Just ask Atlanta businesses; Olympics are a pain

SALT LAKE CITY - Olympic organizers spent the past six months trying to prevent people from clogging downtown during the games, but now city officials have a different message: Please come back.


Rather than showing how vibrant the city's normally staid downtown can be, the Olympics have kept people -- and their money -- away in droves.

Before the games, organizers warned that highways would be clogged, lines long and parking nonexistent. They asked businesses to shift employee schedules to keep people out of downtown and told folks in the suburbs to avoid driving here.

Now, patients are canceling doctor and dentist appointments. Restaurants and retailers in a wide radius around downtown report slumping sales.

While people are standing in line to get food inside venues, restaurants immediately outside are empty.

The situation was bad enough to prompt Salt Lake Mayor Rocky Anderson to make a public plea this week asking people to patronize downtown businesses.

``We're hearing from a lot of businesses that people are staying away,'' Anderson said. ``I think people were planning for the very worst. We see now it's not bad at all.'' He said the Olympic transportation system is working well to funnel people into downtown.

There doesn't seem to be a particular formula to predict success or failure during the Olympics. Some places thrive while others next door are withering.

At downtown's Third and Main Bar & Grill, ``It's unbelievable, our business. We're planning on it just getting busier,'' said sous chef Jonathan Ruppert.

Just up the street, Sam Weller Books has only a few customers browsing.

``We've lost local traffic without it being compensated by visitors,'' owner Tony Weller said.

Some businesses beefed up their staffs and hours because the Salt Lake Olympic Committee told them things would be booming during the games. They say SLOC should have known better.

Atlanta, the last American city to host an Olympics, experienced hit-and-miss success and some major disappointments. There, people began venturing out after the first few days and proved going downtown was worth the hassle, but most vendors' profits didn't match expectations.

``I'm feeling a little critical of the boosterism of the SLOC people. They kept telling us how great this would be for business. They were wrong,'' Weller said. ``Mostly, I feel like a sucker for believing what I was told.''

Business owners are also upset about planners' grim predictions of gridlock during the games and scare tactics to get people to use the Olympic transportation system.

``People keep announcing that there is no parking downtown and that is false,'' Weller said. ``Of course, navigating is harder. But it's been grossly exaggerated.''

Business owners also say reports of price-gouging are overblown.

Christopher Patterson, who owns Christopher's restaurant a couple blocks south of the main Olympic hoopla, says the only price-gouging he's seen is at Olympic venues, where a hot dog costs $5.

The mayor agrees. He says he paid $25 to park for an hour in Park City.

The dashed hopes pain many business owners.

``Business started dropping in January, with the local populace believing that there were street closures, etc.,'' Patterson said. ``Then there were corporate cutbacks because of the economy and Sept. 11, so when you put the three together, it's a disaster.''

At Winterfest 2002, an entertainment tent with live music and vendors, organizers are ``getting killed'' because of lack of foot traffic, said Winterfest organizer Kye Tanner. The attraction has dropped its prices for evening entertainment from $18 to $6.

``We thought 50,000 to 70,000 people would be coming down Main every day. We don't know where they are. Our vendors are suffering, and they did the same research we did,'' Tanner said.