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Organizers of the Pan Am Games justify the spectacle’s cost by pointing, in part, to the legacy of infrastructure it will leave behind: new stadiums, pools and that shiny new train to the airport.

Yet a glimpse at just one line item in the $2.5-billion Games budget — tent rentals — illustrates the extent to which such events inevitably lavish money on temporary facilities of lesser benefit to the local economy.

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TO2015, the organizing committee for the Pan Am Games, is renting 784 tents for the sports spectacle at a total cost of $8.1-million, organizers say. That’s an average of $10,000 per rented tent.

Many of the tents are simple, four-sided, open shelters, not much larger than you might find at a backyard barbecue. In fact, the tent-rental bill does not include the cost of the largest tent at the Games — the dining hall in the athletes’ village — for which organizers did not provide a price tag.