By Gintautas Dumcius
State House News Service
BOSTON — Boston lawmakers on Friday met behind closed doors with top officials from Boston 2024, a nonprofit group seeking to bring the summer Olympics to the area.
Boston is on the short list of cities to represent the United States in a bid for the 2024 summer Olympics, the U.S. Olympic Committee said in June.
The meeting included Mayor Marty Walsh, several legislators, Boston 2024 officials and James Rooney, the executive director of the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority, among others.
Sen. Eileen Donoghue, a Lowell Democrat, was among the legislators in the room. She helped pass a law that led to the creation of a commission that held public meetings and explored the feasibility of Boston hosting the Olympics.
Donoghue said the meeting was to discuss plans for the bid, which the city is expected to submit in about one month. She said specific venues have been discussed, but no final decisions have been made.
“I am convinced this can benefit all of us, in particular regarding the build-out of infrastructure that’s so needed for not just Greater Boston, but the entire state,” Donoghue said after the meeting. “To grow jobs, to grow the economy, I think there is an opportunity to utilize the Olympic bid as a catalyst to get some of those projects off the ground.”
Rep Nick Collins, D-South Boston, said the meeting provided a “sense of the planning process.
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“We got a lot of good information, a lot of good back-and-forth and feedback about what it would take to host the Olympics, what it will mean for the city’s infrastructure and transportation, how it will be paid for, you know, making sure the city and the state are not footing the bill,” he said.
Opponents of the bid say the effort is unnecessary and that the state’s attention and money should be spent on other priorities.
Gov. Deval Patrick has sounded supportive notes for a bid.
“For me, as exciting as it would be to have the Olympics here, and I think it would be, the fact that we are pursuing that I think is hugely important,” Patrick said during an appearance on WGBH Radio Oct. 9. “Because it means we are prepared to assert ourselves on the international stage. And I think it’s important for the Greater Boston area and the commonwealth to let its light shine, to let our light shine. It’s important economically and socially, it’s great to create the buzz.”
Patrick said on a “practical level,” if Boston wins the bid, the impetus to finish his administration’s transportation infrastructure investment plan would be “huge.”
“There, the public would have to invest but in things that the public has already said they want,” he said. “And the opportunity to generate the support of the business community, both in dollar terms and in encouraging the Legislature to make those investments I think is also top-drawer.”
Patrick stressed that there is no public money involved in competing for the bid.
Boston 2024 supporters also met with former Gov. Mitt Romney this week at the Boston 2024 Partnership’s office in Boston’s Seaport district.
Romney, the former president and CEO of the Salt Lake City Organizing Committee, which ran the 2002 Winter Olympic Games, was introduced at the meeting by Steve Pagliuca, co-owner of the Boston Celtics and a former U.S. Senate candidate.
Sun reporter Chelsea Feinstein contributed to this report.