After being delayed in Houston because of thunderstorms, Charles Moore, head of the USOC’s site evaluation committee said that San Francisco is unchallenged in terms of great climate. “I don’t think there is any question a temperate climate is a plus”.
The USOC group viewed a video presentation of what the projected Olympic Village at Moffett Field in Mountain View would look like should San Francisco host the 2012 Games prompting Moore to say at a press conference, “you could not help to be impressed with the care to the environment in the village”.
The planned Olympic Village would include 2,600 housing units equipped with solar power, shops, restaurants, an international zone, two plazas, a 50-metre pool, a practice track and a gym. After the Olympics the complex would be converted into affordable housing in one to four bedroom units.
But the USOC wanted more assurances about the bid’s ability to acquire the land, which is held by the Army. BASOC president Anne Cribbs said, “they were comfortable with the planning and financing. The issue was the availability of the land. We think they’re about 90 per cent confident now. That’s a level we hope to get even a little higher”.
On Monday the group went on a Bay cruise where it was able to see the projected sailing venue, and visited Pacific Bell Park where members were received by a sign that read “San Francisco is the best place on the earth for the best athletes in the world”.
During the question-and-answer session the USOC officials grilled bid officials about the transportation concerns that represent San Francisco’s biggest challenge to staging the Games. Reports say they seemed impressed with San Francisco’s plan and approach, and were aware that it contrasted sharply both with plans and approaches of the other cities, as well as with their own earlier comments about what they considered desirable.
Moore said that San Francisco bid officials “made significant changes in their venues, which we think are really impressive. Plus they’ve made improvements and given us greater assurances in transportation. They are off and running in a number of key transportation elements”. But they admitted the bid still contains an element of sprawl that the other plans do not. The bid calls for bid clusters in San Francisco, Palo Alto, Oakland and San Jose.
Still Moore called San Francisco’s bid “a fine, and it may even be an exceptional bid. I congratulate your bid city team. You understand what it takes to win and you’ve carried it forward”.
The evaluation teams’ vice chairman Deedee Corradini had praised Washington-Baltimore bid leaders for condensing five competition clusters into two but of San Francisco’s bid she said, “there’s no question compact venues are an advantage to the Olympic Games”. But “we don’t see this as being too dispersed. You’ve got enough sports in one cluster…the most you can go to in one day is two events”.
Bid leaders have also emphasized San Francisco’s international appeal, which they tried to showcase Monday by ferrying USOC officials around Alcatraz and Treasure Island. “We think we can win internationally”, said Cribbs. “We have the best bid for athletes, and we think we can be the best partner going forward”.
Moore has said no ranking of any sort has been compiled since the evaluation team traveled to Washington and New York and that the USOC team has had no meeting of any sort to compare the competing cities.
The team won’t undertake comparative discussions until members assemble to make the cut from four cities to two – which is scheduled for September – out of a desire to prevent the group’s view from being leaked.
