Chicago, LA race for 2016 Olympics

Chicago, LA race for 2016 Olympics
By Doug Cameron and Matthew Garrahan
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Published: April 12 2007 19:53 | Last updated: April 12 2007 19:53


Pat Ryan, chairman of insurance group Aon, took a long hard look at the T-shirt handed to him amid a crush of reporters in a cramped corner of the Macy’s department store in downtown Chicago.

Wisely, Mr Ryan did not attempt to pull the limited edition “Chicago 2016” shirt over his neat suit, but there are few things the city’s business community will not do to help bring the summer Olympics to the Midwest for the first time.

Chicago will square off against Los Angeles on Friday at a meeting of the US Olympic Committee in Washington DC to decide which – if any – US city will front a bid for the 2016 games.

The two cities have taken markedly different approaches in the run-up to this weekend’s decision, with Chicago boasting experience of hard work and LA – a two-time Olympic host – focusing on glitz and its past experience.

Chicago has been unashamed in promoting the potential economic benefits of hosting the games, using it as a springboard to revitalise parts of its lakefront and south side.

The focus of a Los Angeles bid will be to reignite interest in sport, rather than the economic regeneration which has fired Chicago’s mayor, Richard M Daley, to galvanise the local business community. “We want to bring audiences back to the Olympics,” says Barry Sanders, executive counsel at law firm Latham & Watkins and chairman of the Southern California Committee for the Olympic Games.

“I think that Chicago, being a city of celebration and celebrating sport, there will never be an Olympics with so many people involved,” countered Mr Ryan this week, as both teams put the finishing touches to their presentations.

The Californian committee was formed in 1939 – seven years after LA hosted its first games – and its 60-member board cuts across business, politics, sports and the arts.

The bid has secured support from prominent companies based in the city, such as Walt Disney and Anschutz Entertainment Group, which owns London’s Millennium Dome and the Staples Center, home of the Los Angeles Lakers.

Chicago responded last June by naming its own bid panel, headed by Mr Ryan and including the sort of heavyweight business and civic leaders who have been instrumental in previous public-private partnerships, such as the modernisation of O’Hare airport and the building of Millennium Park.

Mr Ryan leads a panel that includes Boeing chief executive Jim McNerney and John Madigan, the former Tribune Company chief now running the Madison Dearborn private equity group. It has established a $30m war chest to fight the international round of the battle if it wins approval from the US Olympic Committee.

“In my experience living in several cities in the US and overseas, I have never seen a business community as united as that in Chicago,” says Mark Angelson, chief executive of RR Donnelly, the world’s largest printing group, and a member of the organising committee.

The USOC is headed by Peter Ueberroth, who is credited with reinventing Olympics economics by successfully turning a profit from the Los Angeles games in 1984.

The US is likely to face opposition from Madrid, Rio de Janeiro and at least five other cities for the 2016 games, with a final decision not due until 2009.