in necrophilia. Policies like these led to Chicago being titled "The False Confession Capital"[2].
And while you could probably hide as many people in Chicago as in LA, the transit situation would be a nightmare, because all transit is centered around being able to go to the loop. So you'd have everyone trying to go through the same area, unlike the more distributed system that exists in LA.
All of this is a real shame. Chicago is a great city, one which I'd sincerely like to share with the world. The centerpiece of the Olympics would have been in an area of the city that is undervalued and under-visited. The plan also did a great job of spreading the competitions around and using the existing infrastructure. For instance, the kayaking competition was going to be held 90 miles away in South Bend Indiana, where a whitewater kayaking course already exists.
[1] “If [Illinois] isn’t the most corrupt state in the United States,” he said, “it is certainly one hell of a competitor.”
http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/December-2010/Why...
[2] From 60 Minutes - Alverez suggest necrophilia as a possible reason who
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50136707n
[3] http://www.chicagoreader.com/Bleader/archives/2015/02/19/may...
> On top of that, Illinois is one of the few states that do not tax retirement income, compounding the problem. (Which makes sense, cause retirees vote, but I digress)
Taxed for a lifetime and taxes until death.. Given the current failing socialist system, when should it sensibly end?
> All of this is a real shame. Chicago is a great city, one which I'd sincerely like to share with the world.
Don't share too much unless you want increased population, even worse traffic, higher rent, and even higher taxes and temporary property values. Flies on shit...
An Olympics here would leave the same devastation it usually does however good the plan seemed. Re-engineering all for the purposes of money grabs and a short term event.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-chicagoans-proposed-20...
Mind you, from 1996 to 2006, they put Georgia State students in the dorms and bussed them to and from Georgia State, which didn't make a lick of sense, but I give Atlanta's government a lot of credit for very nearly doing something right.
- London (http://www.eastvillagelondon.co.uk): "Welcome to London's newest neighborhood, former athletes' village."
- Beijing (http://www.china.org.cn/2008-03/05/content_11646502.htm): "Once the Paralympic Games are concluded, the Olympic Village will be taken over by a private development company, which will remodel the apartments into residential buildings"
- Athens (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic_Village#List_of_Olympi...): "The Athens Olympic Village also became a residential area following the Games. Today, the village with a capacity of approximately 10,000 people is in use."
- Sydney (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newington,_New_South_Wales): "The Athlete's Village was converted to residential apartments after the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games."
That's not schools or libraries, but if you build apartment buildings for 10,000 sportsmen, using them as apartments afterwards simply is the best fit.
Of course, the fact it's in a very expensive city where leaving land unused would be commercial suicide helps a bit too.
People still keep downplaying just how isolated Lake Placid as compared to both where people are and where people want to be.
Honestly, as bad as Atlanta's Olympics look at the time (with commercialism and the bombing, for example), I really think they deserve a lot of credit for using it as an excuse to provide the city with renovations people could use. Hopefully LA can do the same.
A lot of the Tech fraternity houses were rented out to media companies and got renovated.
Tech did get a lot of use out of the aquatic center and it gets used for many NCAA events.
They did finally defuel the Neely nuclear research reactor on campus before the games. I'd wondered how they were going to house athletes next to an experimental reactor.
Nothing can excuse that mascot though.
They also utilized existing venues for nearly everything, only having to actually build two new venues (a swim center and a velodrome).