Last week the French financial police raided the headquarters of the Paris 2024 Olympics in a preliminary round of the traditional sport of investigating Olympic corruption.
The French team, consisting of “the criminal police and the public prosecutor” descended on the office to collect documents, according to an internal email to staff seen by Politico.
In case you don’t remember, the 2024 Olympics were supposed to be Washington’s games.
“The Washington 2024 Bid distinguished itself from past and present bids as the most compact and walkable games in recent Olympic history,” the cover of the Washington 2024 Olympic Bid Master Plan stated. “With the 75 percent competition venues located within the District, as well as the Athletes’ Village and International Broadcast Center, the bid would foster the City’s long-range development plans, and create opportunities for reinvestment in areas still untouched by the widespread economic success enjoyed throughout much of the city.”
I wonder which District officials and business leaders would have enjoyed enough “widespread economic success” to have their documents collected by law enforcement.
The District’s quest to be the United States Olympic Committee’s representative city for the 2024 bid failed, as the USOC selected Boston, which turned around and abandoned its bid when citizens let their elected officials know they would have rather given Derek Jeter a duck boat parade in the Charles River than have their city robbed by the International Olympic Committee mafia.
The District, despite the best efforts of Mayor Muriel Bowser and Washington 2024’s bid leader Ted Leonsis, was spared the pain that so many other Olympic-winning cities suffered after being plundered by IOC gangsters.
There is, however, one thing that, for some, would have made all the corruption worthwhile.
If the District had handed out enough “documents” to the decision makers to win the 2024 Olympic bid, the city would likely be well along in the construction of a new Olympic stadium on the RFK Stadium site.
The new stadium eventually would have become the home of the Washington Commanders.
The Olympics may have been the only way to get this team a new stadium in the city.
For most members of the City Council, the bitter taste of Dan Snyder’s decades-long destruction of the franchise has taken the fun out of the notion of a public-financed stadium, despite the mayor’s strong support. The banishment of Snyder and the anticipated arrival of new Commanders owner Josh Harris and his financial group hasn’t seemed to rinse out the bad taste.
WUSA 9 reported earlier this month that D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson added a budget amendment to extend a provision in the D.C. code prohibiting the Washington Convention and Sports Authority from spending city money to bring the Commanders back to the District — a leftover clause from 2019 that would have run out in October without Mendelson’s move, an obvious signal that if Josh Harris and company want a stadium in the city, they are going to have to pay for it themselves.
The clause states that the Sports Authority, also known as Events DC shall not expend funds to “purchase all or a portion of the property comprising the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium” or “induce a National Football League team to locate in the District,” WUSA reported.
That’s very bad news for everyone hoping for a return to the days of NFL glory in the District, because sources say that the Harris group — after raising $6 billion for the purchase of the Commanders — doesn’t have strong enough finances for private funding for a stadium.
It’s bad news for a new football stadium, period, in any jurisdiction. If they want to build in Maryland or Virginia, the financial issue will remain the same — a significant portion of it may have to come from public money.
Virginia bailed on pursuing legislation last year that would have supposedly resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars for a new Commanders stadium after the tsunami of bad Snyder news drowned the deal — although I never believed Virginia was or remains a serious option.
Maryland, where they have played at FedEx Field since 1997, has offered $400 million to develop the area around FedEx Field, but no money for stadium construction.
Compare these to the last two NFL financing efforts. New York allocated $850 million of state and county public money of the $1.4 billion costs for a new stadium for the Buffalo Bills. In Tennessee, state and Nashville city officials have agreed to put up $1.26 billion for a new Titans stadium.
These are the league’s measuring sticks right now for stadium deals.
Magic Johnson, one of the investors, is going to have to sign a lot of autographs to get a new stadium for the Harris group — or else FedEx Field will continue to be their home for a long time.
A host city for the 2036 Olympics hasn’t been selected yet.
You can hear Thom Loverro on The Kevin Sheehan Show podcast.
• Thom Loverro can be reached at tloverro@washingtontimes.com.
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