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CNN Live At Daybreak

Melinda McKay of Jones Lang LaSalle Discusses Economic Benefits to Olympics Host

Aired July 16, 2001 - 08:24   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
COLLEEN MCEDWARDS, CNN ANCHOR: The Olympics have a new boss. The International Olympic Committee has elected Jacques Rogge of Belgium to an eight-year term, replacing Juan Antonio Samaranch, of Spain.

The two met with reporters in Moscow, including our Patrick Snell, who's there.

PATRICK SNELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Colleen, that's right: the Samaranch era has officially come to an end after 21 years. Now all eyes will be focusing on the 59-year old orthopedic surgeon from Belgium, Jacques Rogge.

Out of all the candidates, in terms of sporting politics, he was perhaps the man with the least experience -- but his very, very widespread reputation is of being a smooth diplomat; an IOC problem solver, if you like; and a man widely credited with organizing the phenomenally successful Sydney, Australia, Games last year.

Rogge has a great sporting background himself. He competed in the '68, '72, and '76 Olympic Games, as a sailor, and also played rugby for his country, and is today happy to share center stage with the outgoing president, Juan Antonio Samaranch -- and a really lovely touch when he presented Samaranch himself with an Olympic Gold Medal for his own achievements. Absolutely typical of the man -- smooth talking -- and a very, very popular decision.

Now a word about the rivals he beat. Rogge in the second round of voting, he won. He totaled 59 votes. That was well clear of his closest rival, the South Korean politician Un-yong Kim, who got 23 votes. That's one clear of the Canadian lawyer, Dick Pound.

So the new IOC president, the Belgian Jacques Rogge -- Colleen.

MCEDWARDS: All right, thanks very much, Patrick.

BRIAN NELSON, CNN ANCHOR: And our next guest is Melinda McKay. She's the senior vice president of a company called Jones Lang LaSalle. This is a firm that did an Olympic study on the long-term impact that cities who've received the Olympic Games are able to benefit from. And they've gone back and studied Sydney, Atlanta, Barcelona, and Seoul.

So we now introduce Melinda McKay.

Let's talk about Beijing.

First of all, thank you for being with us, Ms. McKay.

Why the study and who paid for it -- very quickly.

MELINDA MCKAY, JONES LANG LASALLE: The study was done based on the fact that I was actually in Sydney last year, and I was seeing firsthand what was happening in the markets, the sort of infrastructure developments that were occurring and I thought it would be very interesting for our clients to actually take a look at what happened in past host cities and see if there were any consistencies across that.

NELSON: Summarize what you found.

MCKAY: We found that although there are certainly short-term economic gains to be had from the Olympics -- between $3 billion and $17 billion, depending on which of the past four host cities you look at. But really, the long-term legacy is in the change to the urban form of the city. At least the past four Olympic host cities have really used the Games to revitalize rundown urban areas.

NELSON: All right and what would be the biggest example you'd like to point to?

MCKAY: I would take the Sydney experience, because as I said before, I was seeing it first hand. They essentially turned the Olympic Village from a munitions dump -- it was an unusable industrial front -- into the world's most environmentally friendly suburb.

And if you take the Atlanta example, they spent $1 billion on capital works as a result of the Games and have revitalized the downtown area.

NELSON: In Atlanta, there was a change, in a sense, to the infrastructure around the Centennial Park, which was created to honor the Olympics. But by and large, some people may question whether all of this was worth the millions and millions -- or maybe I should say billions of dollars -- that are poured into getting the Olympic Games. Does it really balance out?

MCKAY: I really do think it does, if you just take a pure look at the net economic gain that is measured from the Olympic Games -- and it, as I said before, ranges between $3 billion and $17 billion, and that's just the short-term gain; you've got the long-term changes to the urban form, which are just tremendous.

NELSON: For residents of Beijing, if the city goes ahead and keeps its promises, what should residents be seeing by the year 2008 to their city?

MCKAY: The Beijing of 2008 will definitely be significantly different from the city that we see now. Beijing is spending $12.2 billion on environmental improvements and antipollution measures. They're spending $3.7 billion on transport infrastructure. They are turning their Olympic Village -- the Olympic Green -- into a 200-acre park, and they're surrounding that by a nature park as well. So there are very exciting changes that we'll see for Beijing.

NELSON: Thank you very much for taking the time to talk to us this morning, Melinda McKay, from Jones Lang LaSalle, and we appreciate your being here.

MCKAY: Thank you.

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