[UPDATED]  Will the International Olympics Committee look at Mayor Daley’s record on bringing projects in on time and within budget when they evaluate the Chicago 2016 bid?  Here’s a handy rundown of recent projects.

Soldier field - original cost $587 million, final cost $655 million.*

Millenium Park – original cost $150 million, with no public financing, final cost more than triple that at $475 million, more than half from public funds.  The parking garage that was going to help pay for it had to be bailed out.  Oh, and that privately-funded conservancy that was going to pay for upkeep?  Didn’t work out.  It’s being paid for by hotel tax revenues.

As a Tribune investigation revealed, one of the problems was Mayor Daley pushing the project forward to meet his deadline; construction began before plans were finalized, and some of it had to be done over.

O’Hare expansion – The first phase was to cost $6.6 billion, now it’s $8 billion and quite possibly more.  The new $500 million runway reduced flight delays by less than a minute. The total project is supposed to be $15 billion, but final cost estimates by critics range from $20 billion to two or three times that amount.  Airlines, which have been cutting service, are withdrawing support.

Block 37 superstation – originally budgeted at $213 million, spending has reached $320 million, and the project has been mothballed since the $1.5 billion for express trains to the airports can’t be found.

CHA Plan for Transformation – The $1.5 billion, 10-year plan provided hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts to politically-connected developers and demolished thousands of units of public housing; planners now say they don’t know when those units will be replaced. “Insiders” told the Tribune last year that the plan could now take an additional ten years.  In the ninth year of the plan, CHA says 65 percent of the work is done, but the Trib looked at the plan’s “most ambitous element” — construction of mixed-income communities — and found a 30 percent completion rate. 

* The biggest potential Olympic boondoggle is the temporary stadium in Washington Park for the opening ceremonies, and last year the blog Behind the Bid pointed out that the 2003 renovation — which Daley strongarmed past the opposition of parks advocates — “shrunk Soldier Field’s dimensions and seating for the interests of the Chicago Bears, partly owned by [Chicago 2016 chief] Patrick Ryan. No more track-and-field potential and it created the need for a new stadium.”