San Francisco puts in chips for 2024 Olympics

An Olympic bid by the city of San Francisco would include a temporary stadium to seat 60,000 for the opening and closing ceremonies and the track and field events, which would be built on the Bayland's Soil Processing land along highway 101, seen on Wednesday Nov. 19, 2014, in San Francisco, Calif. BSP superintendent Jason Barsanyi walks along a ridge of recycled material overlooking the property. less An Olympic bid by the city of San Francisco would include a temporary stadium to seat 60,000 for the opening and closing ceremonies and the track and field events, which would be built on the Bayland's Soil ... more Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 22 Caption Close San Francisco puts in chips for 2024 Olympics 1 / 22 Back to Gallery

A $350 million “pop-up” stadium in a Brisbane field. Beach volleyball in front of San Francisco City Hall. Table tennis in Chinatown.

San Francisco is officially bidding on the 2024 Olympics, organizers have disclosed to The Chronicle, and their pitch for the Summer Games will focus on the Bay Area’s distinctions, ingenuity and character.

“We have a lot of reverence for the Olympics ... but there may be some ways to modernize the Games or do it a little differently,” said Giants President and CEO Larry Baer, who is leading the bid committee with venture capitalist Steve Strandberg and Olympic gold medal swimmer Anne Warner Cribbs.

Plenty of uncertainty remains, however, including whether improvements to housing, transportation and other infrastructure are worth the cost of hosting the Games.

Baer acknowledges that their effort is still in “the first inning,” even after a months-long exploratory process that included meeting with U.S. Olympic officials in July.

Previous attempts to host the 2008, 2012 and 2016 Games fell short. This time around, San Francisco is competing against Los Angeles, Boston and Washington, D.C., for the backing of the U.S. Olympic Committee, which is expected to decide early next year whether to pursue the 2024 Olympics and which city to put forward.

Host named in 2017

If the U.S. Olympic Committee names a city, that candidate would face an international field of competitors. The International Olympic Committee is expected to name the host in 2017.

But there also are recurring questions about whether hosting the modern Olympics is even worth the expense.

The 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing are estimated to have cost $44 billion. Last winter’s Games in Sochi, Russia, may have cost even more. Last month, Norway withdrew its bid for Oslo to host the 2022 Winter Games, following at least four other cities that dropped out. Munich was considering a bid for that Olympics, but decided against it after voters rejected the idea in a referendum.

“It looks more and more like a boondoggle,” said Andrew Zimbalist, economics professor at Smith College in Massachusetts and author of the upcoming book “Circus Maximus: The Economic Gamble Behind Hosting the Olympics and World Cup.”

“It’s a very difficult calculus to make work for you,” Zimbalist said. “The modern Olympics costs billions and billions of dollars to host. The recent evidence we have is that it does not increase tourism, even during the Games.”

Host cities or countries are often left with large, expensive venues that have little use after the Games have left town and depleted coffers from major transportation and infrastructure projects.

Mindful of those criticisms, the IOC this week released 40 recommendations to shape the future of the Olympic movement. Among them, an emphasis on reducing the bidding cost for cities, embracing sustainability and emphasizing the use of temporary or existing facilities.

Those points align with the San Francisco vision, which relies heavily on existing venues and temporary structures similar to some used in the London 2012 Summer Olympics.

A regional undertaking

San Francisco would be the official host city, but putting on the Games would be a regional undertaking. Organizers are looking to use venues like an expanded Moscone Center, the new Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, the Earthquakes’ soccer stadium being built in San Jose and Stanford Stadium and Memorial Stadium at UC Berkeley, both recently upgraded.

The proposal for a “Coliseum City” in Oakland, including a new stadium for the Oakland Raiders, could also play a prominent role if that development gets built, Olympic bid organizers said.

The organizers want to build as the centerpiece a temporary stadium on part of a 540-acre parcel just west of Highway 101 along the Caltrain line in Brisbane known as the Baylands. It would hold the Opening and Closing Ceremonies, as well as track and field events.

The Brisbane property is owned by Universal Paragon Corp., which is planning to build office and research facilities as part of a new technology hub, along with an entertainment district, retail and housing. Local bid officials said they were in talks about using the property.

If San Francisco is awarded the Olympics, the current plan is to have the stadium built in the southern portion of the Baylands and then dismantled afterward and replaced with a park. Part of Lennar Urban’s huge development at the nearby Hunters Point and Candlestick Point would provide the Olympic Village for athlete housing.

Costs: $4.5 billion

Private funding from international corporate sponsorships, ticket sales and local sponsorships would cover operating costs that Baer projected at about $4.5 billion.

“Some of this budget could potentially fund and accelerate projects that are in the pipeline for transportation links (and) housing,” Baer said.

Public funds are anticipated to go toward transportation upgrades, including ones already planned, such as the electrification of the Caltrain line and extending it to the Transbay Transit Center now under construction.

Boston has a similar cost projection of $4.5 billion for hosting the 2024 Games, a number Zimbalist dismissed as “a nonsense figure.”

“They don’t know what they’re talking about,” Zimbalist said.

San Franciscans in recent history have been averse to shelling out public dollars for major sporting events. Last year’s America’s Cup was a boon to certain businesses but cost the city $11.5 million, and Mayor Ed Lee was unwilling to make the financial concessions regatta organizers sought to bring back the event.

Olympic bid leaders aren’t touting the Games’ economic benefits, but rather the ability to rally a region around tackling some of its major problems — transportation and housing — while improving San Francisco’s marginalized southeast corner.

“The Olympic Games could give us the economic and civic will to do some things that maybe we should have done a while ago in terms of reconnecting parts of our city,” Strandberg said.

They also just might inspire the next Anne Warner Cribbs, who won a swimming gold in the 1960 Olympics in Rome at age 16.

“Olympians,” said Cribbs, “are just ordinary people who do extraordinary things.”

John Coté is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: jcote@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @johnwcote