Boston has "enough hotel rooms, security expertise, and cultural cachet" to host the '24 Summer Games, but would "face a challenge finding space for an 80,000-seat Olympic Stadium and a 100-acre Olympic Village," according to a special commission’s draft report cited by Michael Levenson of the BOSTON GLOBE. The panel concluded that Boston "could feasibly host the 2024 Olympics but would face a 'monumental task' making the densely packed city easy to navigate and ready for the world’s largest sporting event." The report stated that the commission "was not ultimately recommending that Boston launch a bid to host the Olympics but urged supporters in the public and private sectors to set up a nonprofit group to explore the idea further and to work with" the USOC on developing a bid. Commission leader John Fish said that the group also would "need to conduct an in-depth study of the costs of hosting the Olympics, an issue that was not examined in the draft report." The 11-member commission was created by Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick and the state Legislature to "determine whether Boston could meet the basic requirements for a host city set forth by the USOC." Fish said that the draft report will "undergo final revisions this week and is due to be released to the public on Friday or Saturday" (BOSTON GLOBE, 2/27). The USOC is "expected to decide next year whether to recommend a U.S. city to the IOC, which will select a host" for the '24 games in '17 (AP, 2/26).
