http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/20...d-reality/

Quote:The Olympian Rise of Atlanta

In the early 1980s, a Georgia real estate attorney named Billy Payne got bitten by the Olympic bug in Calgary. When he returned from their winter games, he had the idea to bring the summer Olympics to a city few in America paid any attention to. Not that Atlanta was a fly-over, but it wasn’t on most Americans’ radar, let alone foreigners.

“People thought Billy was off his rocker. I thought he would never pull it off. He put the weight of selling Atlanta to the Olympics on his shoulders and it was all surprisingly worth the effort,” says Chris Cummiskey, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Economic Development.

By the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce’s estimate, the city was on the receiving end of a $5 billion return on a roughly $3 billion investment because of its hosting of the 1996 Games. Other economic studies, like on conducted by German sports economist Holger Preuss, put the operational expenditures of the Atlanta games at $1.2 billion in 1995 dollars, with revenues of $1.7 billion.

What’s happened to Atlanta since? It’s gone on to host the XXXIV Super Bowl in 2000. Has 15 of the country’s Fortune 500 corporations headquartered there. And is now home to the world’s busiest airport. Yes, the world’s busiest airport is in the American south, not London, not New York, not Chicago, and not even Beijing.

Julie Hotchkiss, a research economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, headlined with two other economists what is arguably the gold standard paper on the RoI of Olympic host cities.

This is where proving the return on investment looks like masters level trig. In short, she used the labor market as a means to gauge the benefits. Hiring rose by more than 17 percent. It doesn’t last. But what the Olympics did for Atlanta was showcase it as an international city, and the major sponsors headquartered there had a hand in that. Atlanta was a sort of privatized Olympic Games.

“Coca-Cola was a huge sponsor for us and I’m sitting here right now looking out my window at their corporate offices,” says Cummiskey. “We didn’t raise any taxes. We didn’t raise any fees on hotels. The money spent on the Olympic Arena eventually got sold to the Atlanta Braves. The money invested into Georgia State University to house athletes turned what was once a pure commuter school into one of our leading overnight colleges. These are all positive impacts of investments that were made during the Olympics.”

Yalls dorms are the former Olympic Village?

I didn't know that.
That's pretty cool.

(08-03-2012 10:28 AM)Dedsquirrl Wrote:  Yalls dorms are the former Olympic Village?

I didn't know that.
That's pretty cool.

Not anymore. They were kind of falling apart and part of GT campus, so now GT owns them. We got nice new shiny dorms now just a block or two from campus.