Quote:
Originally Posted by Dalton
I disagree about the Olympics. Look what the Olympics did for Barcelona. I agree that if the opportunity is badly botched or the city doesn't truly have anything to offer on an international scale (which is why Atlanta failed miserably), the Games won't help. But Chicago's international reputation gets a big boost, and more importantly a major makeover, by winning the Olympics because it is a city that is still widely misunderstood and underappreciated by foreigners. Internationally, Chicago is still perceived as a gritty industrial town with a long history of organized crime - a declining rust belt city well past its prime. Perhaps they still slaughter pigs there.
|
^ I disagree with your disagreement. Winning the Olympics is in no way necessary, to even the remotest degree, for this project to be successful. I am actually quite surprised that very rational and intelligent people (like yourself) who are otherwise making great arguments are throwing that idea into the mix.
Chicago has received tons of foreign investment on its commercial & residential real estate for many, many years--I know that by simply reading the local news every day. Over 120 highrises (and growing) have been built in Chicago in the past 8 years, representing billions & billions of dollars of real estate, albeit during a national real estate boom. We're talking about a city that has tons of infrastructure and well over a thousand huge, expensive highrises that have been built in 120 years. Developers have built luxury residential towers in Chicago successfully for decades, through some of the worst economic recessions & through the era of white flight which plundered other American cities.
It is clearly evident by this that Chicago is a city, more than nearly any other in this country (besides NY, LA, perhaps SF) that does not
need to hitch its wagon to the star of a major 2-week event to justify such an investment. Generations of investment and the grandness of the city around you alone proves otherwise.