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by HOTPOLITICSThe Rev. Isaiah Waddy has a word of advice for Tampa residents about to jump on the Olympic Games bandwagon. "Watch out," warns Waddy, who last year was pastor of the Atlanta's Cosmopolitan AME Church, located a few blocks from the Georgia Dome.
The church was near the Olympic field hockey venue, "and we thought we could make a little money for our congregation by selling bottled water" to Olympic fans parched by Atlanta's July and August heat. "The city sold us vending permits and we bought lots of inventory. Many hundreds of dollars of inventory."
But the Olympic promoters reasoned -- without consulting residents -- that it was better for crowd control to offer free water at the hockey field. And, Waddy recalls, "the security people decided not to allow visitors to venture down into the neighborhoods."
The church ended up afloat with unsold bottled water. Waddy decries the indifference of the city's leaders to businesses in the black community that were devastated when traffic patterns were re-routed. "They even wanted us to shut down senior citizen centers, but we said, 'We can't do that,'" Waddy says.
Neighborhood groups sought $4 million in interest free loans -- a pittance compared to the Atlanta's $1.7 billion Olympic budget -- to help businesses hurt by the games. "But we didn't get that," Waddy says. "This was all about rich people and corporations promoting themselves and getting richer, and the rest of us didn't matter a lot."
It wouldn't matter at all to Tampa, except that the Olympic bug flew into town in October.
Whether Tampa will be tapped to champion the United States in a contest among the world's cities to win the 2012 games is, for now, a matter for odds makers. Nine other U.S. cities -- some with vastly more resources, others with vastly more experience hosting international extravaganzas -- also are vying to make the international finals.
The bitter and expensive rivalry among the U.S. cities commenced in November. It won't end for five years, a civic decathlon that will test endurance, promotional skills, financial resources and boosters' resolve.
Even if Tampa has a chance, long odds or short, whether we want the games is another matter. What a city gets is much more than a few days of glory, and an occasional terrorist drama, on the world's stage.
"There's nothing like it in sports," says Mike Moran, spokesman for the U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC). "A lot of ego is involved. Cities can get a great economic boost, and they can look forward to a number of other international sporting events."
But some cities have gone for the gold and ended up broke -- Montreal, for example. Atlanta's citizens have mixed reviews of last year's games. "Yeah, there's potentially a lot of good things with the Olympics," says Andrew Zimbalist, a Smith College economist and expert on sports facilities and financing. "But there are also a lot of bad things. Politicians are not a good lot to trust these things to."
Without the enthusiasm, understanding or consent of Tampa and Hillsborough citizens, an agenda is being pushed forward by a group whose membership is, so far, largely secret. Already, $250,000 of taxpayer money has been spent, and $100,000 of that was grabbed under conditions that were a slight bit sneaky. Not a good beginning.
That agenda clearly would, as in Atlanta, be a mega-windfall for some businesses, landowners and developers. The local sports franchise moguls would scoop in millions, something at which they're well practiced.
The community might benefit. The University of South Florida could be transformed by new facilities.
Certainly, the whole world would come to recognize Tampa's landmark buildings. St. Petersburg's beaches would be televised in living color to billions. No longer would the word Ybor be almost universally mispronounced.
The agenda also would shape the future of the Tampa Bay area. Long before Tampa would know it had won the games, the city and region would have to commit to such projects as a mass transit system and extensive road projects. Civic priorities for much of the next century would be indelibly chiselled on the community's landscape by games and parties that last a mere three weeks.
Promoters vow federal aid will flood into Tampa. And a grand alliance of state government and the region's metropolitan areas will ease Hillsborough's burden. But so far, the words of encouragement have been lukewarm. St. Petersburg Mayor David Fischer has shrugged, telling the St. Petersburg Times he will watch the effort from the "sidelines." And, Fischer, Orlando Mayor Glenda Hood and Gov. Lawton Chiles all skipped a major USOC meeting last month -- not in some faraway burg, but in Orlando. All in all, a mixed signal to the Olympic world.
Promises are being made that the multi-million-dollar promotion of the bid will be a privately funded venture -- but Tampa lacks the corporate deep pockets of competitors such as Los Angeles and New York.
Moreover, Atlanta was an orgy of commercialism, the antithesis it would seem of "amateur" sports. Nonetheless, the $300 million from television contracts, and $1 billion plus from 43 corporate sponsors, led by local heavyweights Coca-Cola and SunTrust banks, paid for the Atlanta games.
Coca-Cola allocated about $650 million promoting the games -- and itself, of course -- in its hometown. "The key is can you self finance," says Georgia State University economist Donald Ratajczak. "You need a bunch of sponsors. Coke dramatically helped Atlanta. The Coke seed money made sure that our bid got a fair hearing. Who does Tampa have?"
"We're weak in terms of corporate headquarters," acknowledges Tampa-Hillsborough Convention and Visitors Association marketing executive Jim Wood, adding that one major possibility, Outback Steakhouse, can't become a corporate sponsor because McDonald's already has nailed down the restaurant category. Another big potential sponsor, the Florida Citrus Commission, with an annual advertising budget of almost $100 million, is also a fatality of Olympic sponsorship conflicts, Wood says.
The bottom line in Atlanta: There was a tidy profit, thank you, of almost $20 million, according to USOC. No government wrote a blank check or made a guarantee if the games went bust.
If Tampa should win the games, and even if corporate sponsors do belly up to the table, there's still some disquieting news.
"The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is no longer comfortable, after Atlanta, with private financing of the games," says the USOC's Moran. That's a polite way of saying that the sports aficionados felt slimed by the gross over promotion in Georgia.
Thus, the IOC is now requiring the host city to guarantee the finances of the Olympic gala.
Think carefully and warily about the change in rules: If Tampa prevails, every Joan Q. Public and Joe Six-pack would, willingly or not, be on the promissory note should financial projections fizzle -- which, in Tampa, often happens to the taxpayers' dismay.
"The good news is that in America, with so many corporate sponsors, it's almost impossible to lose money," Moran says.
But is it absolutely impossible?
Moran: "We don't know that."
With no financial warranty, is trying to capture the games worth the effort and expense?
Absolutely, says Ed Turanchik, the Hillsborough commissioner who is this area's Mr. Olympics. "A magnificent opportunity," he says, quick to add that money won't be a problem.
Oh?
"This whole effort is a fiasco," counters
commission colleague Jan Platt, the Cassandra of local politics. "They
want local government to guarantee the losses. That's crazy. There's
been no fiscal impact study. No one has thought this thing through. Those
games would take place during hurricane season. Who would pay for the losses
if a hurricane hit? Has anyone considered that? This is Florida, after
all."
How It Starts
In Atlanta, the spark plug of the Olympic effort was a well heeled real estate lawyer-dealmaker, Billy Payne, who after a church service in 1987 was blessed with "an idea founded in goodness." Atlanta had, so Payne prophesied, a divine right to be an Olympic city. A proselytizer, he won supporters and bulldozed critics. To the day the games ended on Aug. 4, 1996, Payne embodied the Atlanta effort.
Tampa's visionary, the father of our Olympic foray, has already been displaced less than two months into the drive. Civic gadfly Neil Cosentino, who had been a leader of the successful movement to save the old Gandy Bridge from demolition, had targeted Tampa Stadium -- slated for the wrecking ball once Malcolm Glazer's gridiron is completed -- as another civic asset worthy of preservation. Cosentino figured that an excuse for saving the stadium would be its utility should Tampa ever win the Olympic games.
The USOC had decided to bow out of the competition for the next summer games still up for grabs, the 2008 Olympics. Cosentino discovered there was an Oct. 20 deadline to join the race to be the United States' nominee for host city for the 2012 games. He enlisted , who convinced the other commissioners -- Platt was absent -- to approve $150,000 of tourist tax money for the non-refundable bid fee.
A behind-the-scenes deal between Turanchik and the Convention and Visitors Association won another $100,000 -- and resulted in a mild wrist slap from the county commission, which declared that any more Olympic spending must garner a 5-2 "super majority" vote of the board.
The idea of saving Tampa Stadium doesn't have a prayer, of course -- Glazer has lucrative development rights to the land. Cosentino has been relegated to irrelevancy.
But since October, Tampa's big wheels have been turning. Those who make it their job to smell money have caught a whiff of the mother lode. A mere Super Bowl is worth a piddling $1 billion in economic impact. An Olympics 15 years hence could be worth $5 billion? $7 billion? $10 billion?
Turanchik has formed a committee to push the Olympic bid. It likely includes the usual downtown insiders -- Turanchik won't reveal names -- plus, he says, "there will be diversity of minorities and women. It will be an impressive group."
Those boosters, Turanchik says, have pledged $750,000 of the $2 million to $5 million needed to carry the promotion through to the USOC's decision in the fall of 2002. No money is in the bank yet -- a non-profit corporation needs to be chartered -- and Turanchik says "it wouldn't be fair" to disclose who has promised what.
"There are major fund drives already going on," says Platt. "The University of South Florida, the University of Tampa building fund, Lowry Park Zoo, the new History Center. . You know they're going to come ask government for money."
Wood says, "Some public pledges will be sought, yes."
Should Tampa prevail with the USOC, the stakes get higher. Another $15 million or $20 million would then be needed to underwrite representing the United States in the contest with other world cities to get the IOC's nod. That decision would come in 2005.
Turanchik already knows who he wants to head his private group -- who was the governor of the Tampa Bay Lightning until a rupture earlier this year with the hockey team's Japanese owners. The controversial attorney is the object of two massive federal lawsuits that charge a variety of civil misdeeds in the building of the Ice Palace, a building LeFevre and Turanchik parented.
Also playing a key role is New York Yankees owner (and Tampa resident). Tampa Mayor Dick Greco is aboard as head cheerleader, and the Tampa-Hillsborough Convention and Visitors Association (THCVA) is supplying most of the organizational talent -- as well as channelling public dollars it controls.
A key player who has signed on is USF President Betty Castor. "It's hard to see a downside for the university," says Castor's aide, Patrick Riordan. "If you think about what happened in Atlanta, all the colleges had events, mainly Georgia Tech, but also Georgia State University and Morehead and Spelman. A lot was spent on their facilities. Having the Olympics also galvanized a lot of giving for them, also."
With some glitches, with some notable players touting the Olympic bid, with hundreds of thousands of citizens still unasked and unconvinced, Tampa is indisputably a player.
"We have a place in the queue" of cities seeking the games, Turanchik says. "Can we put together a competitive package? I sure think we can. I think this will be the greatest thing we could ever have for Florida and Tampa."
Hyperbole is the common tongue of Olympic zealots. IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch called the Atlanta games "the largest and most important peacetime event in history." Atlanta Olympic boss Payne often boasted that "35 billion people watched" the games in Georgia -- there are, of course, only about 5 billion people on this small planet.
Many Atlantans aren't so sure of the glory of having the Olympic games. "I think a lot of people are so happy it's over, they pretend it never happened," says David Secrest, an Atlanta Journal-Constitution editor who was a leader of the newspaper's Olympic team. "Other than a downtown park, it's like the Olympics were never here."
Going for the (Fools?) Gold
If citizens are ever asked whether they want the games -- a big "if," by the way -- they need to know the score before the games begin.
For example, the Olympics have a very mixed record of financial success. Los Angeles' 1984 games had a $240 million surplus -- the city opted for smaller games and avoided extensive construction.
Atlanta upped the corporate ante, delivering about 2 million visitors, selling 8.5 million tickets, creating 77,000 jobs (mostly temporary), attracting the participation of 197 countries and 10,700 athletes, and utilizing 29 venues, 12 of them new. It was the largest Olympics ever, one that stressed but didn't break Atlanta's infrastructure, especially its MARTA transit system.
Although a $5.1 billion economic impact was anticipated in Atlanta, that estimate is now reduced to about $4 billion. But "economic impacts" -- a number arrived at through academic alchemy that multiplies each dollar spent -- is misleading. An estimated $1.5 billion was actually brought into the city by Olympic spectators, athletes and officials.
Atlanta tallied a roughly $20 million profit -- but that's just a shade over 1 percent of the city's Olympic budget, not a very comfortable margin.
Montreal, meanwhile, is still recovering from its 1976 Olympic binge that resulted in more than $1 billion in debt. "They tried to rebuild the entire city, and that failed," says economist Zimbalist. Moscow, for the 1980 summer games, spent about $9 billion, again the result of a massive construction program.
Where does Tampa fall on the Olympic continuum?
On the one hand, we have 28 sports venues along the corridor between St. Petersburg and Orlando, as well as four sizeable convention centers, a half dozen universities and colleges. "It's a very attractive formula," says Wood of the Convention and Visitors Association.
But the region has many deficits. For example, many of the sports facilities may not be usable or may need significant upgrading. There's no local rail transit system -- and only a handful of people have joined Turanchik's movement to build one. The commissioner speaks of "finding ways to tie together Orlando and Tampa" -- a suggestion for a high-speed commuter train.
USF's Riordan comments: "The Turanchik Olympic plan is really the
Turanchik says: "There are many jobs to do, things to fix. Making a bid for the Olympics won't prompt us to build something we wouldn't do anyway. It will just accelerate what we do."
So, we need massive infrastructure. An Olympic stadium would need to be built, as well as an Olympic Village for 15,000 people, a natatorium for aquatic events. Atlanta, too, had many existing facilities, and it still spent $600 million on sports venues.
"You know why all the (sports team) owners are backing this?" Platt quizzes. "They know that in 15 years, they'll need major remodelling of their stadiums, or they'll want new ones. This is a way to get someone else to pay for their stadiums, just like they always do."
What's inescapable is that Central Florida would go on a building and infrastructure binge. That would make us perilously close to the big losers among Olympic cities of the past. And, although additional cities and the state could participate in the plan, USOC's Moran says one city -- Tampa, if we should win the bid -- must shoulder financial responsibility.
Turanchik says not to worry, that TV contracts will cover most of the bill. Indeed, NBC has purchased exclusive rights for the Olympics through 2008 for $4.8 billion, excluding next year's winter games in Nagano, Japan. "We could be looking at $2 billion for TV by 2012," Turanchik says.
But, of course, the cost of the games will be proportionately higher.
"The question is," says Smith College's Zimbalist, "what do you do with the facilities after the games? What happens to the new hotels and restaurants? Who supports them? The workers will lose their jobs after the games and create a new welfare class. There is very little basis to suggest that a rush of activity at the Olympics will create a sustainable basis for Tampa's economy."
Platt worries that Turanchik and his allies are eyeing the revenues from the Community Investment Tax passed last year. Originally, it was supposed to generate about $2.7 billion over 30 years, but the growth in tax revenues now is pushing estimates to twice that amount, maybe more. Turanchik wouldn't comment on whether his Olympic plans are tied to the tax.
"Are we going to use the Community Investment Tax to build the infrastructure we really need, or are we going to use it to build the monstrous infrastructure for the Olympics?" Platt asks.
Turanchik says not to use Atlanta as an example of what to expect. "Things have changed," he asserts.
But have they changed for the better? Atlanta's taxpayers weren't on the hook, after all.
And, there are similarities between the cities. Tampa, like Atlanta, has a fondness for ignoring its citizens when the business and political elite want something.
In Atlanta, labor unions were so incensed at the Payne's plans to flood the city with $6 an hour jobs that they stormed the Olympic organizers' headquarters and eventually won concession. The unions decried Payne's plantation mentality, noting that he had made himself the highest paid executive of a non-profit corporation in America, with an annual salary of $669,000.
Meanwhile, the moderate and low income areas of the city suffered from the massive disruption of the city, but received little payback from the games.
Gays were insulted by an anti-homosexual ordinance in suburban Cobb County. Olympic organizers further insulted gays when, after pulling events from Cobb venues, they said the reason wasn't concern for human rights but only to deny gays a platform for protest.
At one time or another, almost everyone in Atlanta was mad at the Olympic organizers. Opinion polls showed that the games enjoyed a thin majority of support among citizens.
Tampa has its history, too. The Super Bowl in 1991 resulted in a national embarrassment when Tampa's African American community raised hell after being cut out of virtually any economic participation in the event.
In Tampa, Wood says polls will be conducted to see if the community backs the games. And, he says all segments of the community will be involved.
Still, Turanchik was unenthusiastic about the idea of putting the Olympic question to the voters -- perhaps on a referendum in the November 1998 general election.
"First we'd have to understand what hosting the Olympics means
in reality," he says. "We have miles to travel before we get there."
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