Venue News & Notes: A Secondary School of Olympic Proportions

In the spirit of renewable resources, the 2012 London Olympics committee announced this week that the main stadium for the Games will be recycled after the Closing Ceremonies and turned into a secondary school. After the Games, the 80,000-capacity stadium will be scaled back to a 25,000-seat venue where 500 students from the National Skills Academy for sports and leisure industries and the English Institute of Sport will attend secondary school.

The main stadium for the 2012 London Olympics will be used after the games to house a secondary school and stage annual track meets. But an official in charge of ensuring that the $13.7 million project provides an enduring legacy for London acknowledged that the stadium cannot make money or break even after the Olympics…

…John Furlong is organizing the 2010 Winter Olympics in the midst of a global economic crisis. Yet, as he looked out on a sunny day here last week, he wished for more gloom: a heavy dose of rain and snow for test events at the Olympic venues. “What we need between now and the end of March are some weather-related challenges for things like transportation and spectator services,” said Furlong, CEO of the committee organizing the Vancouver Winter Games, which start Feb. 12. “We need to be faced with some adversity that way.”…

…The Pro Bowl would return to Honolulu in 2011 and 2012 under the terms of an offer NFL officials presented to the state last week. The annual all-star game, which has been played in Hawaii since 1980, will be played in Miami’s Dolphin Stadium next year, a week before the Super Bowl is played in Miami. Hawaii’s response to the NFL’s offer will be determined by the Hawaii Tourism Authority, the agency that had contracted with the NFL to bring the Pro Bowl to Hawaii…

…The Indianapolis Capital Improvement Board outlined its first round of cuts a week after the city revealed that Lucas Oil Stadium is operating $20 million in the red. The board also outlined plans to turn down the heat and turn off the lights when the stadium is not in use, as well as to cut the budget for supplies. With an overall deficit estimated at $25 million and projected to grow to $45 million in coming years, nearly $6 million may be a small start, but board members said it’s just the beginning of a long process…

…The St. Louis Rams’ stadium is getting a bit of a facelift for next season. The city’s Convention and Visitors Commission on Monday announced $30 million in upgrades at the Edward Jones Dome required by the team’s lease agreement. The downtown facility opened in 1995, and terms of the lease require the city to keep it in the top quarter of the NFL…

…The owner of the minor-league Dayton Bombers hockey team says he wants to build a hockey arena in downtown Dayton. The Bombers currently play at the Nutter Center in suburban Fairborn. Costa Papista is proposing a location where the arena could be connected to a major downtown hotel and Dayton Convention Center…

…There was public comment at Tuesday night’s Fremont, CA, City Council meeting about the proposed ballpark for the Oakland A’s, but the real noise came from the neighborhood where a stadium might be built. More than 350 people lined up along Warm Springs Boulevard in Fremont to demonstrate against any ballpark for this city…

…The Vikings’ frustration in their quest for a new stadium is reaching a boiling point. That became evident when Lester Bagley, the team’s VP of public affairs and stadium development, provided biting remarks Wednesday about the lack of engagement from Gov. Tim Pawlenty and intimated that the clock could be ticking on the Vikings’ time in Minnesota if something doesn’t happen in the current legislative session…

…New York House members want the Obama administration to ignore the little-town blues of a couple of out-of-state congressmen who want a $400 million stadium-naming deal between Citigroup and the New York Mets to disappear. The six New Yorkers came to the defense of Citigroup’s 20-year naming-rights deal for Citi Field, the Mets’ new stadium scheduled to open in April. Last month, Reps. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) and Ted Poe (R-TX) urged Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to demand that Citigroup cancel the deal because the bank received $45 billion in government aid.