Organizers leading the blitz to capture the Summer Olympic Games for the Washington-Baltimore area in 2012 started out anything but a unified team.
At first, the neighboring cities unwittingly competed against each another for the most coveted prize in amateur athletics.
The allure was clear. Each group saw the chance for billions of dollars in economic impact, a tourism boost that could last decades and international exposure they could never afford to buy.
The opportunity came as each city struggled with crime, declining population and troubled schools. Washington had the additional yoke of fiscal problems and Mayor Marion Barry Jr.'s ,, tarnished image. Baltimore struggled to attract new business.
It wasn't unusual for the two cities, barely 40 miles apart, to be at odds. The pattern had been well established over the years.
But something unusual, nearly unprecedented, happened this time. Representatives from the two cities started talking about what they could achieve if they worked together.
And the boundaries between an Olympic organizing group called Baltimore and Beyond and some business leaders from Washington and Northern Virginia melted in light of a common goal, winning the Olympic Games for the region.
The cities are competing against San Francisco; Arlington, Texas; Cincinnati; Houston; New York; Seattle; Tampa-Orlando, Fla.; and Los Angeles.
The story of the local bid is one of people with the persistence to chase a dream while others snickered. It's about people -- far too many to name -- so caught up with an idea that they were willing to invest their own time and money to see it launched.
At first, the effort focused on the 2008 Games. Then the U.S. Olympic Committee, which selects a candidate city to submit to the International Olympic Committee, changed the year to 2012. Organizers in Baltimore and Washington figured that facilities throughout the region could be used to bolster an Olympic bid, but each side saw its city at the core.
But with the birth of the Washington-Baltimore Regional 2012 Coalition, as the joint effort is now called, the competing cities adopted a single vision for grabbing the five Olympic rings.
Fellow attorney
Minutes into the Chinese food, Paul Levy broadsided his friend ++ and fellow attorney Keith Rosenberg with a question: How about trying to bring the Olympics to the Baltimore area?
"You're out of your mind," Rosenberg told him on that mid-August day in 1996.
"I was just at the Olympics, and you've never seen anything like this," Levy countered. "I think we could do this here."
Despite the 15-year gap in their ages, the two lawyers, who had met seven years earlier, had slipped into an easy friendship after working on cases together.
Rosenberg, 51, had lived in Maryland since 1968 and had been an attorney in Baltimore for four years before becoming a partner a Washington firm.
Levy, 36, had practiced law in Chevy Chase and Baltimore and, (( although he came from Montgomery County, claimed a stronger kinship to Baltimore than to Washington. A shared passion for sports gave the men plenty to talk about that day over lunch at the Chevy Chase Pavilion.
Rosenberg listened. At one point, he leaned back in his chair, scratched his chin and said, "Boy, it would be a big coup." He left an hour later, promising to think about it.
That night, he couldn't sleep.
"In my mind, I started to see it," Rosenberg said. "I tried to think of what the place would look like in 2008. If we could do this and win it, and bring the Olympics here, we could bring people back to the city."
The same idea
They had no idea that about 35 miles away, someone had the same idea.
From her office in Georgetown, Elizabeth Ganzi made dozens of trips to Atlanta in 1995 and 1996 for her company, Ganzi Productions Inc., which does marketing, special events and publicity. Her time was spent designing promotions and events for the Olympics and developing soccer and other venues for Coca-Cola Co., one of the sponsors.
"I kept coming back to our city and thinking, 'Why can't we have the Olympics in our nation's capital?' " said Ganzi, 33. "I found 67 percent of the Olympics had been granted to capitals over 100 years. And we're the most international and powerful capital in the world."
During the six months leading up to the 1996 Games, when Ganzi was based almost exclusively in Atlanta, the idea took shape.
"There's a spirit to the Olympics that makes you want to do more," she said. "I had the Olympic bug."
Ganzi, who worked on the visit of Pope John Paul II to Baltimore in October 1995, knew that putting together an Olympic bid would make that job look easy. But she wasn't discouraged.
"My dad taught me I could do anything I wanted to," she said. "I knew the Olympics wasn't going to fix our city. But I always said that it would bring our region together in a way that had never been done before."
As Rosenberg and Levy invested dozens of hours -- and eventually thousands of dollars of their own money on travel, long-distance calls and photocopies -- they concluded they needed help.
"We're not political, don't have a lot of money and don't move in powerful circles," Rosenberg said. "We need to find someone enthusiastic, respected and known, to accomplish this."
They spent days creating a list that grew, then shrank to one name: John A. Moag Jr., chairman of the Maryland Stadium Authority.
"I don't know John Moag; I never met him," Rosenberg said. "I only know what I read about him. He got football here. He got a stadium here, and look at Camden Yards."
Levy called Moag on a Monday in early October and said, "I'm Paul Levy. You don't know me. I'm an attorney in Chevy Chase. I'm working with some other people. And we're convinced that this area can host the Summer Olympics. Do you want to have this conversation?"
The silence stretched for 20 seconds.
"Where are you going to get the hotel rooms?" Moag asked. The region has more hotel rooms than Atlanta, Levy fired back.
Invitation extended
Moag seemed satisfied that Levy had done his homework and invited the lawyers to lunch.
"I figured we'd be there 20 minutes and he'd throw us out," Rosenberg said. But the conversation lasted 2 1/2 hours, long past the pastrami sandwiches.
Three weeks later, Moag assigned the lawyers to research financing.
Meanwhile, Moag began quietly sounding out powerful people to determine whether they would support an Olympic bid. He talked to two dozen chief executive officers in Baltimore and Washington.
In December, the lawyers found out that the USOC was going to hold a meeting in Philadelphia in February for cities interested in being host to the Games. Ganzi also heard about the meeting. The Washington and Baltimore Olympic efforts were about to converge.
When the two groups met in Philadelphia for the first time, on Feb. 12, 1997, they seemed intent on keeping the bids separate.
"I think D.C. could be a valuable partner, of course," Moag said at the meeting. "But they have some big obstacles, especially financially. They lack the infrastructure that Maryland has. I would like to talk to them, but in terms of an actual host city, I think Baltimore makes more sense."
Standing near Moag, Ganzi's comment at the time was, "I don't think the international community knows where Baltimore is. Washington is the capital of the free world."
The USOC presentation was sobering, warning of the complexity and high costs of staging an Olympics. But neither group came (( away discouraged.
Moag, Levy and Rosenberg were happy as they rode back through the cold, dark night in Moag's Land Rover. Plumes of smoke from three Honduran cigars spiraled up and out the open windows.
Back in Washington, Ganzi moved to organize the bid effort. She called friend Dan Callister, a Washington attorney who once shared a law office with Kenneth W. Starr, for help in creating the Greater Washington Exploratory Committee (GWEC).
Callister -- who as an attorney for nonprofit organizations has listened to plans that range from ending world hunger to stopping youth violence -- talked with Ganzi for hours around an oval conference table.
"I became convinced that she was very serious and that she had convinced the mayor to support her and that she was prepared to put in as much time as it takes," Callister said.
He agreed to help set up two nonprofit organizations, one for the bid effort and a second to handle what would become the athletic legacy.
Mayor's blessing
Ganzi had the blessing of Mayor Barry but still had to raise $100,000 by the May 1, 1997, deadline, which was two weeks way. She enlisted the experience of friend Paul Klepper, a consultant for the Atlanta Games.
A week before the bids were due, Ganzi was walking to the White House for an unrelated meeting, cell phone at her ear, making a last check on a final large chunk of money.
There was a problem. She couldn't have the money after all.
"I panicked for a minute, and then I got back on the phone," she said. Ganzi was $40,000 short going into a weekend, a bad time to find executives at work. Back at her office, Ganzi mailed overnight packages to the homes of CEOs she had talked with.
On the morning of May 1, she was short $15,000. A friend wired the money about 11: 30 a.m. The $100,000 was wired to USOC headquarters in Colorado Springs, Colo., about three hours before it was due. The other paperwork had gone to Colorado Springs by overnight delivery.
In Baltimore, fund raising was less of an obstacle. Moag had secured the $100,000 in a lump sum from the Abell Foundation.
As Atlanta had done -- although he didn't know it then -- Moag hand-delivered the documents to USOC headquarters. No other city did that. "We wanted them to know that we felt strongly enough about the bid to deliver it in person," Moag said.
In June, the USOC announced that it would not enter a U.S. city in the bid for the 2008 Games and would wait for 2012. Both cities wanted to stay in the race, but the news troubled Rosenberg.
"I'll be 65 years old in 2012, if I'm alive," he said. "How can you sustain this activity for such a long period of time? Try selling something to somebody who may be dead by then."
Moag had been dubious that Washington would really file a bid. But once they did, he was sure neither bid could succeed on its on.
In August, Moag called Kenneth R. Sparks, executive vice president of the Federal City Council, a nonprofit, economic development group and said: "We've got an Olympic bid in Baltimore, and there's one in Washington, and they ought to be brought together."
His call prompted Sparks to call Donald Graham, chairman of the Washington Post Co., who agreed that separate bids would be destructive. "It would make it quite a bit harder for either city to win," Graham said
In October, Graham called Mary E. Junck, then publisher of The Sun and now president of Times Mirror Co.'s Eastern newspapers. It was a five- or 10-minute call, typical of conversations the two newspaper executives had every few months -- except this time Graham broached the Olympics.
"We agreed we should have a meeting to get people together," Junck said.
USOC recommendation
Behind the scenes, there had been strong recommendations from the USOC that the two groups should join forces, according to several sources. As one, the region would be a top contender. That advice from the USOC seemed to light a fire under the movement to unify.
The newspaper executives planned a meeting for Dec. 3, 1997, on neutral territory, in Elkridge, at Belmont Manor, a mansion owned by the American Chemical Society and used as a conference center. Junck and Katharine M. Graham, chairman of the executive committee of the Washington Post Co., presided at the meeting attended by about 100 business and community leaders.
It was a crucial meeting, and they all knew it. They imported Billy Payne, who headed the Atlanta Games, to talk about what the games had done for Atlanta. Ganzi then gave the speech she'd rehearsed for weeks. Moag spoke next. The two bid groups were asked to leave as 20 minutes slowly ticked by.
When the group was called back in, a joint steering committee was announced, and the regional Olympic bid was on its way. The joint coalition solidified in June.
Ganzi and others on the GWEC board have not been given a place in the coalition. GWEC representatives have declined to discuss a dispute between it and the new group. The dispute may ultimately be resolved by a lawsuit that would address the legality of transferring the bid rights to the coalition from the GWEC, which still exists.
Late unification
Bradford H. Dockser, international director for real estate investment company Starwood Capital, who was involved in GWEC from its early days, says the Olympic effort should have unified in May 1997.
"I attribute that totally to the delay in getting the groups together," he said. "The delay was caused solely by the executive committee of GWEC." That committee was Ganzi, Callister and Klepper.
"We're not behind by a magnitude that would keep us from winning," Dockser added.
With the creation of the coalition, John Morton III, president of NationsBank Corp.'s Mid-Atlantic Banking Group, was named volunteer chairman.
"This is an effort that easy to get passionately involved in," he said in a recent interview. "I believe we can win. But it's certainly not a slam dunk."
Within months, the coalition is expected to name a CEO. The final selection of a U.S. city will be made in 2002. The winner then will face international competitors who have not yet been identified but may include Cairo, Egypt, and Johannesburg, South Africa, for a 2012 site to be chosen in 2005.
"I think it would be terrific to get the Olympics, but I think as important is the path to getting there," said Junck. "All kinds of groups are going to have to work together that haven't before. We have an even stronger reason to fix things than we have in the past. We have to get the Olympics."
Pub Date: 9/20/98