No Boston Olympics logo. Screenshot via NoBostonOlympics.org.

These seem like dark times for Boston’s Olympic organizers, whose ambitious efforts to bring the 2024 Summer Games to the Hub have been met with increasing amounts of criticism – criticism that reportedly has the United States Olympic Committee thinking twice about its host-city endorsement.

The level-headed No Boston Olympics group isn’t necessarily responsible for the growing wall of opposition currently staring down Boston 2024. But the awareness campaign No Boston Olympics has been mounting since the early stages of 2014 – one that primarily focuses on the financial risk associated with hosting the three-week sporting event – has certainly given the critics, and undecided skeptics, something to sink their teeth into.

 

 

 

But the group that has become the de facto face of the anti-Olympic movement in the city isn’t as anti as some may want them to be.

“The bid as it stands is not a responsible one,” No Boston Olympics co-chair Chris Dempsey told me during an interview Tuesday morning. So should Boston 2024 succeed in putting a referendum on whether or not the city should bid on the Games on the 2016 ballot, there’s little doubt how Dempsey and his fellow co-chairs Liam Kerr and Kelley Gossett would vote, right?

Dempsey said that “Boston 2024 has a long, long way to go” before No Boston Olympics would even consider the idea of supporting the Hub’s bid at the ballot box come November 2016.

While Dempsey further acknowledged it would be “hard to imagine a world” where he sees No Boston Olympics voting “Yes” on the Olympics at the ballot box more than a year-and-a-half from now, the fact of the matter is, he hasn’t entirely ruled out that possibility.

Dempsey recently told the Boston Globe‘s Joanna Weiss, “If [hosting the Olympics] is the best thing for our city, for our commonwealth, moving forward, if we see a deal that represents that — we’re going to vacate our opposition.”

What if that happened? If No Boston Olympics, however unlikely it may seem, did concede – bow out of the race, so to speak – would all the animosity the masses have shown towards Boston 2024 on social media, and at public meetings, persist? Or would Olympic haters follow suit, except the idea that hosting the Games is in fact the best thing for the city and flock to the polls to vote “Yes?”

“No City Council vote, no vote in the state Legislature, and certainly no referendum. That’s the way the Olympics organizers want it,” MetroWest Opinion Editor Rick Holmes wrote at the beginning of March. Obviously, things have changed with Boston 2024 chairman John Fish flip-flopping on the referendum issue, thanks largely to tanking poll numbers.

One could wonder why Boston 2024 would want to leave the possibility of hosting the Olympics up to a statewide vote, knowing a majority of residents seem to despise the idea. One possible explanation: it buys them time to run a full-fledged political campaign, and possibly win over some of their biggest critics along the way – critics like No Boston Olympics, who appear to be the most adept shaper of public discourse on the Olympics debate at this point in time.

But right now, the possibility of No Boston Olympics jumping their own ship seems highly unlikely. Here’s a portion of the group’s response to questions on whether they had intentions on, for lack of better words, going to the dark side:

So while we’ve made great strides, we aren’t stopping now. Boston2024’s bid asks taxpayers to bear the risk of cost overruns, while the IOC and the USOC walk away with guaranteed payments of hundreds of millions of dollars. The bid is irresponsible and unacceptable — and No Boston Olympics isn’t going anywhere if that doesn’t change.

But the bid could change. “The critics,” Boston 2024 CEO Rich Davey said in Weiss’s earlier report, “at the end of the day, can make us better, can make our bid better, can make our city better.”

Boston 2024 seems to be teetering on the brink of epic failure. But until No Boston Olympics definitively states that there is no chance they will approve of any Boston Olympic bid, the group represents the best chance Boston 2024 has of success.

No Boston Olympics logo. Screenshot via NoBostonOlympics.org.
You can read more stories on Boston startups, technology and innovation at https://www.bizjournals.com/boston/inno