Cost Effective Olympics: Examining Houston’s 2012 Bid

Ty Jacobsen
CDS Community Development Strategies

The XXXI (31st) Olympiad is now underway in Rio De Janeiro, and with it come the conversations and debates about the impact of hosting the Olympic Games. Every two years, we see fresh fears about the readiness of the latest host to hold a safe, enjoyable, and profitable Olympics. The cautionary tales of past host cities are brought back up, tales of crippling debt and of expensive new venues now sitting unused in cities such as Montreal, Sarajevo, Athens, and Beijing. The media, former Olympic athletes, and everyday sports fans feel prompted to ask if there is a way to improve the value and mitigate the negative impacts of hosting the Olympic Games. Perhaps some answers can be found by looking back at Houston’s failed bid to host the 2012 Olympics.

From 1999 to 2002, the Houston 2012 Foundation worked earnestly to bring the Olympic Games to town. The Foundation helped pass a ballot measure in 2000 that allowed the city to fund the bid. They arranged for 1,000 commemorative lapel pins were flown on the Space Shuttle Atlantis that same year to promote Houston 2012. A long list of ambassadors were enlisted to promote the bid, including former Texas governor Ann Richards, astronaut Jim Lovell, Olympic legends Carl Lewis and Mary Lou Retton, and, of course, Gallery Furniture owner Jim “Mattress Mack” McIngvale.
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Besting a bid from rival Dallas/Fort Worth in the semi-final round of selections in October 2001, Houston was one of the final four sites chosen by the US Olympic Committee for the 2012 games, along with New York, San Francisco, and Washington D.C./Baltimore. In August 2002, New York and San Francisco were chosen as a final two, with New York going on to represent the United States in the final bidding to the International Olympic Committee. In 2005, The IOC would ultimately select London to host the 2012 Olympics. An attempt to bid for the 2016 Games was made as well, but failed to make it beyond the very early stages of consideration. Despite its failure, there was merit to Houston’s 2012 Olympic bid, especially when considering the current financial concerns of former and potential future host cities.

Befitting Houston’s reputation as a practical and no-nonsense place to do business, the city’s Olympic bid proposed to limit costs by using and renovating existing venues instead of constructing new ones. The plan was slated to cost considerably less than its American competitors, and claimed that 90% of the necessary venues for the Games were already in place. Though it may well have grown by the time construction would have begun, the proposed capital expenditure budget for all venues was $165 million, less than half the cost of London’s Olympic Stadium alone! The Olympic Village housing was to be built on the campuses of the University of Houston and Texas Southern University and converted to student housing upon the conclusion of the games. In the only significant plan for its reuse until the failed 2014 county proposition, the Astrodome was to be converted into an air-conditioned 70,000 seat track and field facility, with the capability to be converted for other uses. The bid also proposed replacing the aging Astroarena and renovating UH’s Hofheinz Pavilion.

While this cost-effective approach seems almost stereotypically Houston, the planned layout of the venues was very much not. In a city known for its sprawl, Houston’s Olympic bid boasted the most compact footprint of any of the proposed US sites. The proposal called for nearly all events to take place in one of three locations, the NRG Park/Astrodome complex, the University of Houston and Texas Southern University campuses, and Downtown Houston, with all three sites connected by a triangle of high-capacity light rail lines. Two of these rail lines do indeed exists today, connecting Downtown with NRG Park and the universities.

As it turned out, practicality was not the largest factor in Olympic host city choice at the time. Even so, the bid received praise at the time from USOC officials for its compact and cost-effective plan. Even a gloating column from the San Francisco Chronicle, written after Houston failed to make the USOC’s cut from four to two, admitted that “according to those involved in the Olympic hosting competition, it had the most technically and financially sound bid among the municipal hopefuls.”

With today’s concerns about the cost of hosting the Olympics and the sustainability of Olympic venues, it seems inevitable that future Olympic host cities will need to take a more practical and cost-effective approach to hosting the Games. Houston’s 2012 bid offers some good ideas, if not a rough roadmap for hosting the Olympics in this manner. Perhaps it will leave a legacy beyond some lapel pins that spent time in outer space and a television commercial featuring a fencing match atop a METRO bus.

​About the Author: Ty Jacobsen is a GIS and Market Analyst with CDS Community Development Strategies.  He has worked on several public project economic impact studies and can name three of the five events that make up the modern pentathlon.