Should New York host the 2012 Summer Olympic Games, the Opening Ceremonies would be held in an 86,000-seat Stadium on the West side of New York, that would later become the home of the New York Jets. Track and field competitions would also be held there.
And Newsday reports that 83 per cent of competition sites are planned within 10 miles of the Olympic village, all within an average of six miles.
Jay Kriegel, executive director of NYC2012, told Newsday, “no modern Games has had every venue within 20 miles. And this will be the first modern Games where every athlete is within a single Olympic Village, which is not so much a statement on the size of the village as on the compactness of the Games”.
The New York’s plan calls for an “Olympic X” – placing virtually every competition site along east-west commuter rail lines and a proposed north-south ferry line. The village is to be at the nexus of the “X”, a series of high-rise apartment buildings – with 4,400 units to be privately developed for sale after the Games.
Daniel Doctoroff, the city’s deputy mayor and founder of NYC2012 said, “we have a team of about 1,000 people who have been thinking about this for two years”. Doctoroff believes his group can answer every question raised by the United States Olympic Committee regarding the bid’s feasibility, including concerns of a 13-member site-selection task force that it would cost $4 billion in construction costs to stage the Games.
The task force was reassured by the fact that New York handles an average of $12 billion in building projects per year and has guarantees of $1.6 billion for potential village housing in the works. Also, the Jets are willing to go ahead with the stadium.
