Much like Kevin Costner in “Field of Dreams,” former Gov. Dick Lamm heard the voices.
If you build it, they will come.
In the late 1960s, a group of Denverites, encouraged by Denver Mayor Tom Currigan and Colorado Gov. John Love, wanted to bring the 1976 Winter Olympics to Denver.
The small city suddenly had big dreams. The stadium at Denver’s South High School would be transformed into a speed-skating oval with seating for 10,000, and ice hockey games would take place at the Denver Coliseum.
Nordic events would be held near Evergreen and downhill events at a yet-to-be-built ski area near Loveland Pass. They even talked of building a 50,000-seat multi-purpose stadium. (Bears Stadium, as it was called then, was expanded to 50,000 seats in 1968 and re-named Mile High Stadium, but that was to help seal the AFL-NFL merger, not to woo the Olympics.)
In 1970, the city of Denver was officially awarded the ’76 games. What a grand way to mark the nation’s bicentennial, and Colorado’s centennial, President Richard Nixon wrote to then-Mayor Bill McNichols.
If you build it, they will come.
But by 1971, a band of political upstarts, including Lamm, then a state lawmaker, began to not only question the financial costs of bringing the games here, but also the environmental costs.
Could Colorado handle the crowds? Were we ready for the crush of growth that could follow once the world caught a glimpse of our Rocky Mountain high?
“We were the third fastest growing state at the time,” Lamm said last week. “There was only so much we could absorb.”
Previous host sites for the Winter Games had lost $1 billion each, Lamm said, and taxpayers would have been on the hook to cover any shortfall.
Lamm’s group began to ask questions the Denver Olympic Committee had trouble answering. In 1972, in an unprecedented move, Colorado voters officially rejected the Olympics, saying no taxpayer money could be used to host the games.
So, we didn’t build it. Yet they still came. By the millions.
In 1970, Colorado’s population was 2.2 million. Today, it’s close to 5 million.
And we don’t have any of the infrastructure that would have come with hosting the Olympics.
Last week, another Colorado governor and Denver mayor began making strong overtures that perhaps we should bring the games to Denver in 2018 — should Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Olympics fail.
I called Lamm, who feels as if he’s been miscast as some kind of Grinch of the Games over the years. (“I love the Olympics,” he said, almost exasperated.) Had he changed his mind?
“We made the right decision in 1972,” he said. “The TV revenues were a very minor part” of the package then. “The history of the Winter Games was a history of red ink in large, gargantuan amounts. The fiscal part (now) is much more promising.”
Corporate sponsors now dominate the Olympics, which can generate a surplus. The $1.5 billion 2002 Games in Salt Lake City netted a profit of about $100 million.
Still, Lamm is reserving judgment.
Hosting the Olympics would make the Democratic National Convention look like a tea party. But it’s more than doable.
People are going to come here anyway. The Colorado of my youth that Lamm wanted to protect has vanished under ribbons of asphalt. Homes scar the once-pristine mountainsides along I-70.
The Olympics could be an opportunity to convince Coloradans we need to pay a little more for our crumbling infrastructure and transportation network — while making a little money to boot.
If they’re coming, we’ll have to build it.
Editorial page editor Dan Haley can be reached at dhaley@denverpost.com
