(For a look at one Olympic contender that didn't make the cut, click on Astrodome's Fate in Limbo With Olympic Loss).

Renovations to parks and other facilities would total $1.2 billion. Funds collected from television rights, sponsorships, licensing agreements and ticket sales are expected to rack up roughly $2.7 billion. (As a non-profit event, that amount would also equal total expenditures, with any profits going into a contingency fund.) And capital expenditures--sports facilities, the Olympic Village, international broadcast center and training facilities, among others, would total roughly $987 million.

And now that the field has been narrowed to two, city officials are unabashedly ebullient. "I believe we are going to make it, not just today, but on Nov. 3, and we are going to be the winning city in the US," New York City Sports Commissioner Ken Podziba tells GlobeSt.com, referring to the date when the winning bid is announced. "The plan is so good--it gets you from venue to venue quicker than anyone else's does. That's what [the USOC] looks for. That's what I believe our plan does the best."

But while the games certainly appear to represent an economic gift that would keep on giving long after the last shot has been put, the proposal by NYC2012--the committee leading New York's Olympics bid--is not without soft spots. Probably the most obvious is traffic. While a system of trains and high-speed ferries would link the various competition venues, the sheer volume of additional vehicular and pedestrian traffic flowing through an already bumper-to-bumper and body-to-body Manhattan is almost unimaginable. On the other hand, the games are scheduled during July and August, when school is out, lowering mass transit use by roughly 400,000 riders per day. In addition, all the proposed venues are located near subway stations.