With or without the games

Daley plans new land, housing even if we don't get Olympics

Mayor Daley is so gung-ho about plans for a $1.1 billion Olympic Village, the new south lakefront community will be built -- on air rights over a truck staging area for McCormick Place -- whether or not Chicago hosts the 2016 Summer Olympic Games, officials said Tuesday.

That means 37 acres of new lakefront land, 5,000 units of market-rate and affordable housing and hotels with up to 1,000 rooms. A pair of pedestrian bridges over Lake Shore Drive also are planned to give South Siders lakefront access they've never had.

"The Prudential Building was built on air rights. North Wacker Drive is built on air rights. Chicago has a great history of creating really important land value out of air rights [and] building over impediments. ... Millennium Park is that," said Chicago 2016 Chairman Pat Ryan.

"The city is so excited about this development that it will go forward irrespective of whether we win. ... This new lakefront living will be like the North Side. They'll look out onto Burnham Park, a beach and the new harbor at 31st Street. It'll be the same kind of living. ... There will be an access point over the Outer Drive for the Near South Side. That's a major urban legacy we're creating."

If Daley's Olympic dreams do come true, the Olympic Village will be the cash cow that helps finance construction of an 80,000-seat, $366 million temporary stadium in Washington Park.

The stadium -- and 5,000-seat, "Ravinia-esque" amphitheater left behind -- would be financed, in part, by $50 million in rights fees paid by Olympic Village developers.

The remaining $300 million in soup-to-nuts stadium construction funds would come from "domestic sponsorships" sold to corporations interested in tying their names to the 2016 Olympics, officials said.

Ryan said a "nationally known construction company" has examined the design and committed to building the stadium for $366 million -- with inflationary adjustments for labor and materials. That's even though there will be an open competition.

A half-dozen developers have also signed "letters of intent" to bid on an Olympic Village expected to include anywhere from eight to 16 "condo towers."

That should provide the guarantee the U.S. Olympic Committee needs to choose Chicago over Los Angeles to advance to an international competition expected to include: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Tokyo; Madrid, Spain; Istanbul, Turkey; Doha, Qatar, and, possibly, New Delhi, India.

"If there's uncertainty on the regulatory [or financing] side, we won't win. We know that. We're getting rid of the uncertainty," Ryan said, predicting that a Chicago Olympics would generate a surplus in the "hundreds of millions of dollars."

With 15,000 fewer seats than originally planned, the stadium-in-a-park includes a partial roof, 117 luxury suites, and club seats to generate even more revenue. Two-thirds of the seats would be located in a temporary grandstand. The stadium would be wrapped in photographs of Olympic heroes to cover an otherwise mundane temporary skin. There would be no parking, putting a premium on an Olympic transportation system to be developed in conjunction with CTA.

Doug Arnot, director of sports and operations for Chicago 2016, also revealed that the rowing venue originally planned for an area "from 31st Street all the way south to the state of Michigan" has been moved to Monroe Harbor.

The change will require construction of a $60 million jetty and the temporary relocation of up to 1,000 private boats currently docked there.

But Arnot said the payoff would be well worth it.

"This venue is the signature of the Chicago Games. It gives the world a daily view of the lake, the parks, the skyline," rnot said. "It's gonna be spectacular."

fspielman@suntimes.com