May 26, 2008 10:05 pm US/Central
Chicago Could Get Part Of London's Olympic Stadium
CHICAGO (CBS) ―
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Mayor and Mrs. Daley stopped by 10 Downing Street in London last year. The Daleys met with British Prime Minister Tony Blair about the city's winning bid for the 2012 Olympics. Chicago is bidding on the 2016 games.
CBS
The same massive stadium being built in London for the 2012 Olympic Games could be shipped to Chicago for 2016.
It's never been done before, but while Chicago continues its push for the 2016 Games, CBS 2 has learned the city is also making plans to recycle London's stadium.
CBS 2 Chief Correspondent Jay Levine reports the talks began about a week ago and are still in the preliminary stages, but they mirror a concept Chicago planners had already been talking about.
Chicago's 2016 Olympic stadium, proposed for Washington Park, was to have Olympic video and images projected on a temporary shell, which would be taken apart to leave a small amphitheater for use by the community.
London's stadium being built to host the 2012 summer Olympics would also be dramatically downsized after the games. Organizers there would like to sell parts of that temporary structure and 55,000 seats to Chicago.
They would be dismantled, packed up and shipped, then put back together like a giant jigsaw puzzle.
"Very, very preliminary stages of discussion at this point to find out, but as we go through this we might find some possibilities," said Doug Arnot of Chicago 2016. "It seems from our perspective that the whole sustainability theme ought to be financial and environmental sustainability so if we can reduce costs we'd like to do that. If there's the opportunity to pass on reduced costs to another city that's where our focus has been."
London's plan for a collapsible stadium for 2012 unveiled last November called for an 80,000-seat, largely temporary structure to be downsized to a 25,000-seat permanent facility after the games.
It was a concept, CBS 2 reported at the time, remarkably similar to the proposal Chicago 2016 architects had shown us months earlier.
"They saw what we came up with and imitation is the greatest form of flattery," Chicago 2016 Chairman Pat Ryan said in November 2007.
Chicago's remaining amphitheater would be much smaller than London's – 5,000 to 10,000 compared to London's 25,000, but it would also be a lot cheaper.
Could buying used parts make it cheaper?
"We are at such an early stage of discussion trying to sort this out that we don't know yet," Arnot said. "Theoretically if you take parts and you move them on, there might be some savings, but remember you have to ship those parts. What parts are reusable? It's way too soon to tell."
What they're talking about could be a blueprint for future games: reusable facilities that could dramatically reduce costs approaching $20 billion for the London games and more than $30 billion for Beijing. Like outgrown clothing in families all over the world, parts of structures could be passed down from city to city in the Olympic family.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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