Following its arrival in New York late Sunday morning for a two-day visit, the USOC inspection team attended a luncheon at the United Nations with members of NYC2012; the city’s Olympic bid committee.
During the luncheon the bid committee emphasized the city’s diversity and the theme that New York is the world’s second home.
Later the team toured potential Olympic facilities in Queens. They went to the U.S. Tennis Center Flushing Meadow Park where they met with New York’s governor George Pataki.
Members of the Queens Civic Congress have protested NYC2012’s plans for Flushing Meadows. They said they don’t oppose the Olympics, just the portion of the plans that would affect neighbourhoods and park patrons in Queens.
Patricia Dolan, a spokesperson for the group said one plan to join two lakes in the park for canoe and kayak races would place a large portion of the park off-limits for up to two years and would cost taxpayers about $70 million to build a new bridge.
The group was then ferried to the proposed Olympic Village in Long Island City where they asked about the village, the size of the apartments, and how many athletes would share them.
The bid officials took the USOC site evaluation team to a high-rise apartment that is a model for the Olympic housing, assembling a group of financial construction and transportation experts who affirmed the viability of the plan.
The New York bid team told the USOC team members they planned to finish the state-of-the-art housing in the Queens West development five months prior to the Games. They said 16,000 rooms would be available for athletes and coaches, and after the Games they would be sold as condominiums.
Edward Molloy, the president of the building and construction trade union, told the New York Post he made a pledge to the Olympic officials that there would be no strikes on Games construction sites.
Today the 14-member panel will have take part in a question-and-answer session at City Hall that is expected to focus on New York’s other massive construction project, a plan to build an Olympic Stadium, for which the projected cost is several billion dollars. A City Hall news conference will be held in the afternoon.
NYC2012 bid director Jay Kriegel said, “the feasibility question goes to the construction projects involved in the bid. We are addressing that in a very, very concrete way related to each project…these projects, in a New York scale, are really not that big. They’re feasible”.
Kriegel said officials from the Port Authority discussed how they planned to shuttle the Games’ 10,000 athletes to their competition venues via ferries.
Mike Moran, the USOC’s outgoing managing director for news and public affairs, said, members were captivated by the renewed determination of NYC 2012 bid group leaders to win the USOC bid designation.
“It’s remarkable to see the emotion and the passion on the part of almost everyone involved, including people at the most nominal positions. The can-do attitude stands out very clearly. It permeates everything that they’ve done today. I don’t know that it (has a place in the USOC scoring system), but it doesn’t hurt.”
