Boston 2024 Chairman Pagliuca Ready for Challenge -- On the Record

(ATR) The new Boston 2024 chairman tellsAround The Ringshehas hit the ground running and believes in the bid's vision.

Steve Pagliuca assumed the chairmanship for the board of directors of Boston 2024 on May 22 and dove right in with a visit to IOC headquarters.

On May 29, the bid visited Lausanne as part of the "invitational phase" for Olympic bids, and by the end of June, Boston 2024 hopes to have a revised plan for Massachusetts citizens to review.

Pagliuca called the bid "transformational" to the city of Boston, and believes the new plan will do wonders to win back citizen support. He sat down with Around the Ringseditor Ed Hula to talk about the past month for Boston 2024, and where the bid expects to go.

This interview has been edited for context and clarity.

Around The Rings: Things can change at any moment, but was this a development you were expecting in the recent months in the past?

Steve Pagliuca: No. I was asked about 10 days ago, and was honored to be asked by John Fish. He convinced me, and he thought that it was very important to get people in with sports experience in here, and I was honored for him to ask me to do it. It's been a great 10 days, I think we've made a lot of progress on our key focus areas which are really finalizing the venue plans, and we've made a lot of progress on that and finalizing the budgets and our plan is to get that out and how people the promise of getting the Olympics in 2024.

ATR: The question that people have when I talk to in different places around the world, why the change at the top of the bid? What are the main reasons for moving John Fish to a vice chairmanship and Steve Pagliuca to the chairmanship?

SP: Well as John described it to me, he really felt like it was going to be critical in phase two, since we already won the bid, to have a chairperson that had sports experience. We also brought in Larry Lucchino as a special adviser, who put up many stadiums, and we brought in Jack Connors. We changed the board structure to make it even more powerful, so he approached me and said that this would be a fantastic thing for the bid and so I spent a few days and got immersed by the details and got excited by it and accepted it. So I think I've been on the job for 10 days now.

ATR: Are you finding its a full time job?

SP: I'm spending all the time I possibly can on it. It's a pretty important job. I'm the chairman, not the president, while John was the president as well as chairman. We have a CEO, we have a CMO and we're filling out the staff, so I'm playing a very active chairman role and my role is to really focus the group on the key priorities which is completing the really exciting venue plans. This could be really transformational for Boston. I was down the road on it, it needs some refinement and needed more community involvement, and we're doing all that and then using those protected venue sites to finalize the budgets and then get that out to the people of Massachusetts and Boston by the end of the month for them to look at. We think that when they see the transformational capabilities and what the Olympics can bring to Boston, they will feel good about it.

I think the IOC will feel good about it because the plan is really transformational for the city and it takes an area that is a tow lot and some storage facilities that kind of sits right in the prime section of town, and it really turns that into a fantastic vibrant area. It will really turbo-charge the development of Widett Circle areas by years and years, create a better tax base, create a modern low-income housing, and just create a fantastic environment for Boston.

It's really a plan that is transformational driving Boston forward, and I think that's what the IOC is looking for in these plans, and to put on a fantastic Olympic Games where you have the Olympic Village very close to the main stadium and the athletes will love that and it will be a fantastic Olympic Village that will be on the water and it will be a really good plan that everyone steps back and says "Wow, that's incredible."

ATR: Will the plan be ready by the end of this month?

SP: The Olympic plans tend to iterate, from what I've read on past Olympic bids. On average, 30-40% of the venues move around the bid as these years go by, but this will be a reasonable defined template of a plan, which will probably be some movement if history is our gauge, but the major sites will be nailed down and a lot of exciting venues will be talked about. I'm sure there will be some movements as they happen of the Games, but this will be a really good thing for people to review.

ATR: And is there a date you expect the plan to be released?

SP: I think it is going to be sometime end of June, first week of July.

ATR: The United States Olympic Committee board of directors meets June 30, in San Francisco, will you be reporting to the USOC then? What will you be talking to them about?

SP: We're scheduled to attend every quarterly meeting that they have, and I've been in close coordination with them every day for the past 10 days, talking to them, being on the trip to Lausanne. We have a really good relationship with them, and they've been very helpful and they have their people on the field, so they are pretty up to speed with what we are doing and we'll probably just give them a quarterly update at the board meeting to where we are.

ATR: Are you under pressure by the USOC to show improvement in public support in that for the Boston bid?

SP: Yeah, I have found Scott Blackmun and Larry Probst incredibly supportive and they have been around a long time, and all bids I've seen have had ups and downs. So they have been very patient and supportive, and I think really we need to get that plan out there. As you know, we came off a huge snowstorm, which I think set everyone back in every endeavor looking towards the future because when you can't get to work, its very difficult. Since that time, the governor has really come out with a fantastic plan to fix the MBTA, and fix it reasonably rapidly and invest money into it, so it should be a state of the art system by 2024 for sure.

ATR: How will you measure whether progress is made? Is it going to come from somebody's public opinion survey? Is it going to come from some other indicator? How do you know you're gaining ground?

SP: I think people do periodic surveys, and we'll do surveys and we'll also talk directly to the community and we have the advantage of having people on the internet. I think it'll be a multitude of sources. You can't run a company day to day based on what the earnings are today and based on what the earnings are tomorrow. You really have to build toward a medium and long term vision. I would counsel patience when we purchased the Celtics 12 years ago, the biggest thing we found is you have to have patience to build a long-term winner, and I think the USOC has that kind of patience and we have that kind of patience and we're very confident that when we plan out as we go down the path people will be very supportive.

ATR: Looking ahead towards that referendum, is anyone giving any thought to how a campaign would be led and organized?

SP: I haven't thought about that the referendum is a ways out, so we're really focused on getting the most specific and transformational fantastic plan for people to look at. So I think we'll see support and confidence build based off that plan and the set of numbers that go with that today.

ATR: And is there a change in your overall communications strategy in the way you talk to the public about the bid?

SP: I would say its a continuation and enhancement of that strategy. We've got more people out in the community. We are going to do frequent updates to board members and the community and we've committed to fully publish and get out where we're at end of June, early July for people to take a fully transparent look at what the rewards and what are the issues on their minds about the Olympics. I think when they see that it will be very positive.

ATR: Are you going to the Pan Am Games or any events like that in the coming weeks?

SP: We're gonna try to do any events that are applicable and that are okay in the agenda in the way they are running the process the IOC.

Interview by Ed Hula and transcription by Aaron Bauer

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