Olympic soccer in Franklin Field and handball at the Palestra could become realities if the backers of Philadelphia's emerging bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics have their way.
For nearly a year, an organization of planners called the Philadelphia 2016 Working Group has been building the foundation for a bid to bring the games to the City of Brotherly Love.
The plans, which until recently had been kept quiet, got a boost earlier in the week when the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce formally endorsed them.
Architect Jim Kise, a lecturer in Penn's School of Design, has been serving as a planner for the 2016 Working Group.
"Philadelphia is in superb shape to do this," he said, adding that the city fares well when the criteria that were used to assess bids for the 2012 Olympics are applied to the city.
When the expansion of the Pennsylvania Convention Center is completed, he said, the city will have 22 of the 31 venues required to host the summer games. In contrast, at the time of their bids for the 2012 games, Paris had only 11 of those venues, and London, the winning bid, had 18.
Two of the would-be Olympic sites sit on Penn's campus.
Franklin Field, Kise said, would be a candidate for women's soccer and field hockey and potentially a venue for swimming events.
"It was a huge disappointment to find that Franklin Field doesn't meet international requirements" for track and field, he said.
Despite its use during the Penn Relays annually, the Franklin Field track is too narrow and short for Olympic competition -- only the outer lane meets international specifications.
With basketball being played in the Wachovia Center -- the current home of the 76ers -- the Palestra could host handball.
International Olympic Committee regulations stipulate that the handball venue have at least 8,000 seats, so the 8,722-seat Palestra would be ideal for the sport, Kise said.
In addition to the track letdown, another disappointment to Kise and his fellow planners was that the Schuylkill River, home to Penn's crew program, does not meet international regulations for rowing competition.
Because an Olympic crew course cannot have currents or curves -- the Schuylkill course has both -- the rowing competition would be held on the Cooper River in Camden County, N.J.
Although Kise said Penn's dorms would not be utilized for housing -- all athletes would be hosted at an Olympic Village, the site of which has yet to be determined -- other Penn facilities could be used as training spaces.
Also, Kise said that if Penn goes ahead with the plans it is considering for building an aquatic center, there is a good chance that the facility would be utilized.
Despite the enthusiasm of the planners and the Chamber of Commerce, many obstacles lie in the way of Philadelphia securing the 2016 games.
Los Angeles, San Diego, Baltimore-Washington, San Francisco, Houston and Chicago have all emerged as cities interested in winning the U.S. Olympic Committee's endorsement.
"There are a number of strong cities that could pull it off," said Scott Rosner, director of programs and strategic planning for the Wharton Sports Business Initiative, adding that the process is highly political.
Still, he said, "it isn't as far-fetched [for Philadelphia] as the uninformed may think."
"The glamour of the city doesn't have a whole lot to do with it," he added. The U.S. Olympic Committee, he said, selects the city that it believes will give the country the best chance to secure the games, not necessarily the one with the most cache.
However, there is concern that, still stinging from the failed 2012 New York City bid, the committee may not even submit a bid for the 2016 games.
Another potential hurdle for the Planning Group is that Philadelphia may not have enough hotel space to accommodate the games.
The planners must also make development plans for an Olympic village and build a stadium suitable for track and field. Like Franklin Field, Lincoln Financial Field does not have a sufficiently large field surface to host track events.
Still, Kise is confident that Philadelphia will have a "superb" chance of hosting the Olympics.
He added that one of Philadelphia's biggest advantages is that the planned venues would all be within about a 3-mile radius. The radius for London, Kise said, was about four miles.
The International Olympic Committee prefers venues to be in as compact as possible. Other American hopefuls, including San Francisco, Kise said, are more spread out.
Over the next few years, Rosner said, the Philadelphia Working Group will continue to build consensus and strengthen its bid.
It will be four years before the International Olympic Committee decides where the 2016 games will be hosted, but the U.S. Olympic Committee will select which bid to back -- if it backs any at all -- within the next couple of years.
"I think that the city has an excellent tradition associated with amateur athletics," Rosner said.
"It would be a great event to see in Philadelphia."
