Recently on Chicago Boyz I saw a post about the re-opening of St. Pancras railway station in London. I was in London recently and was very impressed with the size and scale of the building as well as the renovation.
Upper left – patrons the bar in the train station. Upper right – the lights in the high vaulted ceiling. Lower left – the Eurostar train station connecting to Europe. Lower middle – the eerie faux-reflection in the glasses on the base of the statue in the station. Lower bottom – the view of the station from the side.
Highly recommended to walk through it if you are in London.
Cross posted at LITGM
That statue is creepy, in a “nasty clown” kinda way.
And the Eurostar terminal: why there are Olympic rings?
Because their gov’t foolishly bid for the 2012 Olympics, as part of their program to piss away as much money as they could on useless projects. The rings are to remind people.
Be grateful that the Smartest Man on The Planet botched it for Chicago.
Renminbi,
“Because their gov’t foolishly bid for the 2012 Olympics, as part of their program to piss away as much money as they could on useless projects. The rings are to remind people.
Be grateful that the Smartest Man on The Planet botched it for Chicago.”
You got it just about cold there, friend. So far, this enormous boondoggle named the Olympics has cost we Brits somewhere around £6.5 Billion, and we are a year way from opening. As with Athens, now loaded down with totally underused and over-costly stadiums and ancillary buildings and track, as with South Africa, with six new, hugely expensive and totally-underused World Cup stadia to pay for, we have the ‘Olympic Legacy’ to look forward to with an Athletics stadium which is going to a football (soccer to you Yanks) ground, to be played upon by a team named West Ham who have just been demoted because they are useless, a swimming and diving hall which is too expensive to run; an award-winning Cycling hall which will be used approximately four times a year, and all the other bullshit connected with this glorious time of ‘Spending Other People’s Money’ without worrying about anything!
The only thing which we don’t have to worry about is the knowledge that we shall surely produce the most toe-curlingly embarrassing Opening Ceremony, as it is costed and run upon two shoe-strings. We are also certain that we may be crap at building things, but at least we on’t be lying about the ‘Special effects’as happened in Beijing.
Renminbi: oh, I am. You can be sure of that. Although everything else that The One manged to accomplish cost more, and what’s worse – will cost even dearer.
Mike,
there is something I don’t understand. As far as I know, in projects of this size, as in all capital improvement investments, first phase is usually Master Planning. Which includes studies by urban planners and their recommendations for further use of the built complexes. Have it been discussed, publicly? Swimming and diving hall, as well as velo-track could be sold to a gym chain, isn’t it? I’m sure those guys would make it profitable.
One of the few things that California has done well since the 1950s was the 1984 Olympics. The cycling events were in Mission Viejo. The course was a roughly oval street, now called “Olympiad” that was integrated into the community. Of course, credit for this should be given to Peter Uberroth who lived in Laguna Beach at the time.
He and Clint Eastwood and Arnold Palmer later bought Pebble Beach Golf Course. The only smarter investor I know of was Marvin Davis who once bought Pebble Beach for $300 million, then about five years later, sold it to Japanese investors for $ 1 billion. A few years later, after the Japanese bubble burst, he bought it back for $300 million from the same man.
A nice $700 million profit for a guy who didn’t need it. He’s dead but if I had money to invest, I would keep an eye on Uberroth.
I was sort of hoping that Chicago would have got the Olympics, for the selfish reason that the road cycling events would have been held here in Madison, since there is nary a hill around Chicago. So Wisco would have gotten some of the benefit, by doing nothing more than setting up some barriers for the race. Also, I think Wisco would have gotten some of the shooting events because you can’t dishcarge a weapon in Chicago but I think Indiana wanted a piece of that as well.
It is better for the US in general that we did not get the Olympics though. Then again, what difference does it make for Chicago and the state of Illinois, they already have billions that there is no way they will ever pay back, why not a few more.