Bay Area civic and business leaders are actively discussing a possible new Olympic bid for the 2016 Summer Games as San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom reportedly said Thursday that there is a “strong likelihood” that talks would produce a formal proposal from the region to host the 2016 Summer Olympic Games.
The Mayor said, “I just can’t imagine a better place for the Summer Olympics”.
The Bay Area lost the U.S. candidacy for the 2012 Summer Olympic Games to New York City.
The Mayor said a decision on whether to compete for the 2016 Games is expected to be made shortly after the U.S. Olympic Committee’s (USOC) board of directors meets Saturday in Denver. If the Bay Area decides to bid it will join two other California cities – Los Angeles and San Diego. San Diego is considering a joint San Diego/Tijuana bid.
At its meeting Saturday the USOC will discuss how to choose the next American bid city. According to reports it is a process that officials have promised will be different from one that had New York become the U.S. representative for the 2012 bid over San Francisco in 2002 because the USOC has reorganized. In 2002 the committee’s 123-member board voted on a winner. Now the committee’s board has been reduced to 11 members.
Darryl Seibel, spokesman for the USOC said, “until we have announced our process and finalized it, nobody is behind the curve”.
Anne Cribbs, chief executive officer of the Bay Area Sports Organizing Committee, the organization in charge of the region’s last Olympic bid, said San Francisco is in a good position to succeed in the next round because of its second-place finish three years ago.
Her group raised $4.5 million over four years to develop and promote the Bay Area bid.
Scott Thompson, business director for the San Francisco Sports Council, a separate organization involved in bringing professional and amateur sporting events to the city, said organizers should think about raising $10 million to $15 million this time around, which he said is in the ballpark of New York City’s winning bid in 2002. He said, “we’re going to need substantial backing from the private sector, from corporations”.
Officials in San Francisco hope to build support for the Bay Area’s Olympic bid on the recent news that the city was awarded the 2008 International Children’s Games. The event is expected to attract 50,000 people, between the official delegates and spectators.
The USOC has vowed to institute a rigorous set of selection criteria to choose the next city, including an emphasis on having facilities approved long before the IOC selection.
Meanwhile, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has put off any serious consideration of another bid until after the November Mayoral election. He said during the 2012 bid New York could not guarantee it would return for another bid. Bloomberg said recently that the city would probably need to find another bid leader willing to spend the time and raise the money necessary because he doubted that Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff, the 2012 bid leader, would continue in the role.
