SALT LAKE CITY — Efforts for Utah to host another Winter Olympics moved forward on Wednesday, with the bid committee approving the bulk of a plan to stage the global event.
The Salt Lake City-Utah Committee for the Games board approved a massive plan that will become part of a formal bid to be submitted by the end of this year.
"Which is thousands of pages we've put together. It’s pretty much ready," said Fraser Bullock, the CEO of the committee. "It was approved to be able to be submitted to the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee. So that’s a huge step forward and we’re very excited about that."
The plan involves logistics, infrastructure and even how the Olympic games themselves would be hosted.
"It looked like an incredibly detailed plan," Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall told FOX 13 News. "Use of facilities, how many tickets are possible, the schedule of events even."
Catherine Raney Norman, an Olympic speedskater who chairs the committee, said they have almost got everything ready.
"We have a few more contracts that we’re looking to get finalized and again, continually refining our submission," she said Wednesday.
Salt Lake City is among those places still hammering out the details of contracts, Mayor Mendenhall said. Earlier this year, the Utah State Legislature approved agreements for the state and started allocating some money.
"There’s public security, there’s citywide functions. There would be a lot more people as we know from the last time we hosted the games," she said. "Those kinds of basic city services and contracts we will work out."
Salt Lake City is pushing to host either the 2030 or 2034 Winter Olympics and Paralympics. Giving us an advantage is the fact that Utah successfully staged the 2002 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games. Venues from that time are intact and still in use. Public opinion polling also shows significant support for Utah hosting a future games.
"We are at 82% is our most recent poll. I think a lot of that is at our existing venues we have, we try to embrace the community in conjunction with those Olympic and Paralympic athletes and high performance," Raney Norman said.
Mayor Mendenhall said Salt Lake City should know by this fall with greater certainty which Olympics we could be awarded and the degree of confidence that the International Olympic Committee would even pick us.
"Our bid is so strong. We are extremely confident we will get a games either in '30 or '34," said Bullock.
