The best tickets to the 2002 Winter Games? Of course. But there's also a chauffeur-driven car to get you there. VIP passes to everything from heated hospitality tents to the normally off-limits athletes village at the University of Utah. Even official uniforms.
It's all part of the package the Salt Lake Organizing Committee is offering individuals willing to contribute $1 million. The fund-raising effort, launched at a dinner Tuesday night, has so far attracted 10 Utahns, including the state's best-known philanthropist, Jon Huntsman, and SLOC President Mitt Romney himself.
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The night's total take from the new "gold level" giving program could reach as much as $14 million, if the Boyer Co. gets the go-ahead from Salt Lake City and the SLOC Board of Trustees to build an "Olympic Legacy Park" as part of its Gateway development.
Kem Gardner, a partner in the Boyer Co. and head of the fund-raising effort, pledged $1 million if that park project falls through. The park, intended to honor Olympic donors and volunteers, would be located in a circular plaza behind the Union Pacific Railroad depot west of downtown.
Others who stepped up Tuesday night are three members of the SLOC Management Committee — real estate developer John Price, banker Spence Eccles and venture capitalist Jim Swartz — and four unidentified executives of NuSkin Corp., a Games sponsor.
"Not a bad evening," Romney said Wednesday. He said several guests at the dinner told him they'll be joining the list of donors, too. SLOC still has a significant gap to close in its $1.33 billion budget, money that has to come from corporate sponsors and private donors.
Gardner told the Deseret News earlier this week his group had lined up seven Utahns willing to contribute $1 million apiece. The names were formally made public at the Tuesday night dinner.
The value of the tickets and other benefits is $100,000, meaning the donors will be able to deduct $900,000 as a charitable contribution on their taxes. The actual cost to SLOC for the tickets and services provided is much less, since, for example, the cars are being donated by a sponsor, General Motors.
Premium ticket packages set aside secretly by organizers of the upcoming Sydney Summer Games recently stirred widespread controversy in Australia, but Romney has said SLOC learned valuable lessons from "Sydney's very negative experience."
On Wednesday Romney defended the perks being offered to the million-dollar donors, saying they were similar to what corporate sponsors receive. There is a difference, though, intended to protect the companies that have paid millions of dollars to become sponsors: Individuals cannot use their tickets to entertain customers.
The wealthy can already afford to buy tickets, even if it means dealing with a scalper, Romney suggested. "We don't need to spend $1 million to get seats," he said. "What we're trying to do is make sure those who can afford it pay for the bulk of the Games so those of more modest means can enjoy the show."
Romney said one donor he declined to name did not plan to accept the perks. But Huntsman's spokesman, Don Olsen, said his boss plans to auction off his tickets and other benefits and donate the proceeds to the Huntsman Cancer Institute.
Both Romney's and Huntsman's pledges came as a surprise. Romney is already giving up his $280,000-plus annual salary as SLOC's president and chief executive officer. Huntsman paid for the dinner, but Olsen had said this week that Huntsman would not be joining the $1 million donors.
"Jon does this a lot. He will think with his heart," Olsen said. Huntsman's pledge is for the Paralympics, the competitions for disabled athletes that follow the Winter Games. SLOC has budgeted about $27 million for the Paralympics.
The donor program allows participants to direct their contributions. Besides the Paralympics, they can choose venue construction and operation, the legacy fund required to run them after the Games, and programs in youth sport and education, arts and culture and environment.
There is some concern in the community that the Olympic fund-raising effort could cost other charities money. "I don't see how it can't," said Glenn Bailey, the head of a group of advocates for disadvantaged Utahns who believe the Olympics should do more to better the community.
"If people have that much money and want to make a difference in the world, the Olympics probably isn't the best way to do it," Bailey said. "That's the kind of contribution one makes when one wants to be recognized and get something back."
Besides the tickets and other benefits during the Olympics, benefactors will also get their name on a "Wall of Honor" planned for the proposed new park. Individual 18-by-24-inch bronze plaques would recognize $1 million donors.
Romney also hopes to sell bricks or stones at the park to donors with perhaps fewer resources. The park is to include a fountain similar to the massive waterworks in front of the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas. The design will incorporate the snowflake-like logo for the Games.
The park is to be part of the massive Gateway development, which will include a new hotel, condo units and a shopping center. Romney said a plan to house visiting reporters in the new units, which is being developed with federal money for low-income housing, is being finalized.
SLOC has already secured property owned by the LDS Church for a medals plaza, where nightly ceremonies will be held during the Olympics. Romney said again Wednesday that he'd like yet another park, which would honor athletes. That park, he said, could be located at a new city library complex.