Cities Making Final Pitches

Last Friday, in one of those only-in-New York moments, at the corner of 60th Street and Lexington Avenue in Manhattan, the NYU dance team pranced and cheered as Bloomingdale’s unveiled a corner window dedicated to the proposition that New York ought to stage the 2012 Olympic Games.

Across the country the next day, boosters of San Francisco’s bid to play host to the 2012 Games unfurled a giant U.S. flag at halftime of San Jose State’s homecoming game. Up in the city itself, meanwhile, San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown delivered an Olympic pep talk and a would-be Olympic boxer talked about making the Games. Across the bay, at Jack London Square in Oakland, two rowers from the 2000 U.S. team in Sydney put on a show.

Saturday, the kitsch comes to an abrupt end for either New York or San Francisco. The U.S. Olympic Committee will choose one to become the sole U.S. candidate for 2012. The winner is expected to compete against Moscow and perhaps Toronto and Paris, as well as candidates from Germany, Spain and elsewhere.

The two finalists were left after Los Angeles and five other cities were eliminated.

New York, the U.S. front-runner, has never staged the Olympic Games. It has the 13th-largest economy in the world, and of the top 15, according to bid documents, only New York, India and Brazil have never been selected to play host to the Games. A San Francisco Olympics would be the fourth in California. Los Angeles staged the 1932 and 1984 Summer Games, and Squaw Valley the 1960 Winter Games.

Either city will face stiff odds when the International Olympic Committee votes, and a number of Olympic observers say U.S. chances probably will be better in 2016 than 2012. The USOC, heavily reliant on a domestic Games to boost revenue, wants the Games back in this country as soon as possible, and 2012 is the first possibility.

The USOC, however, will have picked its 2012 candidate before the IOC’s selection next year of the site of the 2010 Winter Games. Vancouver and Salzburg, Austria, are the primary contenders. A Vancouver victory would significantly complicate U.S. chances in 2012, since the IOC prefers to move the Games around various continents.

Recent history also is working against U.S. chances for 2012. The Games have been staged in this nation four times since 1980, most recently in Salt Lake City last February.

The IOC will award the 2012 Games in 2005. At issue Saturday at the USOC’s meeting in Colorado Springs, Colo., are dramatically different ideas of how to run an Olympics.

San Francisco’s bid, for instance, calls for events all around the Bay Area. New York has a compact plan, with virtually all venues in the city.

A visitor with a hotel room near Union Square in San Francisco would have to go to Berkeley to see beach volleyball, or to Palo Alto to see swimming or track and field -- or, for that matter, the opening and closing ceremonies, at Stanford Stadium. The equestrian venue would be near Monterey, rowing near Sacramento.

San Francisco’s bid does not call for much new construction, since 80% of its venues are in place. New York’s bid calls for significant building, in particular, construction of the Olympic village near the United Nations and a stadium on Manhattan’s West Side.

San Francisco would also need to build the Olympic village, at Moffett Field, according to the bid. It’s not clear, however, that the former Naval air base is available. If a village can’t be put there, precisely where the housing would go, and whether the land would suddenly command a premium, remain uncertain -- perhaps threats to San Francisco’s depiction of its bid as financially low risk.

San Francisco’s overall strategy is premised on a number of hedge bets.

Bid leaders have heavily promoted the San Francisco 2012 venture as in line with repeated calls from IOC President Jacques Rogge to downsize the Games. But there’s no evidence that the IOC equates low construction costs with a winning bid.

To the contrary, capital costs in Athens, site of the 2004 Games, are projected at $4 billion; in Beijing, host of the 2008 Games, infrastructure investment is expected to total $30 billion.

Asked about downsizing during a conference call this week, Rogge did not say construction costs needed to be slashed. He said, “We want venues to be in tune with what a city needs after the Games.”

Another major component in the San Francisco plan involves a projected $400 million surplus. Of that, $140 million would be given to the 28 U.S. national governing bodies, $5 million to each.

Why that might appeal to the USOC is evident. Not clear is how such a plan would help internationally. The U.S. team is already dominant at the Summer Games. Asked why the IOC would want to support a plan to enhance prospects for the American team, Anne Cribbs, the head of the San Francisco bid, said, “That’s a good point.”

She paused, then said, “The quick answer is, and this is probably not the right answer, we have to focus on becoming the U.S. candidate city.”

Long-term, according to USOC leaders, the focus has to be on which city can win internationally.

Several insiders said that although San Francisco is beautiful, beauty isn’t everything and New York would appear to have an advantage.

They cited high-level connections in corporate, financial, governmental, diplomatic and Olympic circles as well as perhaps the most important factor of all -- the “story” of New York, a city built and sustained by immigrants, and the show of communal values and capabilities so readily on display since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

A city’s story is critical. Athens won the 2004 Games on the lure of a return to the home of the ancient Games and core Olympic values. Beijing won the 2008 Summer Olympics on the potential of bringing those values to one of every five people on earth -- the population of China.

Rogge suggested this week that New York would not benefit from post-9/11 sympathy.

Dan Doctoroff, New York’s deputy mayor and the bid chief, said, “We always say we don’t want any sympathy for 9/11. What we also say is that the world now sees, certainly the rest of America now sees, New York in a very different light, post-9/11. The values and traits New York exhibited -- courage, teamwork, resiliency, the ability to pick oneself up, patriotism -- those are exactly the Olympic values.”

In a letter to the USOC board, former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani put it this way:

“The question is not just which city has the best chance of bringing the Olympic Games back to the United States. Perhaps the more important questions are which city symbolizes the world’s hopes and dreams? Which city has proven that it can meet and beat whatever challenges it faces? Which city will benefit more from the opportunity to rebuild better than it was before? Which city will best be able to welcome the world with open arms?

“Finally, which city will not only highlight the deeper meaning of the Olympics, but also hand the 2012 Games into history as an enduring symbol of the best of humanity united, working side by side, as one.”

Giuliani is expected to speak Saturday. So are the current mayor, Michael Bloomberg, and others who will underscore New York’s star power. Even some representing San Francisco have said the Northern California bid is an underdog.

Cribbs, however, said she remained “quietly confident.” An Olympic swimmer at the 1960 Games in Rome, Cribbs said, “You swim your own race.”