The Olympics Are Coming. The City Is Not Ready.
Three years out, the costs are rising and the answers are not.
The bid book promised a $1.2 billion Games. The actual budget, three years out, is already pacing toward something closer to $1.8 billion, and that figure does not include the transit and public-safety investments the city is being asked to fund from its own capital budget.
The Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games has, from the beginning, made a virtue of being privately financed. The premise held while the numbers were small. The premise begins to strain as soon as the city is asked to underwrite the peripheral infrastructure the Games require, which — quietly, in three separate council briefings this spring — it now is.
This is an archival excerpt. The full piece runs to roughly seven thousand words in the July 1993 print edition. — The Editors, 2026.
More from News
The Transit Vote, in Plain English
What the July ballot question would actually fund — and what the fine print leaves out.
NOAA Raises Atlantic Hurricane Outlook for July
Sea-surface temperatures across the basin are running 1.2°C above the long-term average.
Mayor Unveils $2.4 Billion Water-Infrastructure Plan
The largest single capital project in the city's history will run for a decade.