newjerseynewsroom.com

BY EVAN WEINER

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS

Last Saturday night, while driving down Route 4 heading east onto the George Washington Bridge, I got to thinking about the traffic backups that could be caused by the ongoing construction on the Alexander Hamilton Bridge in the Bronx. What if that construction coincided with the opening of a New York Olympics on July 27?

New York was in the running for the 2012 Summer Olympics when the selection was made in 2005. New York fell out of favor when New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver voted against funding the construction of a west side stadium which would have been built at the end of the Lincoln Tunnel.

But what if New York got the Olympics? That Bronx Bridge construction would have been the least of the problems facing New Jersey residents and commuters.

For years, getting in and then around Manhattan would have been problematic.

New Jersey commuters who used the Lincoln Tunnel would have been caught in delays for years had that stadium been constructed near the tunnel's entry and exits on both sides of the river as infrastructure was being built around the 11th and 12th Avenue site between 30th and 34th Streets.

New Jersey was going to have a role in the 2012 New York Olympics as the original plans included the use of facilities in the Meadowlands. It was the great time that Dan Doctoroff had at soccer’s 1994 World Cup at the Meadowlands that got the New Jersey born businessman thinking about holding the Olympics in New York.

Doctoroff, who was a principle at a private equity firm at the time, formed a group and went after the Olympics.

The original NYC2012 estimate for the cost of holding the two week sporting event was $3.3 billion. Doctoroff's group felt that the Olympics would somehow be funded with TV and licensing money.

It was unclear from the plan who was going to be paying for infrastructure and security during a New York/New Jersey Olympics.

There is an estimate by Olympics insiders that guarding London from terrorist attacks during the upcoming events could be costing as much as a billion dollars in public funding.

The Olympics is a money loser for an area. New York would have taken a big hit financially; New Jersey was just a secondary market.

The Olympics added to Greece's financial woes because of the 2004 Athens Games. It appears Turin and Vancouver taxpayers were left holding the bag for the Winter Games. Sydney, Australia is paying hundred of millions of Australian dollars for upkeep on unused facilites that were utilized during the 2000 Summer Games. It took Montreal, Quebec and Canada 30 years to finally pay down the debt on the 1976 Summer Games.

England is mobilizing its armed forces in an attempt to make sure the Games are secure. If New York won the 2012 bid, it is very likely New Jersey commuters would have faced serious delays driving into Manhattan on a daily basis with security check points at the George Washington Bridge and the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels in the weeks prior to the Games during the Games and following the event.