Rio City Hall Begins Looking for Post-Olympic Answers

(ATR) Faced with managing two large Olympic complexes amid a financial crisis, Rio de Janeiro is searching for answers to prevent potential white elephants.

A city hall spokesperson tells Around the Rings the new municipal administration is seeking solutions for both the Deodoro and Barra Olympic parks. The ongoing financial crisis in the state of Rio de Janeiro has upended Rio’s supposed "benchmark [for Olympic] legacy". Only five months after the 2016 Games neither Barra nor Deodoro currently have an operator, while the Maracanã has been all but abandoned by its concessionaire.

Deodoro Olympic Park is the latest casualty in Rio’s legacy. It has been closed down and a spokesperson for Rio City Hall tells ATRit will remain closed to the public until a bidding process is completed to find a company to manage the park.

"The space was run by an outsourced company; this contract ended in December," the spokesperson said. "The new administration is working to resolve the issue. The park will remain closed until the bidding process is completed."

Deodoro, located in Rio’s north zone, is one of the poorest areas in the city, and lacks green space. The legacy of the park was to have green space, bike paths, a skate park, picnic areas, a museum dedicated to environmental legacy, and a public swimming pool. The pool was opened in December 2015, before the Olympic Games, in a ceremony originally set to feature then-President Dilma Rousseff.

When it was open, the canoe-slalom venue turned public swimming pool was welcomed by the area’s residents, and previous mayor Eduardo Paes called it "a beach serving an area of a long-abandoned city".

Like Deodoro, the Barra Olympic Park has struggled to find an operator in the midst of the financial crisis. The Sports Ministry has taken control of two of the Carioca Arenas, the tennis center, the velodrome and the dismantling of the Future Arena, after a bidding process failed to find an operator willing to assume a 25-year lease.

The city hall spokesperson told ATR that Rio Mayor Marcelo Crivella has already held talks this week with Sports Minister Leonardo Picciani about the situation. The spokesperson said the mayor "is aware of the [current] contracts," and working to broker a new solution.

"City hall wants to keep [everything] in operation, but first it is necessary to review the contracts and formulate new ones," the spokesperson added.

Meanwhile, the IOC believes the setbacks facing Rio Olympic venues are temporary.

An IOC spokesperson told ATR that all of venues for the Games were designed with a "strong post-Games use." Also, the IOC remains confident in Rio authorities to find proper solutions for each venue.

"The Olympic Games Rio 2016 were perfectly delivered in an imperfect environment, as was underlined during the Rio 2016 Debrief event held in Tokyo last year," the spokesperson said. "We are confident that the activities in each of these venues will be managed as diligently post-Games, as it was during the Games themselves."

Finally, a dispute between Rio 2016 and the consortium Maracanã SA has left the iconic football stadium without an operator and falling into disrepair. The dispute centers on the supposed state that Olympic organizers left the stadium in after the 2016 Paralympics.

Rio 2016 director of communications Mario Andrada told ATR that the organizing committee acknowledges repairs need to be done to the stadium, but it left "the stadium in much better state than we received it." Andrada added there was no timeline set for when the repairs needed to be done, and that the repairs did not impact the day to day operations of the stadium.

A spokesperson for Maracanã SA told ATR that not completing the repairs violated the "Term of Authorization of Use," that Rio 2016 signed. It has submitted documents, seen by ATR, to the Rio state government to highlight "nonconformities" left by Rio 2016. Maracanã SA says it is seeking arbitration to resolve the issue to avoid a lawsuit.

The Maracanã is owned by the state government, although operations of the stadium are run by the consortium. One of the companies in the consortium, Odebrecht, had been discussing selling its shares in the stadium’s operations. A state government spokesperson told ATR it is pursuing "all legal measures to repair the damage," to the stadium.

Without an operator power to the stadium has been cut off, and Brazilian outlet O Globo published pictures showing degradation of the pitch after touring the stadium. The Rio State Football Federation (FFERJ) has appealed to the state government for help after receiving reports of looting of televisions and historical artifacts from the stadium.

Written by Aaron Bauer

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