“Blame it on Rio” will be a popular headline/hashtag this month.
No, Hollywood isn’t rebooting the 1984 Michael Caine-Demi Moore rom-com, as it has done with seemingly every ’80s film these days. Rather, it’s the reality of Rio de Janeiro, awarded this Summer Olympiad over Chicago and two other finalist cities in 2009, failing miserably as a host city.
#SochiProblems were very real in 2014, but they’re downright cute compared to #RioProblems.
Despite the fact that I wrote for the official Chicago 2016 channel in the push to bring the games here, I was relieved when I learned my hometown wasn’t getting the Olympics. This despite the fact that I know Chicago would have done a much better job preparing for them than Rio.
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However, just because you can do something better than someone else doesn’t mean you should. Our city grapples with many of the issues Rio faces. Both cities are all too familiar with gang violence, conflicts with police, corrupt local government, crumbling infrastructure and large neighborhoods defined by crippling poverty.
As Shakespeare wrote, “what’s past is prologue,” and if you knew Chicago’s past history that fateful day in 2009, you also realized that Rio didn’t actually “beat us out.” While a Summer Olympics brings numerous problems for the host city, most of the issues fade from the public consciousness in time.
There is one problem, however, that inevitably lingers for decades: the diversion of public funds to subsidize privately owned sporting venues.
Taxpayer dollars, which are used to build bridges, make parks safe and pay our first responders, should never, ever be used to finance facilities we cannot enter without first paying a $150 cover charge.
Or as C. Montgomery Burns, the supervillain from “The Simpsons,” put it: “Welcome to the American dream. A billionaire, using public funds, to construct a private playground for the rich and powerful.”
This extreme graft goes beyond American pro sports leagues. It’s the elephant in every Olympic room. “The Big Owe” is what Montreal residents call their Olympic Stadium. Constructed for the 1976 games at a cost more than double original estimates, the city finally paid it off—in 2006. Meanwhile, the venue hasn’t had a primary tenant since the Expos baseball team left in 2004.
This is the exact kind of financial bullet, fired by the International Olympic Committee, that Chicago dodged and Rio must now absorb. Although Soldier Field was very much a part of the final Chicago Olympic plan, it was not the proposal’s equivalent of the Olympic Stadium. The final pitch called for a $366 million temporary stadium to be built in Washington Park. After the games, the plan called for the facility to be converted into a 10,000-seat amphitheater.
In other words, the city’s Olympic epicenter was to be in a neighborhood that borders Englewood and Park Manor, two areas of the city that unfortunately are grappling with frequent violent crime.
The city would have spent almost $400 million on a venue with a shelf life of about a month. Then it would have ended up with a brand-new, multipurpose facility with no regular tenant to fill it. You don’t need an MBA to realize Chicago likely would have been facing its own “Big Owe” debacle. Thank goodness Rio “won.”
Paul M. Banks is a RedEye contributor. @paulmbanks