Flame out for Chicago in bidding for 2016 Olympics

Rio de Janeiro captures sporting prize

By Kathy Bergen and Philip Hersh - Tribune reporters

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COPENHAGEN — It was the kind of stinging defeat Chicago sports fans know all too well.Mayor Richard Daley took one grand shot at landing the Olympics, devoting more than three years to an effort that involved thousands of volunteers and more than $72 million in donations, but in the end Chicago was done in by a combination of Rio de Janeiro’s more compelling story line and the quirky politics of Olympic voting. 

Despite an appearance by President Barack Obama at the final presentations Friday, Chicago’s candidacy landed with a thud. The city was ousted in the first round of voting for the 2016 Games, rejected before the mayor’s car could even arrive back at the convention center to witness the drama of the International Olympic Committee vote. He had the car turned around and headed straight to a suddenly deflated Chicago backers’ party.

Back in Chicago, the celebration also ended practically as quickly as it began. Would-be revelers arrived at Daley Center and other locations expecting a tense morning culminating in a victory announcement just before noon locally. Instead, Chicago was out of the running by about 10:15 a.m.

Chicago’s main pitch was to put on games along the spectacular backdrop of Lake Michigan. That turned out to be no match for Rio, not because the beach at Ipanema outshines Oak Street, but because of a more powerful geographic symbolism. Time and time again in this intense contest, Rio de Janeiro hammered away at the fact that an organization devoted to international understanding through sport had never deigned to give the games to South America.

Rio’s argument won the day, and the games, over Madrid in the third and final round of voting, 66-32. Chicago got the least votes in round one and was eliminated, followed out the door by Tokyo in round two.

“I wouldn’t say it was a negative vote (against Chicago) as much as it was a positive vote for Brazil and the idea of having games in the southern hemisphere,” said Richard Carrion, an International Olympic Committee member from Puerto Rico. “I analyze it more that Brazil had a better idea.”

For Chicago, this is the end of the road for this particular pursuit, at least in the short term. Daley ruled out a bid for 2020, saying it was highly unlikely the IOC would return to the Americas so quickly.

About three hours after Chicago was eliminated, Daley made his first public statement, saying he was disappointed, “but you go on with your life.”

IOC politics appeared to play a major role in explaining how Chicago, which many saw as the favorite, was eliminated so quickly. The first round of voting is always the most unpredictable, with regional allies often promising to back friends, or conspiring to gang up on a specific challenger.

In this case, friends of Rio may have formed alliances to quickly eliminate Chicago, its most significant threat, said Richard Pound, an IOC member from Canada.

“That’s sport politics, not anything else,” he said, adding that the Europeans and the Asians are much better at this maneuvering than are North Americans. “We kind of think if you’ve got the best bid, the world will recognize that, and these decisions are made solely on the merits of the bid. Well, not solely.”

Another factor in Chicago’s vote failure appeared to be the sometimes fractious relationship between the United States Olympic Committee and the IOC. The two sides have sparred over issues such as TV contract revenue, potentially alienating some IOC members.

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Be proud, Chicago

Tribune Staff Reporter

So that’s all there is.

Chicago in 2016 will watch the Summer Olympic Games on television along with the most of the world.

Chicago lost. We don’t like losing. We don’t like being embarrassed either, which, let’s admit, was the near-universal reaction to being knocked out in the first round of voting by the International Olympic Committee.

But we’ll be fine.

Bidding for an Olympiad forced Chicago, its leaders and its citizens, to focus on what works and what doesn’t. It made all of us think to the future how this city should capitalize on its assets: the lakefront, the neighborhoods, the parks–and sports and kids. This process also energized the concept of public/private partnerships here.

That work won’t go to waste. There will be no Olympic Village on the site of Michael Reese Hospital. But the city owns that land now and Mayor Richard Daley has promised to develop it into a new neighborhood anyway. Do that, Chicago–and preserve Reese’s landmark Walter Gropius buildings.

A Chicago Olympics would have spotlighted the city’s single greatest physical asset–that glorious lakefront. It was to be the centerpiece of the games. It’s still the centerpiece of Chicago. Take it to the next level, Chicago. Complete the public access where it doesn’t exist. Build the pedestrian walkways that would have anchored the village to the lake. The lakefront is the city’s crown jewel. Polish it. ƒp This bid turned a spotlight on the city’s transportation infrastructure, a weak point. The region’s rails and roads need capital investment to handle the demands of a growing metropolis. Invest the money, Chicago, Olympics or no.

That includes finishing the unfinished part of the O’Hare International Airport expansion: Build a western access road; just about every local transportation study for decades has listed that as a priority to ease the bottleneck at the eastern entrance to the airport. Fixing transportation also includes easing Chicago’s freight rail gridlock. And it includes making the city’s rapid transit system work better and more efficiently.

The greatest legacy of this bid could have been as simple and profound as this: kids and sports. An Olympiad held the potential to nudge them off the couch, away from junk food, TV and video games, the gangs and their violence. Chicago founded World Sport Chicago to boost the bid, but it can and should be a powerful force in the years ahead to promote active, healthy lifestyles.

Chicago is an attractive destination for talented, educated young people. Its location makes it a hub, as accessible to Mexico City and Mumbai as to Milwaukee. But Chicago won’t reach its potential unless it fosters a climate more conducive to business investment and entrepreneurial development. A new scheme for taxing and public spending would greatly help protect Chicago from an erosion of employers. Jobs, jobs and more jobs will be the city’s salvation.

Businesses that locate and grow here pay taxes and all those newly employed people pay taxes, too.

Olympiad or no, Chicago needs to become a perpetual mecca for small businesses in particular. Their energetic potential is explosive. Make it so easy and welcoming, Chicago, for them to start up here that they can’t imagine going elsewhere. This means shifting a mind set that currently sees them as a source of fees, fines and other revenues, only secondly of growth and opportunity.

This city has reinvented itself before, without the provocation of an Olympiad.

Chicago was a “City on the brink” in 1981 when the Tribune series with that title looked at this metropolis and its bleak post-industrial prospects. The world was changing; grit and brawn didn’t matter so much anymore. The harsh competition of globalization was dawning; structural decline was palpable in cities ill-equipped for this rigorous economic game. By the mid-’80s, Chicago’s ugly racial politics and its City Council wars made the city a national embarrassment, famously jabbed by The Wall Street Journal as “Beirut on the lake.” All arrows pointed south except the jobless rate. That soared.

Why didn’t Chicago plummet like so many heartland cities in what the Tribune series called “an arc of economic crisis”? Partly because of an innate spirit that created a city out of a swampy onion patch–and then improbably promised to host the world at a glittering gala just 22 years after the Great Fire of 1871. Hence the wildly successful Columbian Exposition.

Partly, too, because of can-do hucksterism: See a problem. Solve a problem. Make a buck.

And partly because of leadership–political, civic, business, cultural. At critical moments, powerful Chicagoans have reached high. Why not? What did they have to lose?

Pinched vision isn’t this city’s civic heritage–from Montgomery Ward’s sacred lakefront park to Daniel H. Burnham’s “Make no little plans” to Mayor Daley’s crowd-pleasing Millennium Park.

Chicagoans love their city but see its warts every day. We know its challenges and its weaknesses. And we can’t forget how this steel and stone metropolis, rising like a castle from the flat expanse of the lake’s broad basin, astonishes newcomers. Its architecture, museums, parks, flowers are always a revelation, as is the richness of its neighborhoods.

Chicago is a world-class city. The Olympics wouldn’t have changed that. But the games would have showcased this city for the world in a way no other event could. Now it’s up to Chicago, its leaders, citizens and businesses to achieve that at a time when competition for jobs, brains, talent and investment is as likely to come from New Delhi as New York.

Some Chicagoans are celebrating today because the XXXI Olympiad won’t disrupt their summer of 2016; many others are disappointed. It would have been a grand party in our own front yard. But it wasn’t to be.

It’s time to get back to what we do best: See a problem. Solve a problem. Make a buck.

Be proud, Chicago. You went for gold.

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2016 Olympics: Cliffhanger in Copenhagen fills air with electric anticipation

Bid teams are nervous about close vote, and Chicago’s star, Oprah Winfrey, creates a stir wherever she goes

By Kathy Bergen and Philip Hersh Tribune reporters

COPENHAGEN – — Eight-hundred-year-old Copenhagen, a former fishing colony that is now a blend of the fine and the funky, the historic and the sleekly modern, is a city on edge.

And the war of nerves is most evident among an unusual group of visitors: the 2016 Olympic bid teams from Chicago, Rio de Janeiro, Madrid and Tokyo, and their supporters, who are sweating out a vote Friday by the International Olympic Committee.

With this being the most evenly matched four-way Olympic bid race in recent memory, even those used to high tension are feeling the strain.

“I’m a little anxious,” Olympian basketball player and former NBA star David Robinson, a Chicago supporter, admitted at a bid backers cocktail party held just as the IOC was officially opening its annual meeting. “A lot of people have put in a ton of time in the last three years and a lot is riding on it for the city.”

Contributing to the war of nerves is the difficulty in predicting an outcome, not just because each candidate city has a strong bid, but because the IOC is notoriously hard to read and the elimination rounds of voting result in quickly shifting alliances as cities are dropped.

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero tempered his optimism Thursday morning with recollections of the vote for the 2012 Summer Games, when Madrid was the top vote-getter in the second round of voting in Singapore, only to ultimately wind up third. London squeaked past Paris, the favorite to win those games.

“When that concluded, I took a reflection,” Zapatero said. “The thing is, with this type of election, there are different faces on it as bids are eliminated. It’s very hard to predict who will win the final vote.”

And it is hard to steer clear of the electric undercurrents in town. With sirens blaring and blue lights flashing, police cars have been whisking heads of state around town. Security guards at posh hotels have kept entrances cordoned off when VIPs were expected.

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Obama: ‘Most American of American cities’

President Obama described himself as a “passionate supporter” of the Games and as “a proud Chicagoan.”

He said he looked forward to welcoming the world to the shores of Lake Michigan and America in 2016. “America is ready and eager,” he said.

He described his own association with and love for the city, noting it was the place where he met his wife. He cited Chicago’s ethnic diversity with “a rich tapestry of neighborhoods.”

Chicago is the “most American of American cities,” with more than 130 nations represented among its population, he said.

He harkened to his own background, how his family moved around a lot, how he lived without roots in Hawaii and Indonesia, but found a true home in Chicago 25 years ago.

“I came to Chicago, and on Chicago’s streets I worked along side men and women who were black and white, Latino and Asian. People in every class and nationality and religion,” he said.

He concluded by saying Chicago would make the IOC proud.

2:29 a.m. Michelle Obama: ‘Choose Chicago, choose America’

Michelle Obama, appearing slightly nervous at the outset, made an intensely personal presentation, talking about how the Olympics inspired her as a young girl and would do the same for the present generation of children.

She said the Games would be used “to bring us together” and “change lives all over the world.”

She said the Olympics “would light up lives across the world.”

“I was born and raised on Chicago’s South Side, not  far from where the Games will open and close… Sports are what brought a community together,” she said.

“We picked sides not on who you were, but what you could bring to the game.”

Sports, she said, is what she shared with her father.

‘I’m asking you to choose Chicago. I’m asking you to choose America,” she said.

2:21 a.m. Chicago called a good place for athletes

Brian Clay, the 2008 decathlon champion, and Linda Mastandrea, director of Paaralympic Sport and Accessibility for the city’s 2016 bid, said the city will be a good place for athletes to compete.

The cited the beauty of the city’s parks and its lakefront.

The city’s Olympic Village would put 90 percent of the athletes within 15 minutes of their venues, with spacious rooms and a private beach, Mastrandrea said.

–Kathy Bergen

2:15 a.m. More virtues: Corporate connections, shopping

Bid team leader Patrick Ryan stressed the city’s economic strength, noting the Midwest is home to hundreds of major corporations. The city, he said, will provide “fresh territory for expansion of sponsorships.”

He said the city’s shopping rivaled that of London and New York, and called Chicago “a safe city.”

“For the next seven years, we will focus exclusively on being your committed partners,” he said. “If so honored, we will begin tomorrow.”

–Kathy Bergen

2:07 a.m. Daley: ‘Chicago will deliver’

Mayor Daley was third up.

“Chicago will deliver,” he promised, “because in Chicago we just don’t talk about what we will do, we do it.”

He said the city’s bid had a “a full government guarantee with the enthusiastic appeal of the city’s leaders.”

“If you award us the Games, we will be your best partners,” he pledged.

At the beginning of his presentation, he cited Chicago’s connection to the Olympics through two of its premier athletes, Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalf, who competed in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.

He noted they competed on behalf of a nation that would not give them, as African-Americans, basic rights. “Why? Because the Olympic Games represent something bigger,” he said.

--Kathy Bergen

1:55 a.m. Presentation begins with ‘Sweet Home Chicago’

Chicago has begun its presentation to the International Olympic Committee with a brief introduction by United States Olympic Committee member Anita DeFrantz and a video of the city to the strains of “Sweet Home Chicago.”

She was followed by Larry Probst, chairman of the USOC, who promised the city would “fulfill every obligation” to get the Olympics.

12:50 a.m. Obama arrives in Copenhagen

President Barack Obama arrived in Copenhagen this morning to help in Chicago’s final push for the 2016 Summer Olympics.

Air Force One touched down at 12:50 a.m. Chicago time, 7:50 a.m. Copenhagen time. He will spend less than five hours on the ground.

He was greeted by a phalynx of Danish dignitaries. His motorcade left the airport 19 minutes later.

Later today, the IOC will choose among Chicago, Rio de Janeiro, Tokyo and Madrid. That decision is scheduled to be announced shortly before noon Chicago time. There could be as many as three rounds of voting. After each round, assuming no city reaches a majority, the lowest vote-getter will be eliminated.

The city’s presentation to the IOC, led by First Lady Michelle Obama, is scheduled to begin at 1:45 a.m. Chicago is up first. It will have 45 minutes to make its case, with another 15 minutes for questions and answers. The president will answer questions.

Early handicapping has Rio has a slight favorite over Chicago. South America has never hosted an Olympics.

U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) was a late add-on to the traveling team accompanying Obama on Air Force One. Also aboard were two Cabinet members from Illinois, Secretary of Transporation Ray LaHood and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

Durbin said White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel was reluctant for the president to make the trip. Emanuel had told Durbin that Obama’s busy schedule, coupled with the fact that health care legislation is unresolved, made him skeptical about the Copenhagen venture.

The president joins his wife, Mayor Richard Daley, Oprah Winfrey and the remainder of Chicago’s bid team in Copenhagen to make Chicago’s case.

For earlier coverage on the Copenhagen countdown CLICK HERE.

Psychics weigh in on Chicago’s chances HERE.

Winfrey said the IOC vote could produce “a decision that could be a landmark in Chicago history.”

The president will speak Friday on behalf of Chicago’s bid and take questions from IOC members during the 15-minute question period after the 45-minute prepared presentation.

“He and the First Lady will both participate in the question and answer session,” Presidential advisor Valerie Jarrett said in a Wednesday interview with the Tribune and four other media outlets — one from Italy, one from Japan, one from Great Britain and another from the United States.

–Peter Nicholas, Jeff Finkelman

[ Updates from the Chicago Tribune ]

Seeing the Olympics Through a Child’s Eyes

By RACHEL L. SWARNS

On Wednesday, her first day in Denmark, First Lady Michelle Obama described the thrill of watching the Olympics as a young girl and the impact that the 2016 Summer Games might have on underprivileged young people in Chicago.

“It was an activity in our household when it was time for the Olympic Games, all of us gathered around the TV cheering on and being inspired by people who were doing things that were beyond belief,’’ said Mrs. Obama, who flew to Copenhagen to support Chicago’s bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympics. “And I just think, wouldn’t it be great if that kind of spirit was happening right down the street in our community?’’

“It does something to a kid when they can feel that energy and power up close and personal,’’ said Mrs. Obama, who was born and raised on the South Side of Chicago. “And for some kids in our communities and our city, around the nation, around the world, they can never dream of being that close to such power and opportunity. So that’s what excites me most about bringing the Games to Chicago – the impact that it can have on the lives of our young people, and on our entire community.’’

The first lady, who was speaking at a reception hosted by Mayor Richard M. Daley of Chicago, said that she and her husband were in campaign-mode again as they prepared to fight for their hometown. “Now is the time for us to pull it through,’’ she said.

President Obama, who will arrive in Copenhagen on Friday to make his personal pitch for Chicago, is continuing to work the phones, Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, said on Wednesday. “Obviously we probably have already deployed our best weapon in Michelle Obama to talk also directly with I.O.C. members,’’ Mr. Gibbs said.

“The next few days really provide us with a real opportunity to hold some hands, to have some conversations, to share our visions,’’ the first lady said. “To let people know that we understand that sports saves lives, that it makes dreams come true, that it creates visions in kids’ heads to make them think they can be the next David Robinson, the next Barack Obama, the next Nadia Comaneci, the next Oprah Winfrey.

“Those dreams have to start somewhere, and for so many, they start when they watch the Olympics,’’ Mrs. Obama said.

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Daley: Olympics campaign a ‘tough election’

BY LISA DONOVAN – Staff Reporter

COPENHAGEN—Mayor Daley smiled when asked this week what it feels like — after safely winning six elections and confidently pushing plenty of other elected leaders across the finish line — to watch his campaign for the Olympics go to a vote and not really know the outcome.

On Friday the International Olympic Committee will meet here and vote on which of the four candidate cities will host the Summer 2016 games: Chicago, Madrid, Rio de Janeiro or Madrid.

Daley considered the question and reflected on his 1983 loss to the late Mayor Harold Washington. Then he reflected on what he and others call a three-year campaign to bring the Olympics to Chicago.

“This is a tough election, these are very competitive cities and countries, they’re just as passionate and enthusiastic about their city as we are,” Daley said.

But even as Chicago’s bid organizing committee “counts noses” — as one Chicago 2016 official referred to lobbying and locking in IOC votes — there can still be question marks.

That’s because the IOC votes by secret ballot, so there’s no way to really know who kept their promise.

On Friday, each of the four cities will have the chance to make a final presentation in front of the 106 IOC members before the governing body sits down to a vote —which is actually a series of elimination rounds with the lowest vote-getter disqualified until a winner emerges, explains Sandrine Tonge, a spokeswoman for the Olympic governing body.

Not all 106 members vote. Jacques Rogge, IOC president, doesn’t participate so that he he can “maintain neutrality” as leader of the group, Tonge said.

And seven members are not allowed to vote in the first round because their cities are finalists for the games.

So in the first round, 97 members are allowed to vote. In each round the lowest vote-getter is eliminated until there are two.

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Olympic Opponents Don’t Make the Cut

By KEVIN HELLIKER and PHRED DVORAK

CHICAGO — On Friday morning, when thousands swarm Daley Plaza to root for this city’s 2016 Olympics bid, Bob Quellos will show up to boo.

“Actually, there will be a small core of us,” Mr. Quellos said.

As a founder of No Games Chicago, Mr. Quellos has worked for months to keep the Windy City Olympics free. Yet when the International Olympic Committee convenes in Copenhagen on Friday to choose the host city of the 2016 Olympics, Mr. Quellos and his group will be excluded.

Never mind that the leader of No Games Chicago, Tom Tresser, will be stationed just outside the voting chamber in Denmark, eager to counter the arguments of President Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey and Mayor Richard Daley — all in Copenhagen to lobby for Chicago’s bid. Mr. Tresser won’t be invited inside.

“In the face of this overwhelming firepower in favor of the Chicago bid, it’s a little intimidating to be arguing against it,” Mr. Tresser, a Chicago college instructor, said Wednesday by phone from Copenhagen.

The group worries that taxpayers could end up on the hook, despite Chicago’s contention that the games will be financed privately. And in a city with a history of corruption, No Games Chicago says the Olympics is likely to enrich the powerful and hurt the poor.

The 2016 Chicago bid received financing of about $70 million, and at its helm sits one of the city’s most respected business leaders, Aon Corp. founder Patrick Ryan. On Tuesday, Chicago’s 2016 committee released an independent poll showing that about 72% of Chicago-area residents support the bid.

Of all the challenges that have faced Chicago’s Olympic bid — the availability of financing, the logistics of proposing new venues, the allure of competitors like Rio de Janeiro — none have been less threatening than the local opposition movement. The first No Games Chicago demonstration, staged last winter, drew only about 200 people, though about half of those who took the microphone turned out to be supporters of the bid.

Anti-Olympic campaigns sprout up at most every Olympics. The Winter Games often trigger an avalanche of environmental concerns: how many trees and mountain vistas need to be sacrificed for a new set of bobsled runs and ski jumps and slalom stadiums and roads to link them all together?

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Will Derrion Albert’s Beating Death Video Hurt Chicago’s Olympic Dreams?

by Ryan Smith

NEW YORK (CBS/AP) Images of the brutal beating death of Chicago honor student Albert Derrion have shocked the nation, but it could also have international repercussions.

Photos: Derrion Albert Beating Death Video

An uncut cell phone video, which has been widely distributed across the Web and television, shows teens viciously kicking and striking the 16-year-old with splintered railroad ties in an attack that left him dead.

The murder is carnal, brutal, and scary.

It’s with this backdrop that Michele Obama is now in Copenhagen trying to impress International Olympic Committee members that Chicago is the right place to bring the 2016 Olympics. Her husband, President Barack Obama, is set to join her later this week.

Will the appalling video overshadow the First Family’s efforts? It may be too soon to know.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the video is “chilling” and that the topic came up at President Barack Obama’s morning meeting in the Oval Office.

Gibbs on Wednesday said that reporters they should expect an administration response to the “heinous crime” shortly.

“This is not just a Chicago-specific problem,” Gibbs said. “Obviously, youth crime and gang violence are something that this administration takes seriously. And we’ll have more on that soon.”

Gibbs added that though the government cannot regulate what’s in people’s hearts, the White House believes such crimes call for community involvement.

As head of Chicago’s delegation to the Internaional Olympic Committee (IOC), and her husband’s representative until he arrives Friday, Mrs. Obama plans to meet with as many members as possible to try to persuade them to pick her hometown over Rio de Janeiro, Madrid and Tokyo.

“I’m so happy to be here, so excited,” Mrs. Obama said. “We’ve got a lot of work to do. We’re not taking anything for granted, so I’m going to go talk to some voters.”

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Madrid 2016 official: Rio has worst Olympics bid

Madrid 2016 Bid Team

MADRID (AP) — A Madrid 2016 Olympics bid official has reportedly labeled rival Rio de Janeiro’s bid the “worst” of the four cities competing for the right to host the games.

Spanish Olympic Committee vice president Jose Maria Odriozola called Rio “the worst bid” according to Spanish news agency Efe on Wednesday.

Odriozola said Rio’s standing as one of the favorites for Friday’s vote comes down to marketing and sentimentality and security remains an issue.

“At this point, the IOC is not going to risk it and take the Games to a site where it doesn’t have total confidence that it can be done well,” said Odriozola, who is also president of the Spanish athletics federation.

Madrid is also competing against Chicago and Tokyo for the right to host the 2016 Summer Games.

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Mayor Places Olympian Bet on Chicago’s Bid for Games

By DOUGLAS BELKIN

CHICAGO — Richard M. Daley isn’t used to losing votes. Arguably America’s most powerful mayor, he has won six straight elections, helped put countless others — including a president — into office and lost just four votes in the City Council over the past 20 years.

But on the eve of the International Olympic Committee’s vote Friday on whether Chicago will host the 2016 Olympic Games, the Second City has abandoned its first citizen just when Mr. Daley needs them the most.

Chicagoans are weary after months of recession and Illinois corruption scandals, and angry about everything from rising taxes to deepening potholes. They are especially skeptical of Mr. Daley’s Olympic push: After pledging Chicago wouldn’t pay a cent should the Games lose money, the mayor later said Chicago would cover any potential shortfall.

Mr. Daley, re-elected in 2007 with more than 71% of the vote, now has a career-low approval rating of 35%, according to a recent Chicago Tribune poll. In public meetings, citizens rail that he has become isolated, thin-skinned and autocratic. Only 47% of Chicagoans support hosting the Games.

Mr. Daley, asked about his falling approval ratings and concerns over cost overruns and corruption, shakes his head.

“You have to have vision,” the 67-year-old mayor said in an interview this month as he shuttled between appearances in the back seat of his black sedan. “You can’t start second-guessing yourself.”

Mr. Daley says the Games will transform Chicago and update its international image from a meat-and-manufacturing hub to the Paris on the Prairie its planners envisioned. Chicago’s Olympic committee has said the Games will generate tens of thousands of jobs and a $13.7 billion economic boost for Chicago. Last week, Anderson Economic Group LLC estimated that spending in Chicago would be more modest, around $4.4 billion.

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