At the height of the city’s Olympic buzz, the two men had a darker vision of what the  games might bring to Chicago: not prosperity and fortune, as they were told by some media sources, but gentrification, corruption, police brutality, privatization of public lands, and massive, massive debt. In the fall of 2008, they met up to create the No Games Chicago organization. Their message was meant to speak for the City of Chicago: “We’re corrupt and incompetent and we’ll bungle this.”

Every day from July 26 to October 2, 2009, they mailed the IOC members evidence of corruption, crumbling infrastructure, lack of public support, and general penury. No Games met with the IOC once formally in Chicago, and twice informally in Switzerland and Copenhagen, where they handed out a “Book of Evidence,” sometimes sneaking past security to do so. On October 2, at 11 am local time, Tresser watched the results on TV in his hotel room in Copenhagen. Chicago was the first of the top four to be eliminated. He shouted, “We did it, it’s over, it’s done!”

Almost exactly a year later, Tresser and Quellos decided to tell their story of the games as a “public resource.” Attendee Pat Hill, a retired  police officer and former Olympic qualifier, said, “The lesson is you can beat city hall.” We won’t ever know what the Olympics would have brought to Chicago, but this crowd considers the failed bid a victory. An elderly lady in the audience, Liane Casten, echoes him, calling the defeat “one of the great miracles of Chicago.” “This time,” she said, referring to the city’s politicians with a self-satisfied grin, “They didn’t get their way.” (Sharon Lurve)

A Bronzeville community center sporting a billboard in support of the Olympics bid; Rachel Reed

Bankrupt and deserted, the Michael Reese Hospital on the 2900 block of Ellis Avenue is an unlikely site for Olympic grandeur. But across the street from the hospital, flags wave in the parking lot of the Prairie Shores apartment complex to welcome members of the International Olympics Committee, who visited Chicago this past week, to the projected site of the Olympic Village for the Chicago 2016 Games.
As the city rehearsed for the IOC’s visit, an impromptu gathering of Bronzeville residents came together at the Dunkin’ Donuts across from Prairie Shores to make their own assessment of the city’s Olympics potential. Jerry B. and Maurice Wilson, who grew up in Bronzeville, visit the coffee shop regularly to talk with old friends. As I asked them about their take on the Olympics, patrons from other tables leaned in to join the conversation.
A large city-supplied “We Back the Bid” banner hangs outside the shop, but support by those inside was lukewarm. “The Olympics only benefit the rich,” said Wilson, who has moved away from the neighborhood and works as a school dean in Riverdale. Other patrons suggested that it wasn’t just business interests like those represented by Patrick Ryan, the insurance tycoon who heads the Chicago 2016 effort, who stand to profit. “We know it’s going to benefit the mayor, ‘cause he always gets something under the table,” someone said. But residents saw little to gain for themselves. One woman at the next table claimed that the Games would attract higher-income retail to the neighborhood, naming Crate and Barrel, Starbucks, Neiman Marcus, and Jamba Juice as possibilities discussed at a recent community meeting. But Jerry B. pointed out that these amenities would be out of the financial reach of most Prairie Shores residents, many of whom are seniors living on fixed income.
The plans proposed by the Chicago 2016 commission call for extensive development across the city, but the two most high-profile venues would be built on the South Side: the Olympic Village in Bronzeville would house 17,000 athletes and officials, and the Olympic Stadium would be built to seat 80,000 people in Washington Park. After the Games, the commission’s bid book claims, both buildings would be converted for community use, with the stadium shrinking into a 5,000-seat amphitheatre and the Olympic Village living on as mixed-income housing. Bronzeville is no stranger to gentrification—the neighborhood is economically diverse and has seen significant recent construction. But for some residents of Prairie Shores, the prospect of improvements in eight years is cold comfort when service providers like the hospital are disappearing.
Less tangible amenities are at stake as well. Wilson, who plays softball in Washington Park, worried that the proposed construction of the Olympic Stadium there will change the park for the worse. “I rode ponies in Washington Park when I was a kid,” he said. “What’s going to happen to that?” Long-running traditions like the Bud Billiken Parade, held every August since 1929, distinguish Washington Park from other open spaces in Chicago. “Take that away,” Wilson argued, “[and you] take away a big part of the South Side.”

Harold Lucas; photo by Sam Bowman

Standing in the crossfire of the land-use debate is Harold Lucas, one of the men who’s worked to put Bronzeville on the map—and he wants to keep it there. “In Europe they preserve buildings for 600 years, but here, we can’t get past the first 100 years before we want to tear them down,” Lucas says matter-of-factly, a hint of consternation marking his voice.

Lucas, a vigorous 66-year-old in wire-rimmed spectacles and a mod, multi-colored scarf, has been crusading to save the neighborhood’s African-American architectural history for more than thirty years. Considered variously a rabble-rouser, an activist, and an expert, he runs the non-profit Black Metropolis Convention & Tourism Council and the Bronzeville Online Visitor Information Center.

Granted, in an area where vacant lots perch next to antique mansions and dilapidated buildings surround million-dollar new construction, it seems as if this unruly patchwork would resist any imposition of order by city planners. But where one person sees urban decay, another sees opportunity in the form of cookie-cutter condos. The truth is, Bronzeville’s gentrification has been carried out quietly under the radar for more than a decade. Visible evidence is only just beginning to show. At 35th and State, for example, one can wash down a Jimmy John’s sandwich with a venti mocha from the Starbucks next door.

“Under the banner of worrying about women getting raped or buildings being drug houses, I’ve seen the wrecking ball of urban renewal crash through gorgeous terra cotta inlays,” says Lucas. “The stuff they’re replacing it with is garbage. Folks buy it and then they hear their neighbors making love next door ‘cause the walls are so thin.”

For some, the term “gentrification” leaves an acrid taste in the mouth; for others, the taste of caramel macchiatos, but revamping this district has undeniably come at the cost of the existing local culture. What’s not so obvious, however, is that when contractors knock down “old” buildings to make way for new development, Bronzeville loses precious pieces of its history brick by brick. What’s at stake? Preservationists regard this borough as the most historically significant black neighborhood in Chicago. It was the city’s first African-American enclave—home to musician Louis Armstrong—and its dense array of nightclubs and churches birthed strains of jazz, blues, and gospel.

Louis Armstrong’s sepia-toned photograph hangs in Harold Lucas’s airy upstairs office in an elegantly restored 1920s building that Lucas helped to preserve, It’s near the corner of 35th Street and King Drive, across from the White Castle hamburger restaurant. Next to Armstrong, a photo of a young black woman wearing aviator goggles bears the caption “Bessie Coleman, 1892-1926, manicurist at White Sox Barbershop, first African-American female pilot.”

With walls displaying antique photographs and yellowing books, their pages slowly decomposing, Lucas’s office serves as a museum and a gathering place. On any given night, impassioned black men—some of Chicago’s most famous activists—might meet to watch CNN footage and discuss Obama’s latest policy, and community members often convene here to discuss local issues.

Not only has Lucas worked to preserve and restore historic buildings located in the rectangle bounded by 18th and 51st Streets between Lake Shore Drive and the Dan Ryan Expressway, but he also campaigned tirelessly for national and local recognition of the area as a historic district. The National Trust for Historic Preservation now recognizes Bronzeville as the “Black Metropolis National Register Historic District” and after a thirteen-year struggle with city officials, according to Lucas, the city designated it as a “landmark historic district” in 1996. However, the city’s Commission on Chicago Landmarks legally protects only nine buildings in the area.

During the day Lucas conducts three-hour bus tours that begin downtown under the towering Ebony/JET Magazine building and end at Obama’s house, stopping at upwards of twenty historic sites along the way.

“See that sign?” asks Lucas on a recent tour, as we drive through McCormick Place. He’s pointing at an enormous surfboard-shaped sign emblazoned with the word “Bronzeville.” The sign welcomes visitors into the neighborhood. “We worked hard to get that up. For a long time, the city didn’t even see this as a legitimate neighborhood, and the South Loop tried to annex us,” he recalls.

An historic building in Bronzeville; photo by Sam Bowman

To be clear, Lucas is not against gentrification. For him, it’s more about saving the history that already exists. “I’d like to see our commercial business strips completely revitalized, with upscale businesses selling authentic merchandise,” Lucas says. Instead of tearing historic buildings down, he thinks developers should restore old buildings and put them to new uses—“adaptive reuse,” in architect-speak. Case in point: the historic Michael Reese hospital, whose future may be imperiled if the Olympics come to town. Preservationists want officials to use the existing hospital buildings as dormitories for Olympic athletes instead of tearing them down.

Chicago ranks as the country’s most segregated major metropolis, according to a December 2008 Chicago Tribune article, and as it stands now, Bronzeville’s population hovers between 80 and 90 percent African-American based on census data. Whether impending gentrification will change the racial mix of the neighborhood is anyone’s guess.

“I’m not willing to give up the culture in my community for integration. At heart I’m a nationalist about my neighborhood,” remarks Lucas. “Not that I’m a racist, trying to say, ‘White folks stay out’ and progressive whites, let me assure you, have been here for ten or fifteen years,” Lucas says. “They say, ‘I see the house. I like it. It’s safe enough. I’m movin’ in,’ and on that basis you can’t block nobody out.”

Lucas’s intimate knowledge of the neighborhood stems from having spent most of his life on the South Side. He was born in Bronzeville in 1943 and lived at the Ida B. Wells public housing, in “the projects.” Today, coincidentally, loud bulldozers shove mounds of dirt across the site where the Ida B. Wells complex used to be, before it was demolished. “My mom was a welfare mother,” Lucas explains. “I’m not a proponent of welfare, because it disenfranchises you inherently. You’re sitting, waiting on an inadequate sum of money to try to survive on. I thought it was a dehumanizing reality for my mother.”

The Ida B. Wells complex was one of several housing projects built between 1940 and the early 1960s along a two-mile stretch of State Street in Bronzeville. This stretch generated “the largest and longest public housing tract in the world” according to Columbia College history professor Dominic A. Pacyga. The projects (which at one time housed the size of a small city—more than 20,000 people) eventually fell into neglect, concentrating poverty and crime in a relatively small swath. In 2000, the city embarked on a controversial plan to bulldoze and replace the housing with less dense mixed-use units. The new mixed-use housing includes one-third market-rate (read: “traditional” condo units), one-third affordable housing and one-third public housing. However, in the interim, as the buildings are being demolished, the original residents have been forced to relocate outside of Bronzeville. Some charge that there hasn’t been enough oversight in helping the residents relocate. And others worry that if the lower income residents leave, they might not come back, which would catapult the neighborhood on a trajectory to uncontrolled upscale gentrification.

As for Harold Lucas, he moved from the Ida B. projects and spent his adolescence in Hyde Park, and this is where his burgeoning interest in activism began. “I did Hy-Y [Hyde Park YMCA] things. I kept the gang boys off the little middle-class kids. I ran the roller-skating there. I had a very multicultural adolescence, which helps to frame my personality,” recalls Lucas.

By his 20s and 30s, Lucas recounts, “I worked on a long spree of nightclub operations on the South Side. Impresario-type stuff called Brothers Incorporated.” Chuckling, Lucas adds, “This was when we first started wearing the big naturals [afros]. We had a logo with a fist in it and two spears across it and it was really nice art direction.”

Lucas’s popularity grew as he organized music events and, eventually, he and his partners managed to score a lease on the old Historic Society Building downtown at Ontario and Dearborn. “We rented it out two nights a week and in the process got to be the number one club there,” says Lucas. “We had live performances: jazz, R&B, Herbie Hancock, Earth, Wind & Fire in its early stages. Folk like that.” The club shut down a year and a half later, when “the syndicate [the mafia] closed in.”
Lucas came back to the South Side looking for a place to open a large music venue and found the Eighth Regiment Armory Building. It was abandoned. “I started looking at the history of it and that’s when I got hooked—into community organizing, historic preservation… the whole nine yards. During that same period of time, I was homeless and living in the Wabash YMCA,” he says.

Lucas successfully saved the Armory from the wrecking ball, though he didn’t convert it into a music club. Today, the Eighth Regiment Armory is a public high school called the Chicago Military Academy at Bronzeville. History class stays in session all day long.

It’s hard to say whether Bronzeville or the man behind it has a more fabled history. But one thing is for sure: as the area rides out waves of gentrification, and the days count down to the likely acceptance of Chicago’s Olympics Bid, it’s heartening to know that one brave soul fights the good fight—saving history and his neighborhood, one block at a time.

Corporate privatization is not usually a phrase that one connects to the Olympics. Images of athletes and medals come to mind faster than those of suited executives and secretive business arrangements. Yet it is exactly this hidden side of the Olympics that activist Anne Elizabeth Moore wants to expose with the Unlympics. Since the bid book for the Chicago 2016 Olympics is due on February 12, Moore is eager to begin a public discourse about the potential effects of holding such an event in Chicago, before it’s too late for Chicagoans to change their minds.

“We won’t have the opportunity to see [the bid] until after the International Olympics Committee sees it,” Moore explains. Important details, such as the location of the Olympic Village, are not accessible until after Chicago has officially submitted a request to host the games. Moore would like this choice to be the result of a public forum, rather than a decision made by a small group of wealthy individuals and companies who donate to the Olympic Bid Committee. The Unlympics Movement is not against the Olympics, but remains critical of the way that it works to permanently change cities like Chicago “without actually asking Chicago,” says Moore.

The website for the Chicago 2016 Olympics shows artist renditions of the altered city. Washington Park will have a 100-acre Olympic Stadium to seat 80,000 spectators, and fifteen minutes away, on some undisclosed location along the “rapidly developing” South Side lakefront, the Olympic Village will house 17,000 athletes. Moore asks, “What will they have to tear down? They’re probably going to start tearing down some of the low income housing facilities, which is very typical of the Olympic movement.” She cited this tendency as starting with Adolf Hitler, who created the first concentration camp in June of 1936, in order to “eradicate the lowest-income residents in the area, and to pretty the place up for the Olympics” in August.

Salem Collo-Julin, a Chicago resident, voiced her fear that if the Olympics come to Chicago, the situation would be similar to what happened in Atlanta twelve years ago. “They basically had a police campaign to get all of the homeless people out of Atlanta,” says Collo-Julin. Kristin Cox, of the Chicago Working Group on Extreme Inequality, stressed that, in addition to displacement, she is concerned about the privatization of previously public spaces. This idea is part of a broader movement that affects libraries, charter schools, and even air space. Cox stresses that “we need to not be selling off everything for profit.”

There is also the question of where the money to fund the Olympics comes from. The Chicago 2016 Olympics website says that the bid is 100 percent privately-funded, supported in part by the “business and philanthropic communities.” “There are people who right now are donating hundreds of thousands of dollars [to the Olympic Bid] that would have gone to nonprofits or philanthropy,” Cox laments. The bid for the 2016 Olympics alone requires a large monetary commitment. “I think we should have had a bid for equity-based public housing,” Collo-Julin proposes.

The decision isn’t up to residents like Collo-Julin, Cox, Moore, or any other members of the Unlympics team. The Board of Directors on the Chicago 2016 Olympics website is comprised of figures like corporate CEOs and people with ties to Mayor Daley. This closed circuit of people is at the core of what the Unlympics objects to. “It’s about who’s able to have conversations and be at the table in order to negotiate what should happen for the Olympics,” says Cox. Moore is associated with several institutions that she says are starting to “get excited” about the Olympics and make decisions that she feels will negatively affect the people that actually work at and use their facilities.

A research institute called inCUBATE acts as a venue for Moore’s Unlympics project and collaborates with her in searching for “alternative funding models and ways to organize projects that don’t necessarily include institutional support,” according to inCUBATE member Abigail Satinsky. Fellow member Roman Petruniak expresses that inCUBATE and Moore share a common goal in “uncovering something that’s not so transparent.” The task is not a small one, but together, with their combination of strength and endurance, these determined individuals are Olympians in their own right.

For more information about the Unlympics, visit unlympics.wordpress.com

“We will call it the Gold Line because many Olympians will ride it, and because the South Side deserves a gold medal transit system,” said Rev. Michael Russell. The Gold Line proposal aims to increase the frequency of Metra service from once every hour to once every ten minutes, running the line from Millennium Station to 93rd street. It also aims to create a new stop in Bronzeville, and the whole line will accept CTA fares. While Metra CEO Bill Tupper refuses to approve the proposal, SOUL remains confident it will succeed.

The proposal is part of the broader 2016 Community Benefits Agreement, which advocates that, if Chicago is chosen to host the Olympics, fifty percent of the construction jobs go to local residents of the South Side and that the city keep at least thirty percent of the housing affordable for original residents. Drafting of the agreement is being completed in part by state representative-elect Will Burns, and will be ready by April, in time to be presented to Chicago officials during the International Olympic Committee’s visit to the city.

At the event, Rev. Sirchester Jackson emphasized the importance of “creative and holistic solutions to violence,” such as a new gun law mandating the immediate reporting of stolen or lost firearms and educational, employment, and recreational activities for youth. “We have no future without the children, but I would argue that we have no present without them either,” she said, referring to the many youth shootings that have taken place in Chicago recently.

Rev. Booker Vance summed up the essence of the evening when he said, “We must start playing to win and stop playing to not lose,” expounding on SOUL’s continued and effective efforts to organize the “power in the pews” and achieve for its community.

The initiative is meant to partially address a major fear many residents have about the prospect of Chicago hosting the 2016 Olympics. Despite the economic and infrastructural benefits Chicago might experience, many people worry that there could be negative impacts on things like housing and transportation for moderate- and low-income residents of South Side neighborhoods. Because the Olympic Stadium would be a located in Washington Park, neighborhoods like Hyde Park and Bronzeville would be especially affected by the 2016 Games. Although the proposed stadium would be a temporary fixture, even that short term structure could have long-term impact. Groups like the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless believe that low-income and vulnerable groups may be rolled over in the Olympic fever that often takes over the chosen city.

While no one expects the degree of widespread evictions witnessed during the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Chicago residents have valid fears that they may be priced out of their neighborhoods. Other cities have faced this problem of displacement as the Olympics have become a larger and larger event. In efforts to spread the benefits of the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, Vancouver recently approved the Olympic Legacy Affordable Housing project to create movable modular housing units. The 320 temporary housing units will form part of the Olympic Village and later be moved to other communities to become permanent affordable housing. Hyde Park’s Coalition for Equitable Community Development advocates a similar measure to minimize the displacement of area residents by making a third of the Olympic Village units into affordable housing after the “two-week party” is over.

The opportunities and risks that the Olympics may bring to Chicago were discussed by Hyde Park residents at a recent forum convened by the Coalition for Equitable Community Development at Augustana Lutheran Church. The forum took place on October 18th, and was cosponsored by several local organizations, including Hyde Park-Kenwood Community Conference and Southsiders Organized for Unity and Liberation. Residents spoke about their concerns to speakers, including the community liaison for Chicago 2016 and two aldermen. With issues ranging from parking to gentrification, area residents expressed hopes that a Chicago Olympics could improve the city, and fears that they might not benefit from those improvements.

There are always huge structural changes when a city hosts the Olympics. There may be urban revitalization, as areas of the city are completely transformed by massive public works projects. The boom in tourism and advertising infuses local businesses and large corporations with huge amounts of money. When all these changes have taken place, a city can find itself transformed. Often the biggest changes are seen in areas considered “underutilized,” throwing the lives of already disadvantaged people into further chaos. How can we make sure that these people are not trampled in the ensuing Olympic madness? Is a non-binding resolution to recommend some provisions for middle income housing anywhere near enough?

Cities are always changing. Whether it is “white flight” or gentrification, a new influx of immigrants or technological upheaval, American cities have witnessed waves of change that each left their mark. If Chicago receives the mixed blessing of the 2016 Olympics, no one can deny that there will be major changes, in both the economic and physical structure of the city. The government and Mayor Daley must be careful to ensure that all benefit. A large public works project like hosting the Games is no experiment in the free market. The city is responsible for the changes it enacts, and it must recognize its obligations to assist all people hurt by its Olympian efforts.

First to speak was the pro-Olympics contingent, which included Professor Bruce Kidd of the University of Toronto. Kidd, although not a stakeholder in the current debate, played leading roles in Toronto’s failed 1996 and 2008 Olympic bids and has studied the impacts of the Montreal, Calgary, and Vancouver Olympics. He was actually an opponent of Montreal’s successful 1976 Olympic bid because he felt the city managed it badly and failed to consult communities that would be affected. Although history would seem to have validated his doubts—the Montreal Olympics were a famous financial disaster, leaving debts that took thirty years to pay off—Kidd told the audience that in hindsight, “I have to tell you that those games have been enormously beneficial.” The games, he argued, brought people together and left lasting improvements in infrastructure that might not otherwise have been undertaken. “Olympic Games can be an avenue where people can put their dreams for the city into effect,” Kidd said, and this seemed to summarize the pro-Olympic point: as one audience member put it in a question to Sanderson, “Don’t you agree that throwing a party can be an impetus to clean up the house?”

“I don’t think anyone ever had a party on a Saturday night because they wanted to clean up the house,” replied Sanderson, who argued that while the Olympics might leave behind a legacy of improvements, it would be more prudent to simply spend the money on those projects now. For example, if Chicago’s bid is successful (as all panelists seemed to agree was highly likely), an empty truck parking lot near McCormick Place will become the Olympic Village and then, after 2016, a new public housing complex; but if we want the housing complex, why not just build it now? Sanderson argued that the question we should be asking is “We have a plan; how do the Olympics fit in?” rather than “How can we benefit from hosting the Olympics?” Furthermore, he rejected the pro-Olympic argument that much of the financial backing for the games would be provided by contributions from the private sector; after all, each philanthropist who donates money to make the Olympics happen isn’t donating that money to another worthy cause such as a charity.

This argument, based on the fundamental economic idea of “opportunity cost,” was one of Sanderson’s most persuasive, but Kidd and his fellow pro-Olympic panelists had a response. During Toronto’s bid process for the 1996 Olympics, Kidd’s brother David led an organization, Bread Not Circuses, that like Sanderson argued for spending the city’s money directly rather than using the Olympics as a vehicle for improvements. Toronto’s bid failed, but according to Kidd, the improvements that had been talked about still didn’t materialize. “Sometimes you need a big idea to do a big thing,” Kidd concluded.

(Ellis Calvin)

In their eagerness to bring the 2016 Summer Olympics to Chicago, four of the city’s largest foundations have created a multimillion-dollar fund to help neighborhoods on the South and West Sides. These areas would likely see the greatest improvements in infrastructure as a result of the Games, yet they are home to the strongest opposition to hosting them. With this in mind, the fund aims to bring residents into the planning process for the Olympics while offsetting some of their potentially adverse effects.

It is not the first time these foundations have collaborated. The Chicago Community Trust, a community foundation, and the independent MacArthur, McCormick Tribune, and Polk Bros. Foundations pooled their resources in 2003 when they created the Partnership for New Communities. With the $10 million it has raised thus far, the Partnership provides grants for economic and workforce development in “those neighborhoods most affected by public housing transformation,” according to a press release—places like Roosevelt Square and Cabrini Green, where public housing has been demolished as part of the Chicago Housing Authority’s Plan for Transformation.

Like the Olympics, the Plan for Transformation is highly controversial. As the Olympics are expected to do, it has displaced thousands of low-income residents in its effort to create integrated, mixed-income communities. It has also overrun its costs and time frame, which is definitely within the realm of possibility for the aftermath of the Chicago Olympics.

South Side opposition to Chicago’s Olympic bid has manifested itself in many ways, though it has gained little acknowledgment from Mayor Daley or the city’s Olympic planners. Five of the area’s aldermen voted against the Olympic financing package last March, and in May Alderman Toni Preckwinkle (4th Ward) demanded that architects redesign the 5,000-unit Olympic Village to be built at McCormick Place. Citing its “self-contained” buildings, she said it “looks like something dropped from outer space.”

That Olympic construction will be insensitive to local needs is an apprehension echoed by residents. Two of the South Side’s largest green spaces, Jackson and Washington Parks, have both been slated as venue locations: Jackson Park would be the site of a 20,000-seat field hockey arena, while Washington Park would host the 80,000-seat Olympic Stadium. The years of construction would leave thousands of athletes without a place to practice and deprive residents of the respite only a park in a city can provide. Despite the fact that they would get a couple new soccer fields out of the deal, the Jackson Park Advisory Council passed a resolution opposing the Olympics last August. The Washington Park Advisory Council, which stands to gain a 5,000-seat stadium, created a twenty-nine-point list of conditions for support.

Also at issue is the cost of the Olympics, whose current $2 billion price tag is unlikely to be paid solely out of the pockets of private businesses. Rather, it would be easy for Mayor Daley to use the $500 million in property taxes collected by his Tax Incremented Finance districts (TIFs) to cover infrastructure costs. Of course, that means the money won’t be going toward education, healthcare, or affordable housing. Even if the Olympic Games actually make the $2.5 billion in revenues that officials are predicting (which seems unlikely, in light of the debt-ridden host cities of the past), the failure to invest in human capital might make the Olympics a bad deal in the long run.

At $3.5 million, the 2016 Olympics Fund for Chicago Neighborhoods is a relative pittance. The foundations that will distribute it may be able to offset some of the damage done by the soaring rents, destroyed homes, and widespread displacement that is likely to come with the Olympics. However, the voice they will give to local residents in the planning process may not be the voice they truly need; perhaps they just want to be heard saying “no.”