Greater Than the Games: Greater Than the Games, #1

By Jay Sorgi

Greater Than the Games Vol. 1: MKE2028 takes the reader deep into the world of Olympic Games host city bids - including a foreword by five-time gold medalist Bonnie Blair Cruikshank - through the lens of Milwaukee and Wisconsin. For four years, journalist Jay Sorgi privately led innovative Milwaukee business and community leaders in developing, discerning and testing a potential bid for a Summer Olympic Games in Wisconsin with key leaders in the Olympic movement and Wisconsin sports. Their plan attacked many of Milwaukee's civic challenges along with the ills that the Olympics have struggled with in recent decades, providing creative solutions to everything from residential displacement to improving the athletes' experience, all while mitigating or eliminating public cost.
 

"Jay's approach takes the intricate nuts and bolts of an Olympic plan, brings them to life in the story, and shows how it makes sense while solving a lot of the issues within the Olympic Games," said Bonnie. "You almost feel like you could picture everything as you're reading it. Intertwined within this book is not just how we could put an Olympics on in Milwaukee, but how you can actually see it, visualize it with so many people that were the parts that make it come all together."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jay Sorgi
• Release date: Jul 11, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223178873

Book preview

GREATER THAN THE GAMES

JAY SORGI

FOREWORD BY BONNIE BLAIR CRUIKSHANK

CONTENTS

Preface

Acknowledgments

Foreword

Introduction

Day 1: Wednesday, July 19, 2028

Super soccer Wednesday and the cauldrons to be broken

Day 1 Schedule

Day 1 Bibliography

Day 2: Thursday, July 20, 2028

A game of catch and five cauldrons to light

Day 2 Schedule

Day 2 Bibliography

Day 3: Friday, July 21, 2028

Happy Hour, selling a beer town, and white elephants

Day 3 Schedule

Day 3 Bibliography

Day 4: Saturday, July 22, 2028

A duck's journey, dream stadiums and The Vince

Day 4 Schedule

Day 4 Bibliography

Day 5: Sunday, July 23, 2028

Gina's ride, real estate and Colleen's monkeys

Day 5 Schedule

Day 5 Bibliography

Day 6: Monday, July 24, 2028

Keisha's early rise, new play places, but no pig races

Day 6 Schedule

Day 6 Bibliography

Day 7: Tuesday, July 25, 2028

Painting the Games Badger Red

Day 7 Schedule

Day 7 Bibliography

Day 8: Wednesday, July 26, 2028

Both kinds of football in Titletown

Day 8 Schedule

Day 8 Bibliography

Day 9: Thursday, July 27 2028

I can't believe I'm going to tell you this, but you've got something here

Day 9 Schedule

Day 9 Bibliography

Day 10: Friday, July 28, 2028

The why, and why Chicago should help its little brother

Day 10 Schedule

Day 10 Bibliography

Appendices

Olympic Harbor

Downtown Milwaukee - Westown

Downtown Milwaukee - Lakeside

Menomonee Valley

State Fair Park

Stand-alone venues

Chicago and vicinity

Green Bay and vicinity

Madison and vicinity

© 2023 Sorgi Enterprises, LLC

Edited and cover designed by Liz Lincoln

Photography by Jay Sorgi

Vellum flower icon Created with Vellum

Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work.

- Daniel Burnham

We plan. God laughs.

- Yiddish proverb

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

To Carrie, the love of my life, and our amazing son Anthony for sacrifices you should not have had to make, and for being the reason why it was right not to pursue this...because our family is, always should have been, and always will be my greatest dream.

To Mom in a greater place, for fostering the dream that led me on this incredible journey.

To the first two people who I sat down with and shared this dream that could have been called hair-brained, but who instead saw a spark of something special, longtime colleague Eric Paulsen who shared many planning sessions and marketing plans over pizza and beer, and Katie Felten, who started as a collaborator and became a true friend.

To the civic leaders, experts and young professionals from many walks of life who joined our discernment sessions: Matt Cordio, Carolyn Esswein, Mark Fairbanks, Dasha Kelly Hamilton, Tracy Johnson, Vivian King and Katie Klein.

To three Bs who have made incredible inroads in the Olympics and sports business world who listened to this dream and encouraged its discernment: Billy Payne, Bob Harlan and Bonnie Blair Cruikshank. Especially to Bonnie for doing the foreword!

To two critics of the Olympic movement who saw our genuineness to innovate and refine the Olympic Games for the better: Robin Jacks and Cerianne Robertson.

To friends who believed in and actively participated in this discernment: Joanne and Scott Colburn, Kelly Hodgson Kline, James Moran, Khary Penebaker, Melanie and Scott Pfeil, Rhonda Ronsman, Karen Stiles and Joanne Williams. And to Liz Lincoln, this book's dedicated editor.

To all of you civic and sports executives and so many other family and friends - too many to mention, many deserving presence in these acknowledgments - but you know who you are.

The words thank you aren't enough, but thank you.

This book is a tribute to your belief in my hometown and using the world's greatest sporting event for the greatest good. Never stop chasing dreams, but never forget to understand the state of the dreamer.

FOREWORD

BY BONNIE BLAIR CRUIKSHANK

In the winter of 2020, before COVID-19 changed the world, longtime Milwaukee sports journalist Jay Sorgi reached out to me to record a podcast for Newsradio 620 WTMJ about the 2020 ISU Four Continents Speedskating Championships, the first major international held at Milwaukee's Pettit National Ice Center in about 15 years for the sport that has defined so much of my life. We spoke not only about my love of the sport and the importance of the Pettit in the world of speedskating, but my daughter Blair's journey in competing along her pathway to try and make her Olympic dreams come true.

When Jay's recorder stopped, he then took an extra half hour with me and privately shared his own Olympic dream, one which I never could have imagined could make any possible sense, let alone have a chance at becoming reality.

Years later, I finally decided to dive into what Jay shared with me, in book form, and he showed how after years of study, research and advice from many in the Olympics and Wisconsin sports community, there's actually reason that it such a bid could make sense in an innovative way.

The creativity he had in putting Greater Than the Games together is really super cool.

I've seen what's gone on in the Olympic movement as far as places that have hosted the Games, how much money they've spent, and what they've done to create something for 19 days in one city and country, and look at it after the fact and see what sustainability they were able to utilize with that. Some have done it a lot better than others.

I love the Olympic Summer Games plan that Jay and his team of civic and business leaders envisioned for Milwaukee, partnering with Chicago, Green Bay and Madison. There would be very limited athletic venues that would need to be permanently constructed. The region would be able to utilize so many venues in the the surrounding areas to help limit the financial burden on a specific area, place and country.

What also struck me was the different people taking part in this idea coming to fruition, and their parts and places within its framework. Like the volunteer who helped work on building the main Olympic complex, serving as a volunteer during the Games, and then getting to live in one of the structures through a plan that could positively transform the lives of thousands our city. Or the mom from Wisconsin whose two girls were competing during the Games while she was helping human trafficking victims escape, finding a way to overcome one of the ills of sports mega-events.

Greater Than the Games' way of unwrapping the details of their plan even speaks to my own Olympic experience during the Winter Games which were often spread out across large geographic areas, with some events far away from the main Olympic hub in satellite villages. Often, I wish I could have been closer to either the central athlete's village or where there was more going on, even as I was there to try to do my best and win. Many athletes experience having to miss the Opening Ceremony, the hallmark event of the Games, because they're too far away in a satellite village and they have an event the next day, or their event is too early the next morning.

The book's plan even solves many of those issues so many athletes endure, with ways to allow every Olympic athlete to take part in both the Opening and Closing ceremonies while having plenty of time to rest or travel for their events, all without tying up public traffic between Milwaukee and its regional hubs. All this, while trying to not have to spend millions upon billions of public dollars to make this all work. I remember finding my mom and my two sisters walking into the Opening Ceremony in Sarajevo. It was one of the coolest things that I remember about my first Olympic Games. This plan figures out a way to allow every athlete to take part in a way that makes it easier for their own Games experience – one of many complicated details this book addresses in a not-so-complicated way.

Jay's approach takes the intricate nuts and bolts of an Olympic plan, brings them to life in the story, and shows how it makes sense while solving a lot of the issues within the Olympic Games. You almost feel like you could picture everything as you're reading it. Intertwined within this book is not just how we could put an Olympics on in Milwaukee, but how you can actually see it, visualize it with so many people that were the parts that make it come all together. This book not only details how one of America's smallest big-league cities could someday do the incredible in hosting the Summer Games in such a compact way, but humanizes it, brings humility to it, from a volunteer to an athlete to someone like him who had this as his childhood dream, one he quietly but passionately chased as an adult.

And you're like, Well, yeah, why can't this happen?

Being able to paint that picture of the first 10 of the 19 days of an Olympic Summer Games for people to see is really pretty special. I really hope you enjoy the first volume of two in Greater Than the Games, one that take you inside a unique approach from my adopted hometown that many cities across America and the world can use to take the Olympic Games, something that has given so much to my own life, and make them even better.

INTRODUCTION

I wonder what sport this place could host.

The Olympic Games can capture the imagination of anyone who watches. It can also own the mind of anyone who dreams about it. Not only those who spend a lifetime preparing to make the Games or win gold, but those who dream of bringing them to their hometown. That's what happened to me in the years where discerning the Games became my life's unexpected passion.

It was not what gave me a paycheck for four years. For the most part, being a radio sports reporter and digital reporter and editor for WTMJ in Milwaukee was the way I took care of my family, as I had from 1998 until 2020. But very privately, with only my family, a few trusted friends and those I was engaged in discussions and discernment with, I was chasing a dream filed away in my mind since childhood. Could Milwaukee, with the help of its nearby neighbors, become the little city that could and pull off the best Olympic Summer Games ever?

Surprisingly, nearly every answer seemed so say at least maybe and you have to explore this and find out, and if the answer is yes by the fall of 2017, go for it and shock the world.

I spent my waking hours, evening hours, the driving hours from Milwaukee to Green Bay covering Packers games and practices, and all the other passing thoughts of my days in thought about this incredible possibility. Thoughts like if you take the first six rows out of each sideline, you can fit a soccer field here. As I'm driving over Milwaukee's Hoan Bridge, That's where the media village tower complex would be.

I spent those hours of discernment to the detriment of my family, even though I was doing it in the desire to serve my family while serving the city and world I live in to its fullest extent. Sometimes in life, you don't realize that the methods of your efforts defeat the very purpose you're trying to serve. And when your marriage and family are suffering the way they were and you don't see it, brokenness becomes harsh reality.

Ironically, it was that exact fact about my love-filled but still-broken upbringing that turned me into the dreamer I was as a child, spawned my very unusual Olympic dream, and led me down this pathway. A pathway that was meant to find a way to host the Olympic Games, but which led me to a greater sense of self.

The 10 chapters you'll read in this first volume in a two-book series will weave a tapestry of vignettes. They will include:

- My own personal journey.

- The challenges the modern Olympic Games face in both practical and detrimental social effect.

- The innovations we discovered could be accomplished by a very unique and potentially executable Olympic plan in Milwaukee and our partnering cities.

- The visions of the Olympic experience for each of the !rst 10 days of the Olympiad we would have bid for, a 2028 Milwaukee and Lake Michigan Triangle Summer Games.

There will be more to cover in the second volume as well, coming soon.

DAY 1: WEDNESDAY, JULY 19, 2028

SUPER SOCCER WEDNESDAY AND THE CAULDRONS TO BE BROKEN

Sweat at sunrise. When you've earned that sweat, it can glisten more brightly than clear water. Particularly when the sweat tells the story of sacrifice, of fortitude and of love given for a greater cause.

As the sun rises at 5:30 a.m., Marwin James would already feel that kind of sweat on his brow. This humid, 75 degree morning would engender much more sweat than normal as the day would progress in this city he calls home. It would be a city on its way up from a history of rust belt recessions and the invisible walls of segregation based on race and economics. Those invisible walls formed a cauldron cooking the perspiration of anxiety which defined how he grew up. The cauldron walls forced his mother and him to sweat out days of looking at increasing bills, wondering how they would afford to eat dinner many nights. Those walls nearly boiled that sweat in fear from him running away from gangs late at night to get home alive. The cauldron walls cooked the bitter moisture of anxiety from a life without a father around, which was a good thing because of the abuse his dad heaped upon his mother before having to pay the legal price. Marwin would pay a similar price himself after a drug conviction and prison time which symbolized the cauldron he built within himself. So many who look like him and grow up in this rust belt city experience that journey.

But for the last seven years, Marwin finally chose to break down his own cauldron, and help sledgehammer the invisible walls of the city. He did it, ironically, by doing for himself (and his city) the words suggested by the civil rights leader who posthumously has his own road in the city, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive.

The words: Build, baby, build. ¹

Marwin did. Literally and figuratively. He took advantage of Altius, a new civic program which not only gave him the kind of job he had not been able to find in years. He found a pathway to the education he gave up when the streets and drugs called, and an education better than the substandard version his North Side neighborhood schools could offer him. The program guaranteed six years of living wage construction jobs and grant money to further his education, plus job placement assistance for the high-technology job boom which would hit his hometown. That job would be ready for him in fewer than three months.

He vowed to attack that job with the same sweat, desire, discipline and dedication he had given to the previous six years of refining, a life in a different kind of cauldron, a fire which refines into gold. But his job often revolved around a different metal: steel. His job was replacing rust with refined steel beams, and linking them into a rail network which could construct a way for so many like him, so many without economic stability, to get to where jobs were and would be. Four-and-a-half years of his life were devoted to laying down that steel just a few blocks from the hyper-segregated neighborhood he called home, four-and-a-half years for the build, baby, build of places to make a life without a car a walkable life, places to meet and ride this steel.

On this humid, sunny sunrise morning, he would take the very rail he helped build to the place where he would work for the next 18 days. He had already taken this line for two years while helping build, baby, build what would become a new neighborhood south of downtown, where he could walk to work, ride the rail, feel safe, feel accepted in the first new, truly integrated neighborhood this city had seen in decades, deconstructing the cauldron by the peace of a great lake.

But as the sun would rise, Marwin would notice this ride would be very, very different. First, he would have to pass by a military-level security process which would rival an international airport. But this security would choose not to wear not the dour, grim face of war. Even the gun-toting, camouflage-wearing army men would wear kind smiles. They could see this would not just be a mission of peace, but a time of excitement and rebirth unlike anything Marwin's hometown, or any other American city, had experienced.

He would step down the stairs of North Avenue to the railway on the southern end of a previously vacant symbol of suffering and abandonment, Century City. Now, it would be filled with relocated factories and new high-technology startup businesses, It would integrate that part of his hometown with living-wage, family-sustaining jobs, all without the tear-down of gentrification, but with the sustaining incomes to bridge any rise in cost.

Normally at 5:45 a.m., the 30 th Street-North Avenue stop would be relatively quiet before third shift changes to first in the city's industrial heart. Perhaps a couple others getting to work early, maybe someone riding to the massively-expanded downtown intermodal station, the one connecting four local and regional rail lines, three bus rapid-transit lines, two downtown streetcar lines and Amtrak.

But on this early morning, sweat would glisten on what would seem to be hundreds at a station which appeared to be as populated as the new downtown behemoth of a station. Not just populated with work commuters, either. People buzzing with anticipation, all waiting for a train line named after the local basketball team's original nickname, The Big Green Line. It would be resplendent in the forest green of both the hoops squad and its beloved football cousin to the north. As Marwin would step inside, he would discover the familiar life-size graphics of guys named Kareem and Oscar, heroes his grandpa told him about, The KO Combination who brought the local team its first world championship. He would find even more familiar green on the train, mockups of Starr, Favre, Rodgers and Love - the four great quarterbacks who brought the football team worldwide championship glory – the latest winning it back in February just a few miles away.

Amidst the green, he would also stare at tons of Coca-Cola and Toyota red, and General Electric blue. The city had made a 12 month promise that they and other worldwide behemoths could convince riders to buy their products. At least the local behemoths also bought in for a few advertising spots: the blue and white of the favorite locally-made worldwide brand of beer, the familiar black and orange of the iron horse which also made Marwin's hometown famous. They spent huge money for the right to greet Marwin this early morning.

But there would be even more forest green and gold to greet Marwin. Fueled by caffeine and beer, dozens in the local football team's colors would repeat the refrain of an unfamiliar and international song devoted to a different kind of football, Ole, ole, ole, oleeeeeeeee, Aussieeeeee, Aussieeeeeeee!! Sprinkled between the verdantly-dressed choir would be the also-familiar colors of the local baseball and college basketball team. The pattern of their clothing, however, would embody a golden cross on a bright blue background. They would sing devotionals in an unfamiliar language, and their sweat in unfamiliar heat would darken their bright blue shadings, but evoke pride for their homeland. Yet people of these different nations not only would get along, but embrace and enjoy each other's cultures – a calling Marwin's hometown residents would finally embrace with each others' differences.

Such volume at 5:45 a.m. might annoy someone as bleary-eyed as Marwin. Instead, it would lead to embrace. He would now high-five strangers whom he would pass by later in the day. His train would rattle happily past the stops at Burleigh-Locust and Capitol Drive, where artists turned graffiti into a warm mural greeting for more visitors over 19 days than the population of the city, a city with a penchant for successfully throwing big parties for the world. They would ride McGovern Park, where Marwin spent many a childhood moment alone, working on his jump shot. They would ride past the U.S. Army training center which would become home base of the largest single-city peacetime domestic military action in history, one where bullets and even tanks would be at the ready, but would never need to be fired.

That military presence would find itself as well at Marwin's stop, and the stop of most people on this train: Industrial Avenue/Uihlein Park. Yet the camouflaged men and women would be trading pins with the happy civilians walking past their security checkpoints, making sure that it wouldn't feel like an armed camp, but an arm-in-arm outdoor tavern. Smoke would rise from this area on the city's northwest side, but not from conflict. It would rise from the local tradition of tailgate parties, with sports fans experienced at holding them as early as 6 a.m. on a gameday. The sounds of Aussie, Aussie, Aussie from a faraway land would be balanced with the local din of the sizzle of bratwurst and burgers, the clang of beer and Bloody Mary glasses, the whap of beanbags hitting wood en route to their targets, the giggles and yawns of children with their parents, families from the neighborhood with discounted tickets who would happily hobnob with the guests from across the world.

Oh, and hobnob with Marwin, too. But he'd have a job to do. After his high-level security checkpoint, he would check in and slide over to the concession stand where the green-and-gold and blue-and-gold items would be plentiful. From the stand, he would have a view of a park which had been a hub for youth soccer for decades, and had an attempt at pro soccer decades beforehand. But suddenly, it had a new life and new purpose. Its 7,000 seats were quickly and budget-consciously expanded – still meeting FIFA's stringent requirements - to 30,000. Those extra seats would be dividable like kids' play toys, to be taken down and reconstructed on numerous high school football fields in the area. For five years, it would become the launch point for a new major pro soccer team and two re-launched college football programs, three of five new high-level sports organizations which would make permanent residency in this smallest of American big cities. These teams would fight for what previously would be thought to be a zero-sum of sports entertainment dollars. Yet somehow, they were profitably co-existing and meeting the demands of not only new residents coming into the region, but those who lived here and would have new spending power from their economic stability.

At 7:30 a.m., Marwin – one of those finding the fruits of that stability – would open the stand, as he would 11 more times, five more for soccer preliminary doubleheaders, and six sessions for the sport of rugby sevens. Fans would happily converge and pelt him with requests for this shirt, that flag, the cute baby outfit, the beer mug, and similar. He'd also make a killing on high-SPF sun block.

After some time, the stand would calm down and he'd have a chance to glance toward the green field which would gleam like never before. He would intently study the face of one of the women wearing bright yellow on the field: Alyssa Rose.

Alyssa had climbed the ranks of the Australian soccer system with the hope of getting to this precise day, on this precise field on the northwest side of this small-big city. Her face would be stoic with focus. Her stomach would be filled with butterfly flutter. Those butterflies would be present from the moment of her 5 a.m. wake-up in a new neighborhood in this changing city, a 30 th floor condominium overlooking one of the largest freshwater bodies in the world. The view of the water would bring her peace. The impending truth of the next few hours would bring her those big monarchs flying around with her protein-centered breakfast which would include the other famous local drink: milk. Those monarchs would take the ride with her north to downtown, west and then northwest to the very spot where Marwin would discover her.

Marwin would recognize Alyssa's expression, the hard-focused look familiar to him, the kind he learned as his anxieties would become fuel for positive change in his life. Alyssa's face would mirror Marwin's look of the past seven years of sweat and struggle. Marwin's look would turn into one of satisfaction that his life would be changing, with that joyful thought interrupted by the next smiling fan looking for their team's gear, or the gear symbolizing the event which was about to kick off.

Gold and green, Aussie, Aussie, Aussie! would find a home in the south end zone near security checkpoints and the northwest industrial hub of the city. Blue and gold Sweden supporters would find their screaming zone on the north end of the pitch, nearer to the tailgate zones in lots for discount furniture stores and cheap Chinese take-out joints across the street. Such is the life of a worldwide mega-event on a reasonable budget.

At precisely 9:00 a.m. Central Daylight Time, Alyssa would approach midfield and the soccer ball. Marwin could see the moment, peering upon an athlete who, for three weeks, would live in the kind of home Marwin could only dream of before returning to his humble dwelling. He knew that the final benefit of the seven years of the Altius program would turn into the down payment on a new place which he would own. Little did he know that his new home, one he had not yet seen, would be the very condominium Alyssa would wake up in that morning.

At 9:01 a.m., the whistle would blow, and Alyssa's instep would strike the ball to a teammate while Marwin, 30,000-or-so others in person, and tens of millions around the world would watch. With that simple kick, 34 hours and 27 minutes before the start of the Opening Ceremony, the 34 th Olympiad, the 2028 Summer Games of Milwaukee and the Lake Michigan Triangle, would begin.

Milwaukee? Olympics? Are you crazy?

Their voices didn't say that. Their eyes often did. Their minds most certainly thought it – at least my instincts told me that. So did my own mind, a status I had long accepted, with the added word of possible.

But when I would mention the dream I was discerning to anyone, I wouldn't start the conversation that way. I would warn them that the idea might sound crazy before sharing it. Then take a deep breath. Give an internal nervous cringe, and take a deeper internal breath.

First, I would mention how the smallest big-market city in American sports, with the help of Chicago, Green Bay and Madison, could become the first city to host a Summer Olympics and Paralympics since 1932 where nearly every venue would be within a two hour drive of an Olympic village, and every gold medal competition contested within Milwaukee County. The only exceptions would be road cycling, golf, and possibly canoe-sprint and rowing if our initial venue plan for those sports would not work. Yes, we could have every sport on the Tokyo 2020 (really 2021) and Paris 2024 program except surfing (a sport which is not permanently on the program, would have to re-apply every Olympiad, and can be