
How America Converted Its 1980 Olympic Village into a Prison - thisjustinm
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-time-that-the-us-turned-an-olympic-village-into-a-prison
======
brudgers
One of the first buildings completed for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics was the
Atlanta City Detention Center.[1] It was in preparation for arresting the
homeless in bulk.[2]

[1]:
[http://www.atlantaga.gov/index.aspx?page=201](http://www.atlantaga.gov/index.aspx?page=201)

[2]: [http://www.nytimes.com/1996/07/01/us/as-olympics-approach-
ho...](http://www.nytimes.com/1996/07/01/us/as-olympics-approach-homeless-are-
not-feeling-at-home-in-atlanta.html?pagewanted=all)

~~~
peterwwillis
Actually much cheaper to give them all bus tickets out of town, like Portland,
Tampa, Fort Lauderdale, Sarasota, San Diego, San Francisco, NYC, Colorado
Springs, Houston, Las Vegas, and other cities have done. But Prisons probably
generated more profits.

~~~
gcb0
your thinking is not as far from sending then to prison as you might like
think it is...

~~~
peterwwillis
It's not "my thinking". And it can be worse than sending them to prison.
Neither are good options.

------
drawkbox
_... The protest group STOP encouraged European countries to write letters of
disapproval to the U.S. government. They also stressed the stark contrast
between international models of criminal justice and the emerging American
model—as Holland, Sweden, Japan, England, and others were reducing their use
of prisons in favor of community sanctions, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons
had doubled its number of prisons in the previous ten years._

 _As controversy peaked in 1979, Ramsey Clark, the former Attorney General
under President Lyndon B. Johnson, testified that the controversy about the
Lake Placid project wasn’t just about Lake Placid, or the symbolism of the
Olympics—this would be a litmus test for the future of incarceration in
America. “We are going to be masters of our destiny or the victim,” he told
Congress. “It’s precisely the psychology of the prison, that once it is built
you believe you have to fill them up.”_

The people in opposition were right on this one.

~~~
dmix
Interesting, this wasn't just a modern problem. But a long standing issue in
American history - even connected to their 1980s Olympics.

------
kafkaesq
Being as we've not only basically made mass incarceration into our national
sport; but have racked up the gold, year after year in this "sport", since
then -- this actually seems a fitting and poetic tribute to our collective
character, and what we stand for as a nation in the eyes of the world.

~~~
tn13
Civil forfeitures is another sport that USA always wins at.

~~~
meric
$5 billion from Civil Forfeiture vs $4 billion from Burglary.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/23/cops-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/23/cops-
took-more-stuff-from-people-than-burglars-did-last-year/)

~~~
sandworm101
Wage theft trumps all:

"If these findings in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles are generalizable to
the rest of the U.S. low-wage workforce of 30 million, wage theft is costing
workers more than $50 billion a year."

[http://www.epi.org/publication/epidemic-wage-theft-
costing-w...](http://www.epi.org/publication/epidemic-wage-theft-costing-
workers-hundreds/)

Contrary to popular belief, wage theft is a criminal act rather than a
contractual dispute. Wrongfully withholding or sequestering a person's
property is just as illegal as taking it from their hands.

~~~
tn13
Whoever wrote that does not know what is theft. Theft is when someone forcibly
takes away your wealth irrespective of what the law says. Taxation for example
is undoubtedly a theft but legalized one and something that most of us don't
mind in principle though we might disagree about rates.

> This failure to pay what workers are legally entitled to can be called wage
> theft;

That is totally dumb. If a legal entitlement is denied it is a violation of
law but not necessarily violation of a person's private property. I have
happily worked more than 8 hours for my employer so many times and done unpaid
internships happily even though the employer likely broke several labor laws.
I think I gained from it.

Even more importantly those people who think they are getting a raw deal can
leave immediately or sue the employer.

~~~
kafkaesq
_Theft is when someone forcibly takes away your wealth irrespective of what
the law says._

I think he's choosing to go by a different definition -- namely where "theft"
is when you're deprived of what's justly yours by whatever unethical means;
not simply when the law proscribes it as such. Or in other word: based more on
an intuitive sense of fairness (or "natural law"), rather than what's on the
books.

Granted, it's a fuzzier definition, and you may not particularly like it. But
I'm just saying, it's a different one.

~~~
tn13
I don't think like gender words too should be treated as some sort of rainbow
and treated in an arbitrary fashion. There is a good reason why we humans
think of "theft" as a bad thing. The author uses a "different definition" yet
while trying to benefit from the negative connotation of the word's commonly
understood meaning.

This is the same trick that advertisers use (Police don't like this new
insurance rule) or politicians deploy (calling a person sexual offender when
he was merely peeing in open) but I think journalists should show far more
sense.

~~~
kafkaesq
That wasn't my take from the article. If anything, it sounds like he's calling
out employers for profiting (significantly) from the same kind of word-bending
you're describing: by telling low-wage earners, when they show up for work the
first day, "Oh BTW, you're not getting paid for setting up and tearing down
your workspace each day. Because you know, that's not really work."

BTW it may be more accurate to describe the authors as policy researchers,
rather than journalists.

------
randyrand
What do you do with 500 dorm rooms in the middle of nowhere?

Honestly this seems like the perfect use case. Theres not enough demand at
lake placid to use them as apartments.

~~~
okreallywtf
It may be a pragmatic approach but thats part of the issue in the Olympics in
general - building a lot of stuff (on the public dime) that will likely never
have a use again. We're "lucky" enough that we always need more prison space
but a much better (and in the long term, more pragmatic) case would be to need
less prisons by not incarcerating so many non-violent minor "criminals".

~~~
mstade
Not disagreeing with you, but would like to offer a counter story. I
personality live in what used to be an Olympic villag. Or, more accurately,
was _supposed_ to be the Olympic village in the bid for Stockholm as the host
city of the 2004 summer olympics. Interestingly, just like the Rio olympics
the theme was environmental sustainability. The bid failed, but they went
ahead with the plans anyway, and now it's lauded as a major success in urban
redevelopment, taking what used to be a run down harbor and factory area which
had mostly turned into a really shady part of town, and making it a great
place for people to live and work. An old waste dump is now repurposed as a
ski slope, and even hosted the Ski World Cup is past winter.

While not technically an Olympic development, the idea was always to build a
village that could then serve as a new residential area, and goes to show that
the olympics can very much be the necessary catalyst in getting major
developments off the ground. If IOC wanted to, they could absolutely push for
all sorts of change by forming host requirements thereafter. They may want to
claim they're non-political, but I don't think that's even possible on the
kind of scale they operate.

~~~
wineisfine
This is just an example of smart Scandinavians being 3 steps ahead again. I
wonder what'll happen with the Brazil built Olympic villages.

~~~
mstade
Let's be honest, we do some dumb shit too, just like everyone else. But this
particular story I like very much. It was laughed at by a lot of people before
the development began, it was too expensive, nobody would like it, the design
was terrible etc.; and now it's a highly sought after area to live in
Stockholm. I'm quite proud of my neighborhood, I'm sure you can tell. I've
lived there for over nine years as well, so I've seen the developments up
close all this time, and it's been an amazing transformation! When I first
moved in, it was mostly a construction area. Thankfully we had a grocery store
and most other necessities in place very early on, but other non-essentials
like pubs and the likes took a while. It's still a quiet part of town (which I
like) but now we have a couple of really nice restaurants and such in place as
well. I think in a world filled with terribly planned urban developments,
Hammarby Sjöstad[1] stands out as an example where you can get things right.
(They got a lot of things wrong as well, but have largely managed to
successfully course correct along the way.)

[1]: [http://www.thenatureofcities.com/2014/02/12/hammarby-
sjostad...](http://www.thenatureofcities.com/2014/02/12/hammarby-sjostad-a-
new-generation-of-sustainable-urban-eco-districts/) (This link says the bid
was for the 2012 olympics, which I think is true as well, but the initial
planning was for the 2004 bid I believe and when they failed they continued
with the planning and tried again for 2012. I may very well be wrong though.)

------
fluxquanta
I live just a few miles from Lake Placid, and have for most of my life. It's
unfortunate, but this area still relies heavily on the correctional system for
the local economy. Along with a majority of the manufacturing jobs up here, it
too has begun to shrink, however, and it's really turning the North Country
(as we call it) into a rural slum.

I'm not opposed to downsizing the amount of incarcerated people, for sure, but
the void isn't being filled, and many of the communities up here are taking a
turn for the worse.

~~~
maxxxxx
Maybe they could hand out cash directly. Using prisons to support a local
economy is probably the most inefficient way to go about it.

~~~
Spooky23
If you gave people money, they'd want to do something with it, like improve
their home, and they would then run afoul of the various regulations up there.

It's probably the most rural and isolated area on the east coast other than
northern Maine. I87 had almost zero phone service north of Lake George due to
cell tower siting regulations. That only changed because a Orthodox Jewish
couple traveling from Montreal senselessly died of exposure after a minor car
accident. That incident triggered a big uproar in the community in NYC and
elsewhere and led to a change in the rules.

All of Northern New York is a "park", and it's impossible to do anything. The
State is mostly exempt from its own rules, so prisons are pretty much the only
thing that you can build. As a another commenter said, it's a rural ghetto.

------
jcbeard
Hmm, maybe we should have gone with something more useful...like a free
vocational school w/on-site free/low cost daycare and perhaps a primary
school? I'm finding the biggest issue with people changing careers is doing so
while taking care of kids. Enough free space, and it'd seem like something
society would go for...then again, say "tax" and 1/2 the population turns off
instantly.

~~~
sevensor
Maybe that guy from Utah who wants to build a utopian city in Vermont could be
persuaded to consider upstate New York instead?

~~~
spqr0a1
Not likely near lake placid. Many land uses within the Adirondacks require a
constitutional amendment.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_Preserve_%28New_York%29...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_Preserve_%28New_York%29#Article_14)

Much of central and western new york has a similarly depressed economy without
quite that level of regulatory burden. So there's plenty more of upstate to
choose from.

------
tn13
Prisons in America is a massive scam and so tightly linked with war on drugs.
American government is like the Mafia boss while the City officials acting
like henchmen. The first time I read about "civil forfeitures" I felt like
someone kicked me in the balls.

But here is my favorite "Prison Project" story.

Kaiser Steel started a mining project in California in 1942 or so called
"Eagle Mountain". A town was built for the workers (around 4k) and it was a
very busy town until 1980s. Environment regulation killed the mining business
and Kaiser left the place in ruins.

State of California then spend millions of dollars to convert the ghost town
into a correctional facility in 1988. State could not budget it properly and
one insane prison riot that got few people killed the prison was closed. This
prison was privately operated and not sure how many people benefited by the
whole scam.

CA then decided to convert the abandoned mine into a giant landfill (the
mining was problematic for environment but somehow the landfill was not!) and
after spending few more millions of our money the project of abandoned too or
perhaps it is still being planned on paper.

The best part is however today the entire ghost town is closed and there are
some people appointed just to make sure no one trace-passes over a town that
no one wants to live into.

I am not even sure who owns the land, the buildings and who is spending the
money to keep it fenced etc.

------
SolarNet
The core idea here was good. Re-purposing these villages after use.

Now if only we could do that in the modern day, with support from the IOC, and
turn them into something positive. For example turn them into schools,
homeless shelters, libraries, something along those lines.

~~~
tzs
> The core idea here was good. Re-purposing these villages after use.

Even better, hold the Olympics in places where there are already facilities
that can temporarily be re-purposed for the Olympics, and then go back to
their normal purpose.

That's what happened for the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. For housing
the athletes they used student housing at the University of Southern
California. If Los Angeles gets the 2024 Summer Olympics they plan to use
student housing at UCLA for athletes and coaches, and student housing at USC
for media housing.

For athletic venues, only two needed to be built. They built a velodrome and a
swim center. For the rest they were able to use facilities already present: LA
Memorial Coliseum, LA Memorial Sports Arena, Dodger Stadium, The Forum, Long
Beach Convention Center, Rose Bowl, Long Beach Arena, Anaheim Convention
Center, along with the athletic facilities at several colleges and
universities (UCLA, Cal State LA, USC, Loyola Marymount, Cal State Fullerton,
East LA College, Pepperdine).

The combination of low construction costs from being able to use so much
existing infrastructure, and the use of corporate sponsorship to pay for the
things that did need to be built (it was the McDonald's swim stadium and the
7-Eleven velodrome) resulting in the 1984 Olympics running a profit of more
than $200 million.

I was living in Pasadena at the time. I had expected the Olympics to be a pain
in the ass due to increased traffic...but it turned out to have no negative
effect that I could see.

In retrospect, that should not have been too surprising. There are times of
the year where the pro baseball, basketball, American football, and hockey
seasons overlap, along with various college sports seasons. One could easily
have a day with several team sporting events going on that will each draw a
large crowd. On top of that you could have a major concert or two going on.

In other words, Los Angeles already can handle many simultaneous major events.
The Olympics is bigger than that, but not by anywhere near as big a factor as
it would be in cities that do not have so many popular pro and college team
sports and so many world class concert venues.

~~~
Declanomous
I'm really glad Chicago didn't get the Olympics. I think it could have been
structured to be positive for the city, but our politicians are either the
most corrupt in the country, the most incompetent, or some combination of
both.[1] For instance, right before he left office, longtime Mayor Richard M.
Daley struck a number of legendarily bad deals.

The city installed red light cameras, and there is a bribery scandal going on
regarding that deal. The city leased the parking meters for a billion dollars,
but the contract is almost an object lesson in what not to do as a city. Rates
for parking more than doubled, and now Chicago has the highest parking rates
in the nation. The city is forced to pay whenever a spot is unavailable or is
removed, for the entire duration it is unavailable. If the city wants to put
in a bike lane, they have to pay something like $26k per parking spot vacated.
If they want to close a street for a festival, they have to pay as if the
parking spots were at 100% occupancy for the entire duration of the festival.
The city gave up a massive amount of city planning ability as a result of that
deal. [3] (added as an edit)

Furthermore, both Illinois and Chicago failed to pay into the pension plans
they have promised their workers, leading to a massive budget crisis. Chicago
and Illinois are basically forced to pay for pensions as they come up rather
than paying with money that had been gaining interest over the length of the
employees tenure. On top of that, Illinois is one of the few states that do
not tax retirement income, compounding the problem. (Which makes sense, cause
retirees vote, but I digress)

On top of that, Chicago has the third-highest number of police per-capita in
the nation, after Baltimore and Washington DC. Our police have routinely been
caught lying under oath. Our former States Attorney, Anita Alverez, (who is
actually the mother of a friend, unfortunately) was a joke, who refused to
charge police officers for lying under oath. She otherwise took a tough-on-
crime policy, and pursued harsh sentences and supported the policies that
basically set the police at odds with minority communities in the city. She
would bend over backwards to defend convictions that had been overturned, once
suggesting that a man cleared of rape may have been engaging in necrophilia.
Policies like these led to Chicago being titled "The False Confession
Capital"[2].

And while you could probably hide as many people in Chicago as in LA, the
transit situation would be a nightmare, because all transit is centered around
being able to go to the loop. So you'd have everyone trying to go through the
same area, unlike the more distributed system that exists in LA.

All of this is a real shame. Chicago is a great city, one which I'd sincerely
like to share with the world. The centerpiece of the Olympics would have been
in an area of the city that is undervalued and under-visited. The plan also
did a great job of spreading the competitions around and using the existing
infrastructure. For instance, the kayaking competition was going to be held 90
miles away in South Bend Indiana, where a whitewater kayaking course already
exists.

[1] “If [Illinois] isn’t the most corrupt state in the United States,” he
said, “it is certainly one hell of a competitor.”

[http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-
Magazine/December-2010/Why...](http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-
Magazine/December-2010/Why-Is-Illinois-So-Corrupt-Local-Government-Experts-
Explain/)

[2] From 60 Minutes - Alverez suggest necrophilia as a possible reason who

[http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50136707n](http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50136707n)

[3]
[http://www.chicagoreader.com/Bleader/archives/2015/02/19/may...](http://www.chicagoreader.com/Bleader/archives/2015/02/19/mayor-
emanuel-says-he-reformed-the-parking-meter-deal-but-he-actually-sold-off-more-
of-the-city-streets)

~~~
cornchips
Good stuff.

> On top of that, Illinois is one of the few states that do not tax retirement
> income, compounding the problem. (Which makes sense, cause retirees vote,
> but I digress)

Taxed for a lifetime and taxes until death.. Given the current failing
socialist system, when should it sensibly end?

> All of this is a real shame. Chicago is a great city, one which I'd
> sincerely like to share with the world.

Don't share too much unless you want increased population, even worse traffic,
higher rent, and even higher taxes and temporary property values. Flies on
shit...

An Olympics here would leave the same devastation it usually does however good
the plan seemed. Re-engineering all for the purposes of money grabs and a
short term event.

[http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-chicagoans-
proposed-20...](http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-chicagoans-
proposed-2016-olympic-venues-20160708-premiumvideo.html)

------
bbarn
I feel like part of the problem here is the IOC and trying to "win" having the
Olympics.

A more sensible approach would be temporary housing, akin more to trailers and
inexpensive pop up temporaries rather than plush living. These athletes don't
need to be treated like royalty. Heck, most of them are used to competing out
of cars and cheap motels when on the road because they make so little money.
(emphasis on most, not all). Basically something like a FEMA response with a
little more class and forethought put into it.

Instead we have cities trying to show how grand and massive these buildings
will be, rather than how practical and well put on the event can be. I was
honestly thrilled when Chicago lost the bid for 2016 to Rio. That chaos the
rest of the world is talking about now would be in my back yard, and
potentially even worse given the density of our city, and the poor strength of
our government.

~~~
Gracana
One of the things they talk about in the article is building structures that
can be moved and used elsewhere after the event, which seems like a pretty
good solution.

------
barney54
Now if they could only put the crooks that run the IOC in prison...

------
Houshalter
What a practical solution. We hear story after story of how hosting the
Olympics costs more than it's worth and ruins neighborhoods. Here they found a
place that already had many of the facilities needed, and found a way to pay
for the cost of building new ones. And it even gave jobs and income to the
local economy long afterwards. I really can not understand how anyone could be
against this.

Of course we all wish the war on drugs would stop, that sentences would be
reduced, etc. But until that happens we can't just ignore the problem.
Overcrowded prisons are awful and seriously harm the quality of life for the
prisoners. Additionally, even with normal population growth, you would
eventually need to build new prisons. And significantly reducing the prison
population is actually really difficult, as demonstrated by this interactive:
[https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/03/04/how-to-cut-
the...](https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/03/04/how-to-cut-the-prison-
population-by-50-percent)

Surely this new prison would have been built anyway. And if they had built it
someplace else no one would have noticed or cared. Using it to reduce the cost
of the Olympics was a very practical solution that didn't change anything.

~~~
kalleboo
> even with normal population growth, you would eventually need to build new
> prisons

Other countries are _shutting down_ prisons...

[http://qz.com/644914/the-netherlands-keeps-having-to-
close-i...](http://qz.com/644914/the-netherlands-keeps-having-to-close-its-
prisons-due-to-lack-of-prisoners/)

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/11/sweden-
closes-...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/11/sweden-closes-
prisons-number-inmates-plummets)

------
Zigurd
Hosting the Olympics where you already have facilities is ideal, but that's
much harder for the winter Olympics. Building athlete housing and spectator
housing that can be moved would let you have an Olympic Village without it
turning into a ghost town or a prison.

Kasita is an attempt at this: [https://kasita.com/](https://kasita.com/)

But even conventional mobile home manufacturers seem to have taken a hint from
the Tiny House movement and are making trailer homes for hipsters:
[http://www.championhomes.com/park-model-
rv](http://www.championhomes.com/park-model-rv)

------
dmh2000
sounds like a good idea to have some future use for olympic infrastructure
instead of ending up with rotting hulks.
[http://www.indiatimes.com/culture/who-we-are/24-abandoned-
ol...](http://www.indiatimes.com/culture/who-we-are/24-abandoned-olympic-
venues-in-the-world-that-are-the-biggest-example-of-money-down-the-
drain-259876.html)

------
HillaryBriss
Same exact thing happened to the city of Los Angeles after the '84 summer
games. Very few get out alive. Good food though.

------
okonomiyaki3000
Well, the headline says it all, doesn't it?

------
ForFreedom
May be Brazil can do the same

------
derekfletes
right on

~~~
triplesec
just a friendly note as I see you're a newish poster: I know you mean well,
but simple 'me too' posts don't really add any information to the conversation
and may well get you downvoted. Have another look at the HN posting guidelines
because people here are quite particular about keeping a high signal to noise
ratio here!

------
ommunist
Wait, 1980 Olympic games were in Moscow, USSR. It was Winter Olympic games
that took place in Lake Placid in 1980.

I applaud, even the USSR did not built GULAG camps in Olympic villages. What
an exciting time we are living in. Democracy, freedom, you know the drill.

------
X86BSD
Of all the things to convert it to...

It could have been a homeless village. But no we would rather expand space to
continue to be the worlds largest incarcerator of non violent offenders.

Disgusting!

~~~
panzagl
Not many homeless in Lake Placid. I guess you could ship them there, tell them
they can't leave, I wonder if there's a name for a place like that.

~~~
HillaryBriss
lol

