As people gathered around televisions Friday night in the Tampa Bay area to watch the opening ceremonies of the London Summer Olympics, dozens of people did the same at a sports bar in downtown Tampa. But this group's mindset was somewhat conflicted. Excited about what the next two weeks will bring in terms of the highs and lows of athletic competition, but also tinged with bittersweet thoughts of such opening ceremonies taking place over 4,000 miles away in East London, when there was once the dream of having them take place almost next door.
They worked as volunteers from 1997-2001 on trying to secure a bid to have Tampa host the 2012 games, an effort led by Ed Turanchik, a former HIllsborough County Commissioner and candidate last year for mayor of Tampa.
"The Olympic bid was a lot of fun because it galvanized a lot of people who saw a different vision for our future," he said shortly after 6 p.m. Friday night inside Champions, a sports bar located inside the Tampa Marriott Waterside hotel. "I think we planted some good seeds, and some of those are still growing," alluding to a recently completed study done by the Urban Land Institute that would transform the area on the south and west bank of the HIllsborough River (Part of his plan called for an Olympic village to be constructed in West Tampa).
This article appears in Jul 26 – Aug 1, 2012.