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New York's Olympic Comeback Falls Short

By LARRY McSHANE
The Associated Press
Wednesday, July 6, 2005; 10:28 AM



NEW YORK -- Standing in Rockefeller Center on a gray Wednesday morning, Nick Patrickas absorbed the bad news: New York's bid to host the Summer Games came up short. The weather fit his mood.

"Everybody seems disappointed," said Patrickas, a painter from Huntington, on Long Island, who came into Manhattan hopeful of a New York victory.

One month after their bid to build a $2 billion stadium on the West Side of Manhattan was torpedoed, city Olympic officials had their bid shot down in Singapore by the International Olympic Committee.

"I'm terribly disappointed," said Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who viewed the bid as a part of New York's recovery from the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. "It was a unique opportunity for New York. ... I don't know what's going to happen down the road."

He and fellow delegates, clearly dejected at a post-election news conference in Singapore, said it was too soon to say whether the city would try for the 2016 Olympics, which stand a good chance of being awarded to the United States for the first time since the Atlanta Games in 1996.

A planned Rockefeller Center victory party Wednesday instead turned into an outdoor wake. A giant Jumbotron, used earlier to beam in a feed of the vote, carried a message of defeat: "Thank you New Yorkers for your support."

Leo Zuniga, 44, of Westbury, wasn't surprised by the result: "The other cities have a longer history of bidding for the games." New York was the second city eliminated, after Moscow. Eventually, London was crowned the home of the 2012 Games.

"I wish London well," Bloomberg said _ but then expressed hope that U.S. athletes would win every medal at the 2012 Games.

He and other delegates _ including New York bid organizer Dan Doctoroff and U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton _ said they were not sure why New York fared so poorly.

"It's very difficult to analyze," Clinton said. "I'm not going to be looking into the minds of anyone who cast a vote."

Barely a month ago, it was unclear if the city would even make a presentation in Singapore. A bitter political fight ended with the scuttling of the planned stadium on Manhattan's West Side, once considered the key to New York's bid.

But the city moved forward with a revised plan featuring a less expensive stadium in Queens that would double as a replacement for Shea Stadium, current home of the New York Mets.

City Council member John Liu, a Democrat, quickly called for the city to mount a bid for the 2016 Games.

"Mayor Bloomberg and Dan Doctoroff deserve credit for saving the 2012 bid after the rejection of the West Side stadium," said Liu. "In the same way, they should persist in an effort to bring the Games to New York in 2016."

Bloomberg has said that crucial deals for public funding and land _ including the proposed Olympic Village site in Queens _ were valid only for the 2012 bid.

"I think this was our moment," Doctoroff said.

Peter Ueberroth, president of the U.S. Olympic Committee, said New York _ despite its energetic campaign _ would not gain any special status if it entered the race to be the U.S. candidate for 2016.

"We will have a new process for the next four years," he said. "We'll open it up."

I am sure that this brings a sense of relief to you and most other taxpayers who reside in NY.

Although New York City has the largest urban park system in the nation, it is woefully under-resourced. Its modest budget is inadequate to maintain the more than 28,000 acres of parkland, gardens, playgrounds, recreation areas, trails, and protected waterfront in the city. New York ranks last out of 19 major U.S. cities in the percentage of the municipal budget spent on parks and recreation, currently less than one-half of one percent. Since the late 1980s, the workforce of the City of New York Department of Parks & Recreation has been reduced by over one-third.

[Note from welch: the '80's budget was thought to be the bottoming-out. So a 1/3 cut to lowest budget imaginable?]

According to New Yorkers for Parks, a nonprofit advocacy group, New York City's "celebrity" parks, including Central Park, Bryant Park, and Madison Square, are somewhat insulated from the City's current budget woes because of generous private support. But too many neighborhood parks continue to be in jeopardy, and the impact of the chronic under-funding and under-staffing of this city agency is of grave concern.

REDEEMEDSKIN wrote:I'm sure they all got "bombed" yesterday, too, hatsoff; getting the Olympic bid is great reason for a celebration.

Sorry, couldn't resist.