The Olympic Games are political plutonium.
Since 2014, voters and politicians in Boston, Budapest, Calgary, Hamburg, Oslo and Krakow have shot down bids for the Games. It’s a global revolt powered by images of abandoned bobsled tracks, empty stadiums and blown budgets in the tens of billions of dollars.
In Denver, citizen organizers have launched a campaign that would limit the region’s play for the 2030 Winter Games. The Olympics already have become a symbol for challengers of Mayor Michael Hancock’s administration in the upcoming election. Gov.-elect Jared Polis has said the Games “would make things worse, not better,” something fun “for millionaires” that he would support only “if somebody else pays for it.”
And yet, oddly enough, some of Colorado’s most prominent people smell an opportunity in unpopularity: Could Denver and the state negotiate their way to a new kind of Games without spending a public dollar?
“Eventually, they will run out of cities that want to host (the Games). They’re running out of them now,” said Rob Cohen, the financial CEO who’s leading the Olympic exploratory committee launched a year ago by Hancock and Gov. John Hickenlooper.
“Our proposal is to change the model. If they’re interested in doing that, we’re interested in talking to them.”
A final decision on the site of the 2030 Games is still years away, but the unconventional plan for a Colorado-hosted Games is approaching a crucial vote: U.S. Olympic Committee leaders recently visited Denver and Salt Lake City, and they soon will decide which of the two cities to support in the international selection process.
And with few global competitors emerging, the U.S. candidate may have an open lane to the Games.
Two visions
Both U.S. cities’ plans share the same goal: Throw one of the cheapest Olympic Games in modern history.
Salt Lake City would rely on venues that were left over from its 2002 Winter Games — the kind of location recycling that may be the future of the event.
Colorado, meanwhile, has never hosted the Olympics, despite efforts dating to 1932. Recognizing the stiff public resistance, Denver’s boosters have proposed a plan that they say wouldn’t require taxpayer funding by breaking some of the Games’ most basic assumptions.
While Russia spent an estimated $55 billion building up a resort city for 2014, the Denver plan squeaks by at a proposed $1.9 billion by eliminating nearly all permanent construction. For example, one variation could replace the Olympic Village with a cluster of existing hotels.
Moreover, a Denver-hosted Olympics would be more like a national Olympics: The events could spread from Lake Placid, N.Y., to Wyoming, Calgary and even Salt Lake City. The plan also could rely on temporary venues along the Front Range and on the state’s ski resorts.
When it’s all over, the organizers say, Colorado would be largely unchanged — no rotting ski jumps, no empty stadiums and potentially no changes to Interstate 70.
“To achieve a fiscally responsible games with lower risk, you’re going to have far fewer tangible legacy items — there’s not going to be a monument that can be pointed to,” said Jim Burton, a financial expert for the local committee. “That financial model that we are proposing could be an Olympic legacy. That could open up the Games.”
Denver won’t be committed to anything, even if it wins the U.S. Olympic Committee’s early endorsement, according to USOC officials. Instead, organizers would begin an intense period of negotiations. The 17-day sports event could easily become a major focus of Denver and Colorado politics for years to come, including popular votes at the city and state level.
And the skeptics are most definitely unconvinced.
“Why not make a different choice? Especially if their interest is having a social benefit,” said City Council candidate Tony Pigford, a local leader of Olympic skepticism. “We could use that energy now to address everybody with our crisis-level issues, and maybe, years down the road, we can have these big events.”
The remnants of ’76
Rob Cohen’s office is decorated with reminders of the resistance he faces.
“76 Winter Games … Denver, Colorado” reads a triangular pennant. It’s an artifact of the Olympics that weren’t hosted here: Denver was elected as the 1976 host, but Colorado voters shut down the plan in 1972, forcing the Games to relocate.
Like today, the Games of 50 years ago had become a liability, not an opportunity. They were marred by government killings of protesters before the 1968 Summer Games in Mexico; by the deadly 1972 terror attack in Munich; and by the enormous debt that was Montreal’s reward for hosting the Summer Games in 1976.
“When it came time to select a host for the Summer Games in 1984, there were no suitors,” writes Andrew Zimbalist in Circus Maximus: The Economic Gamble Behind Hosting the Olympics and the World Cup.
“The IOC had no leverage, and Los Angeles … took full advantage,” Zimbalist writes. Organizers were able to secure better financial terms, and they held events in facilities that dated to the 1932 Games, rather than building new ones.
The bid even survived a Colorado-style uprising, with Los Angeles voters forbidding the use of public money. The 1984 Games reported a $225 million surplus. Zimbalist, a critic of the Olympics’ modern bloat, points to it as an example of positive change.
“Now, we’re at another place — we call it a tipping point — where the Olympic model has its challenges,” Cohen said.
The risks
The Denver committee is pitching a cheaper Olympics, but its numbers aren’t unheard of. For comparison, Vancouver’s Olympic committee reported that it spent $2 billion on operations in 2010. That excludes permanent venue costs, which Denver expects to avoid.
But the Denver document includes some ambitious estimates, calling for $500 million in ticket sales — roughly double the sales of Sochi and Vancouver. That math assumes higher ticket sales from an unusual plan to enlarge the opening and closing ceremonies: each ceremony would be at both Broncos Stadium at Mile High and at Coors Field.
Still, the cost of the Olympics almost always inflates over each Games’ decade of planning. In response, the Denver plan calls for a system of insurance and other risk management to absorb cost overruns, rather than relying on government guarantees.
And the local committee claims that the state’s current infrastructure — traffic and all — can handle the Games. But they’re also holding out some hope that Olympic money will entice developers and local governments to build multiple villages that will later serve as affordable housing — or that the excitement of the event might prompt the state to rebuild Interstate 70 through the mountains.
Still, there’s reason to be skeptical of “privately funded” claims, said Zimbalist, an economist at Smith College.
“There’s so many Olympic Games that have made the claim that they’re going to be privately funded,” he said in an interview. For one thing, the federal government would likely pay heavy security costs for a Denver-hosted Games.
“Invariably, the public puts up the land, the public makes agreements to exempt whatever’s being built from income taxes and sales taxes and other things — from anywhere to 10 to 20 to 30 years — and the government makes other guarantees to the private entity,” he said.
The Denver planners also have proposed using facilities to be built on the new National Western Center campus, leaving the question of whether Olympic considerations will inflate the project’s cost.
In his book, Zimbalist questions the argument that the Olympics can benefit the public by prompting governments to build infrastructure. In other words: If Interstate 70 needs fixing, why not just fix it?
The resistance
Pigford says he doesn’t necessarily oppose the Olympics. He just wants to give people a choice. That’s why the City Council candidate has joined former Gov. Dick Lamm, who led the 1970s Olympics resistance, and others in a new campaign to rein in Olympic plans.
They now have dozens of volunteers gathering signatures for the “Let Denver Vote” initiative that could appear on the ballot in May. If it passes, the city would have to seek future voter approval before using “directly or indirectly any public monies or resources for the purpose of bidding for, aiding, or furthering an Olympic Games.”
The vote is timely, Pigford said, because city staffers and leaders already are spending time at meetings on the Olympics. Economic development chief Eric Hiraga attended a recent luncheon with USOC officials, whom Hancock and Hickenlooper also met.
“Their salaries, their time are taxpayer resources,” Pigford said. City officials say it’s “due diligence” for city employees to meet with event planners.
The local committee itself is comprised of unpaid sports and business leaders — though it also has support from the Denver Sports Commission, an economic development nonprofit.
The Olympic organizers also are interested in a vote: Their plan calls for a statewide public vote “in the year 2020 or later,” presumably before the final international decision is made. It wouldn’t necessarily be legally binding, Cohen said, but the organizers would obey the results.
“We’re not going to have a vote of the people and then go, ‘We’re bidding anyway,’ ” Cohen said. “Why would we bring it here if 51 percent of the people in this community don’t want it?”
That’s much the same message of Gov.-elect Polis.
“Jared’s position is the position that he has maintained,” said spokesperson Mara Sheldon. “Whatever the voters decide, he will respect.”
The Salt Lake question
This is a moot point, of course, if the USOC chooses Salt Lake City over Denver. Utah’s capital certainly has some strengths: Its bid claims to be nearly a third cheaper than Denver’s, and it concentrates its events in one city.
“It’s really ours to lose,” said Mayor Jackie Biskupski, according to The Salt Lake Tribune.
A poll by that newspaper and the University of Utah found 83 percent statewide support for the Games. In Denver, a poll by Keating Research in January found 61 percent support in Colorado and 65 percent in Denver.
Utah also has unconditional support from its lawmakers: Its legislature and governor unanimously passed a resolution supporting another Salt Lake City Games — no ifs, ands or referenda about it.
Cohen acknowledges that Salt Lake City is a tough competitor. But he maintains that Denver offers something unique: a financially sustainable Olympics that won’t simply rely on previous host cities.
“If they’re looking for a new model that’s sustainable over the long term, that shows other communities it can be done,” he said, “then I think our proposal becomes very attractive.”
There’s also a wild card: The focus right now is on 2030, but the 2026 process is proving chaotic. Three cities have withdrawn, leaving only Stockholm and Milan as contenders. The USOC has said it won’t try a late bid for 2026, which would be financially complicated — but rumors abound that the U.S. could swoop for both years.
“All those potential rumors and conversation are out there: ‘What happens if the 2026 race implodes?’ ” Cohen said. “That’s for the United States Olympic Committee and the IOC to figure out.”
