Resident Opposition Cited In Decision
Reporting on what had become a controversial issue for the local community, the New York Times notes that the US Olympic Committee announced on Monday that it is removing Boston as a proposed bid city to host the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games. In announcing the decision the committee said opposition among residents “was too great to overcome in the short time that remained before the committee had to formally propose a bid city by Sept. 15.” USOC chief executive Scott Blackmun said that the organization “does not think that the level of support enjoyed by Boston’s bid would allow it to prevail over great bids from Paris, Rome, Hamburg, Budapest or Toronto.”
Among the issues the bid faced was a notable lack of state and local government support. The Boston Globe reports that “after seven months and millions of dollars spent,” Boston’s bid collapsed “after Mayor Martin J. Walsh declared at a hastily scheduled news conference that he was not yet ready to put city taxpayers on the hook for any costs related to the Games if local Olympic organizers ran out of money.” The Globe said that the standoff between Walsh and USOC over signing the host city taxpayer guarantee “appeared to be the final blow that ended the bid.” In other news citing the lack of official support for the bid, the Boston Herald reports that Walsh’s pushback and Gov. Charlie Baker’s hesitance “gave everyone the face-saving outs they needed to douse the torch of Boston’s ill-fated bid to host the 2024 Summer Games.” Around the same time as Walsh’s statement, Baker reiterated to USOC that his support was contingent on a consultant’s report on the financial consequences of the games which was expected in August. After the decision, Baker hailed the discourse over the Games saying, “One of the things I like about living in Massachusetts is we do have loud and robust policy and political debates on stuff like this.”
What This Means For Small Businesses
Small business owners around Boston are likely to have mixed feelings about this news – on the one hand, the debt accrued by the city to host such an event, along with the burdens that infrastructure construction and renovation might have caused in the form of traffic rerouting or congestion are among the reasons some business owners might welcome the cancellation of Boston’s bid. However, if the city were to have moved forward with, and won, the bid, there could have been major benefits to the city’s economy and to small businesses, many of which would have enjoyed an uptick in consumer demand prior to, and during, the Olympic games.
Additional Reading
NFIB previously noted mounting opposition to Boston’s Olympic bid.
Note: this article is intended to keep small business owners up on the latest news. It does not necessarily represent the policy stances of NFIB.
