Boston’s bid for the 2024 Summer Olympics: What could have been

Instead, Paris will host the Summer Games this year, which are expected to draw thousands of athletes and millions of spectators and generate some $12 billion in economic spending.

The French are hoping to impress with an opening ceremony on Friday, with a delegation of athletes arriving in a parade of boats on the River Seine.

What could have been, Boston.

We had our chance in 2015, when planning for the 2024 Summer Olympics was in full swing. But Boston withdrew our bid and told the United States Olympic Committee, thanks, but no thanks.

We shuddered at the thought that taxpayers could be left with billions of dollars in cost overruns. Some cheered the decision—as if they had driven the British out of Boston.

How much are we celebrating today? Can our claim to fame really be the City That Said No?

What I believed nine years ago is still true: preparing for the Games would have forced us to confront and solve our biggest challenges: fixing the T and building homes. And all by the time the world was on our doorstep.

Here’s the thing: Without a deadline, Boston procrastinates.

Today, the Red Line is in worse shape than ever. Large sections are closed this month for repairs. The lack of housing is now a crisis so severe that a recent survey found that 25 percent of 20- to 30-year-olds plan to leave Greater Boston in the next five years, primarily due to the high cost of living.

And what happened to Widett Circle? It remains an industrial wasteland that the MBTA uses as a rail yard. Widett was to have been the site of our opening and closing ceremonies in a temporary Olympic stadium that would have been dismantled to make way for the development of the city’s newest neighborhood.

I never said that hosting the Olympics would be easy. We probably would have gone over deadlines and budgets. But look at what we could have achieved: a public transportation system that runs on time and an influx of housing after the athletes’ village was built.

Architect David Manfredi, hired as lead planner by the bid’s organizer, Boston 2024, got involved because he saw what hosting the 1992 Olympics meant for Barcelona. The Games left the Spanish Mediterranean city with better transportation, more public parks and a new neighborhood once occupied by industrial warehouses and factories.

But most importantly, Barcelona was given the opportunity to host the matches, which gave it a place in the hearts and minds of the billions of people who watched the games on television for 16 days.

“We’re already a world-class city,” said Manfredi, a principal at Elkus Manfredi Architects, a Boston firm that helped shape the city’s skyline. “But what’s happened to Barcelona is it’s become a world-class destination.”

Of course, mistakes were made in the design of Boston’s bid. There should have been more transparency and more grassroots involvement. Too often, it felt like the pipe dream of a handful of power brokers, from then-Mayor Martin J. Walsh to business leaders John Fish and Steve Pagliuca.

The bid’s defeat by a group of young, bright grassroots organizers marked a turning point in the city’s politics. It was a moment when old Boston met new Boston, and everyone learned a valuable lesson: power could no longer be concentrated in a few hands.

“I understand what happened,” said Fish, the CEO of Suffolk Construction who originally chaired Boston 2024. “I take responsibility. But I think we missed a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

But all is not lost. Fish still believes we can tackle our toughest challenges, whether it’s fixing the T, solving homelessness, or protecting the region from rising sea levels.

“No one should ever underestimate the will and the strength of Boston and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,” he said. “All we have to do is continue to come together, not point fingers at each other, and realize that we are better together as a community than we are as individuals.”

As the world turns its attention to Paris, we must ask ourselves: What have we gained by losing the Olympics?

A democratic process is good, but we also have to realize that it takes longer to reach consensus. That’s the part that we as a city still have to master. Sure, Boston will one day create enough housing, Widett will pop up as a new neighborhood, and we’ll have a functioning public transportation system. It just might take decades.

But let’s not wait for decades.

As unfortunate as it was, Boston’s Olympic bid was a Big Idea. My biggest fear is that Boston will stop thinking big because it’s too hard or too expensive. We did the Big Dig — cost overruns notwithstanding. The city is better for it.

If there’s an Olympic legacy, it’s that Boston shouldn’t be afraid to do the hard things.

Shirley Leung is a business columnist and host of the Globe Opinion podcast “Say More with Shirley Leung”. Find the podcast at Apple, SpotifyAnd globe.com/saymore. Follow her on Threads @shirley02186

Shirley Leung is a Business columnist. You can reach her at [email protected].