What does Northern Nevada have in common with the Ukraine? Both have announced intentions to bid for hosting the 2022 Winter Olympics.
Hosting the Winter Olympics in our area has been a project since 1955, resulting in the 1960 Squaw Valley Olympics. Get this ... 50 years later, that legacy still is a draw to bringing folks into our area. Once you become known as an Olympic site, it can project a community onto an international stage for decades as a tourist destination of choice.
The current bid efforts have their roots back in the 1980s. This resulted in the creation of the Nevada Commission on Sports in 1989. Reno has been bidding for Winter Olympics events since 1987, missing out on the U.S. bid rights to Anchorage in 1992 and 1994, then to Salt Lake for the 1998 and 2002 Games. We all know that Salt Lake City finally won the International selection and hosted the Winter Olympic Games in 2002.
Gov. Kenny Guinn made new appointments to the NCOS, which resulted in the eventual founding in 2001 of the Reno Tahoe Winter Games Coalition as a non-profit corporation. Its sole function was to spearhead the bid efforts independent of, but with full cooperation with the NCOS. The current Chairman of the Board for this non-profit corporation is none other than our Lt. Gov., Brian Krolicki. The CEO is a highly energetic and enthusiastic Jon Killoran.
In talking with Killoran recently, I acquired a major dose of excitement regarding Reno/Tahoe's chances for winning the potential U.S. Olympic Committee's selection to represent the United States for the bid on the 2022 Winter Olympic Games. (Our main competition? Denver, very beatable since their closest mountain resorts are a long ... long drive away, and Reno/Tahoe accesses more than 15 million local potential attendees.)
He asked me to imagine for a minute, the injection of billions into our local economy between now and 2022, $2 billion of which is just in the actual Olympic year. Then he pointed out that that was just the beginning of a long-term revenue injection into an Olympic community. The residual tourist revenues would last for decades afterward. I wondered what would be the impact on permanent entertainment related jobs in our area? (Obviously, it would be significant.) One BIG help would be the more near term construction jobs created for getting ready for an Olympic event.
Killoran pointed out that there are corporate sponsors nationally, and regionally (counting all the way over to the San Francisco Bay Area and Silicon Valley), that makes this a very attainable achievement. One key missing ingredient might be a large enough stadium for opening/closing and medal ceremonies. I'm wondering if anybody thinks that the University of Nevada Wolf Pack is long overdue for a new football stadium?
One last thing. Killoran told me the Reno Tahoe Winter Games Coalition is almost exclusively funded by private donations, with the exception being a three-year grant from the Nevada Commission on Tourism of only $10,000. If you want to help Jon and the Board of Directors of the Reno Tahoe Winter Games Coalition make this dream a reality, you can go to their website www.renotahoewintergames.org to make a donation. I did.
• Kelly Bullis is a Certified Public Accountant in Carson City. Contact him at 882-4459.