Chicago Olympics?

Today at noon (central time) the International Olympic Comittee will anounce the host city for the 2016 Summer Olympic games.  I've been following the race closely for months now, and even had an inside look at the early development of Chicago's bid from my time at A. Epstein. 

Apparently the odds makers have it down as a close battle between Chicago and Rio De Janeiro.  I believe Chicago would do a fantastic job of hosting an Olympics and would help redefine what it means to host an event of this magnitude. 

In recent years, many host cities have spent tremendous amounts of money building massive facilities that become obsolete immedietly after the games are concluded.  These facilities are often built in one large, olympic campus that quickly turns into a ghost town.  Many cities have gone into considerable financial distress over these expenses (Montreal supposedly took something of 30 years to pay off the debt acquired from hosting their games)

Chicago's proposal for the games is both to integrate the games into the city by hosting events all around the city and near by suburbs, and to utilize as much existing infrastructure as reasonable possible.  Existing facilities such as Soldier Field (the newly renovated stadium where the Chicago Bears play), The United Center (Home of the Chicago Bulls and Blackhawks) and McCormick Place (Chicago's massive convention center complex) will all play key rolls in the games.  The largest piece of new construction will be a new stadium in Washington park that will temporarily hold up 80 or 90,000 people for the games, but later be scaled down to a modest 7,000 person perminent facility. These ideas should make the games substantially less expensive for Chicago to host, and create a road map for other medium sized cities to host the games in the future.

Beyond redefining how a city should approach the games, the Olympics would be a wonderful opportunity for the world to come and see the beautiful city of Chicago.  Chicago would do a great job at hosting the Olympics, and I hope we are given the chance!