Six months after the loss of the 2016 Olympic bid, Michael Reese Hospital, the planned site in Bronzeville for the Olympic Village is a thirty-seven-acre deconstruction site and the future remains uncertain. This week, NewCity took an excellent in-depth look at what's next (or not) for the site. The city took over the Michael Reese Hospital’s thirty buildings last July with plans to demolish most of it for the Olympic site, which upset local preservationists. They formed the Gropius in Chicago Coalition led by architect Grahm Balkany with hopes to save his work. Even though the Illinois Historic Sites Advisory Council voted unanimously to add the site to the National Register of Historic Places, the demolition had already begun and only two buildings are planned to remain, a plan that was the subject of scrutiny. more ›

Sure, we're over a month removed from the vote that sent shockwaves through the city (no matter what you thought of the bid), but we're just now starting to hear more information on what exactly went on in Copenhagen. The latest comes from Jack Kelly, of Lexington Kentucky and member of the 2016 bid. more ›

As the city moves on from the 2016 Olympic loss, one group of citizens is hoping that as the Olympic dream fades, the attention focused on their neighborhood doesn't. Residents of Washington Park found themselves in the spotlight as Chicago's plans for the 2016 Olympics put them squarely in the middle of it all as the proposed location for the main Olympic Stadium. Residents now hope the neighborhood can stay in the spotlight even as the Olympic plans are tossed on the scrap pile. more ›

It's been three weeks since the Big Letdown but Mayor Daley hasn't been quick to move on from the disappointment of finishing last of the Final Four in 2016 Olympic voting. Speaking last week to the editorial board at Crain's, Daley pointed out the disparity between government support for U.S. candidate cities and support other governments give their candidates. more ›

We're three weeks removed from the awarding of the 2016 Summer Olympics to Rio over Tokyo, Madrid, and, yes, Chicago. But in the weeks since the announcement, while we in Chicago have been focused on figuring out what went wrong, Rio has been dealing with another problem: a continued string of high-profile violence. Last weekend, a police helicopter was shot down in a gun battle between police and gangs. Already dealing with one of the highest murder rates in the world, 29 people have been killed since this past weekend. Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said, “I need to clean the filth that drug traffickers impose on Brazil," and Sérgio Cabral, Rio’s governor, added, “We want to get to 2016 with a Rio de Janeiro in peace before, during and after the Games." more ›