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Apparently, a lot of Olympic buildings/structured get abandoned after the Olympics

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oddyager said:
The Olympics, aside from one or two exceptions, have always been a way put the hosting city further into debt.
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Not according to this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_the_Olympic_Games

Every summer Olympic besides Athens made good money since 1984 LA Olympic. LA made $250 mil, Atlanta made only 10 mil, but did get something done for the city, expanding their airport...etc.

But you know Greek and their ability to manage money, so their loss is probably not Olympic's fault....
 
The Grand Olympic Auditorium in LA is now a Korean church? I don't understand what's up with Koreans buying out old buildings and turning them in to churches... there is a an old Circuit city around here that had been converted in to a Korean church, without even remodeling the CC exterior.

Churches on the cheap for a rising Korean population? As chill and friendly as I think young Koreans around here are, this just makes no sense to me.
 
I thought that everything from '72 Munich had been kept or re-purposed.

Off to google maps, to figure out where the ghost train station was.
 
zzuupp said:
Off to google maps, to figure out where the ghost train station was.
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That abandoned train station looks like an awesome spot for German teens to hangout. I wonder how many spliffs have been smoked there?

At this one spot in the Santa Monica Mountains, they opened this bunker to find countless beer cans from the 1950's. It's where the teens back then used to get drunk and do drugs and stuff; it's amazing how times will change, but kids will be kids, always.
 
rchiu said:
Not according to this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_the_Olympic_Games

Every summer Olympic besides Athens made good money since 1984 LA Olympic. LA made $250 mil, Atlanta made only 10 mil, but did get something done for the city, expanding their airport...etc.

But you know Greek and their ability to manage money, so their loss is probably not Olympic's fault....
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That table is highly suspect. Notice the absence of taxpayer contribution.
 
Xyclone said:
The Grand Olympic Auditorium in LA is now a Korean church? I don't understand what's up with Koreans buying out old buildings and turning them in to churches... there is a an old Circuit city around here that had been converted in to a Korean church, without even remodeling the CC exterior.

Churches on the cheap for a rising Korean population? As chill and friendly as I think young Koreans around here are, this just makes no sense to me.
Click to expand...

large space, cheap rent, what is not to like.

Christian missionaries were very successful in Korea.
 
That article is pretty bad. Stuctures well north of thirty years old and in many cases in countries that have since been devastated. I watched a documentary on the building of the London games and they had it though out pretty well like Atlanta. Several structures were just temporary(basketball if memory serves) and others were partially so. The swimming arena had a temporary roof and stadium seating to be taken out afterwords and used as a public pool. Done properly the Olympics can serve as a way to greatly improve the structures and infrastructure of a city for basically free as Atlanta did. Done poorly and you have a bunch of abandoned buildings and a huge bill.
 
I've got a local example as well: Due to various considerations the 1968 winter olympics bob sleigh track was built on a south slope, and was barely usable even during the games. Citing the cost of running the thing, it was not used afterwards.

But then, bob sleigh tracks are quite exotic I guess...

On the other hand, it's not just the Olympics that cause waste like this. The local soccer club had a new stadiim built, played two years in the first league, then dropped to second, then bankrupted itself and was relegated three more leagues down.
While it seems they still play matches there, they only fill about 10% of the stadium, and now it's mostly used for concerts and the like.
 
SKORPI0 said:
london-olympics-past-venues-athens-history_57291_600x450.jpg


Panathinaiko-Stadium.jpg
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I was there in 2010. It's pretty well maintained. I think we were charged like 2 or 5 euros to walk around that track.
 
I think cities generally lie saying "Oh this will be great, we will let the universities use them once we are done, etc. etc.." and it gets everyone positive about breaking new ground.

Post-olympics, people start to realize these buildings are shoddy and the maintenance is pretty heavy....so they just stay out of it for good reasons.

I'm sure olympic ghost towns are taken into consideration when applying for hosting status
 
Personally I think for the US usually the Olympic games work out good for re-use of structures because of the strong College Athletics and professional sporting teams. A lot of times the structures either exist or are built on existing college campuses. For example the 1984 Olympics, Boxing LA Sports Arena (used by the Clippers at the time), Athletics just use the Coliseum, baseball Dodger stadium, Gymnastics use the existing Pauley Pavilion at the UCLA Campus, The Swim stadium was constructed for the OLympics but was built on the USC campus so it is regularly used still, Basketball use "The Forum", Soccer use the Rosebowl. From what I can tell for the 1984 Olympics all the facilities where re-used or where existing and a lot of the facilities already existed.
 
boomhower said:
That article is pretty bad. Stuctures well north of thirty years old and in many cases in countries that have since been devastated. I watched a documentary on the building of the London games and they had it though out pretty well like Atlanta. Several structures were just temporary(basketball if memory serves) and others were partially so. The swimming arena had a temporary roof and stadium seating to be taken out afterwords and used as a public pool. Done properly the Olympics can serve as a way to greatly improve the structures and infrastructure of a city for basically free as Atlanta did. Done poorly and you have a bunch of abandoned buildings and a huge bill.
Click to expand...

I had a problem with how they through the Grand Olympic Auditorium in with the rest of the Abandoned sites and the pictures they took would make the casual reader think the site was abandoned. The Grand Olympic Auditorium was used for decades after the Olympics and only within the last decade was the building bought and re-purposed into a church. Which isn't a issue. Not bad for a facility that was built in 1924 and is still in use today.
 
Atlanta did a good job. Georgia Tech ended up getting the Olympic Village for their student dorms...as stated before the stadium was obtained for use by the Braves and Fulton Co Stadium was demolished.

Athens is about the saddest. It was stated that the olympics cost the country millions of dollars and was supposed to help the economy. Most of the structures are sitting there decomposing with no money to do basic maintenance....China is in the same boat, but only because after you get past what they want you to see, you realize how much poverty really exists in that country. It's no wonder that they don't have the same level and support of leisure/competitive sports we do in the USA or Western Europe. Sure they have national teams, but that's different than multi-million dollar industries that we have that support the infrastructure.
 
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