It was the first public Olympic meeting without Boston 2024 Chairman John Fish, CEO Richard Davey or Boston Mayor Marty Walsh. Their absence coincided with declining public support and some major public relations gaffes in recent weeks.
In their place was Boston 2024 Vice President of Engagement and External Affairs Nikko Mendoza.
“I want to say right off the bat: We did not get our community process right during phase one of this bid process," Mendoza said. "Rich Davey, our CEO, has said many times that Bostonians want to be engaged early and often. We did not get the early part right. We were absolutely committed to getting the often part right.”
But John FitzGerald of the Boston Redevelopment Authority moderated the hearing, and passionately defended the mayor’s decisions and vision for an Olympic Village.
“Taking the Olympic Village, making it into modular housing where we can then move it and take it to other neighborhoods throughout the city and have it be workforce housing," FitzGerald said. "That’s the idea. It’s certainly not the end-all, be-all solution to affordable housing. I don’t know if that will ever come.”
Boston 2024 architect David Manfredi says the U.S. Olympic Committee has been in town this week, meeting with the Boston 2024 organizers. The USOC says it remains committed to Boston and is not considering other cities.
The meeting was another 3 1/2 hours of mostly angry comments about the Olympic plans and the process for gathering and distributing information. Some of the roughly 300 audience members referred to declining public opinion, even as Boston 2024 has just pledged to do its own polling.
“These gentlemen, these people have put in a tremendous amount of work here and they could lose the whole thing," said one audience member. "That’s the way I see it going. I don’t see a white knight coming in here and saving this thing.”
The hearing took place at Harvard Business School in Allston, but no one addressed plans for the university to host aquatics, fencing and tennis events, to name just a few. Only one person, a Cambridge resident, encouraged those on campus to take a stance.
“I want to thank Harvard for having us here. In this city and its surrounding neighbors, there’s a lot of students, there’s a lot of faculty and there’s a lot of alumni," the audience member said. "They are in a position to be pressure points to say we don’t want this here.”
The panel again emphasized the bid is still in planning stages. They announced another round of public meetings in the fall, to present a revised Olympic bid.
