Boston 2024 claim a report into their failed bid to stage the Olympic and Paralympic Games contained “several misrepresentations and errors” and that they were surprised it “failed to thoroughly and accurately account for important cost differences between Boston’s bid and other Olympic Games”.
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Boston 2024 say the Brattle Group didn’t critique the detailed construction budgets organizers gave them.
But the Brattle Group, a Cambridge-based consultancy, concluded a “more reasonable estimate” for construction costs likely would have been more than $970 million higher, based on previous games.
Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker asked a consulting firm in June to vet Boston’s 2024 Olympic bid and its financial implications. But seeing as how the USOC opted out of Boston, the report now provides retrospective insight into whether or not advocacy group Boston 2024 was honest and accurate in its portrayal of the bid to the general public.
“The Brattle Group report lays out in black and white that Boston 2024 and its enablers in our government were lying”, he said.
As well as Los Angeles, Rome, Hamburg, Budapest and Paris have all announced their intention to bid for the 2024 Games.
The decision to end Boston’s first run for the Olympics came after Baker declined to grant his support until after the Brattle Group completed its analysis and Boston Mayor Marty Walsh refused to sign a guarantee committing taxpayer dollars to cover any overages.
The report also said Boston 2024’s economic estimates were unrealistic. He acknowledged, though, that organizers could have found better ways to address the state’s concerns, if given more time.
Some Olympics opponents agreed: “The healthy skepticism expressed by voters and leaders in the State House was warranted”, the No Boston Olympics groups said in a statement.
Their deep dive into the bid’s risks and costs arrives almost a month after the U.S. Olympic Committee and the city called it quits.
“Even though the bid was withdrawn, this report demonstrates that there were a series of real risks associated with bringing the games to Massachusetts”, Senate President Stanley Rosenberg, D-Amherst, said in a statement. “Massachusetts dodged a bullet”.
The Widett Circle area was the site of the proposed 60,000-seat Olympic stadium for Boston’s Olympic bid for the 2024 Summer Games.
Others were less impressed.
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House Speaker Robert DeLeo suggested the Brattle Group report might still prove useful as Massachusetts seeks new ways to spur economic development and improve Boston’s much-maligned transit system.
