What the University of Utah president learned from touring the Paris athletes village

PARIS — University of Utah President Taylor Randall said he was struck by the size of the athlete housing built for the 2024 Summer Games in Paris.

“It’s a massive village. It’s a ways out of Paris,” Randall said after a daylong tour of the new apartments sprawling across three suburbs outside Paris that will house nearly 15,000 athletes and coaches during the Olympics and Paralympic that follow for athletes with disabilities.

Randall, part of the Utah delegation that traveled to the French capital for the International Olympic Committee’s July 24 decision awarding the 2034 Winter Games to the state, wanted to see the Paris athletes village firsthand since in a decade, it will be the University of Utah’s turn to house Olympic competitors.

What Paris organizers built in an area known as Seine St. Denis is almost three times the size of what the University of Utah will provide.

“To be honest, that was daunting, that scale. I kept trying to bring it down to the size of the Games that we will host,” Randall told the Deseret News after his tour last Saturday. The Salt Lake City-Utah Committee for the Games’ submission to the IOC pledged beds for 5,500 Olympic athletes and officials and 2,500 Paralympic athletes and officials.

The University of Utah was also the site of the Olympic Village for the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City, home to some 3,500 athletes and coaches. Since then, more Games have scattered athlete housing across multiple locations, so once again providing a single village for athletes was seen as a big plus for Utah’s 2034 bid.

The bid also pitched something new , accommodations for the families of athletes, along with access to tickets and transportation. Olympic champion skier Lindsey Vonn , a member of the bid team, was behind the idea of making it easier for athletes to be joined by family members at the Olympics and Paralympics.

Randall said the University of Utah’s contract with what is now the organizing committee for 2034 spells out the athlete family housing will be at the university. One of the takeaways from spending time at the Paris athlete housing was that there needs to be a more streamlined way for family members to get in.

“The way villages are set up today, families have to come through a security process,” he said. “It took us 45 minutes to get through at least, when we were there. It may have been 50. It’s not convenient to get in and out.”

While that may have just been a busy time, Randall said “to the extent they feel more comfortable and more at home, and are better able to compete with family around them, I think we’ve got to think through the details about that.”

Whether that means extending the security that will be around the University of Utah’s athlete housing to include the dorms where their family members are staying remains to be seen. But Randall said “given the concentration, we’ve probably got to do something.”

Still to be determined is the demand for the athlete family housing, he said.

An innovation at the Paris 2024 housing that the University of Utah may duplicate is a first-ever nursery for the young children of athletes. “We’ve got to consider that,” he said after talking to athletes who brought their babies with them to the Games.

As the university moves forward with plans to add some 5,000 new beds on campus by 2034, including about 1,000 set to open this fall, Randall said he was reassured to realize that already includes nearly everything that’s needed to house Olympians and Paralympians.

“That was my surprising conclusion — maybe surprising or relieved conclusion — today. We can plan for a campus and just make sure we have the right security perimeters. We’ll probably accomplish 95% of what the Olympics will need,” he said, with the rest added temporarily for the Games.

The Paris housing is intended post-Games to become what French organizers call a neighborhood, with 2,500 new homes, a student residence, a hotel, offices, city services, shops and parks, “mirroring Paris 2024′s exemplary environmental standards for the people of Seine Saint Denis.”

The project is seen as helping to revitalize a diverse area of Paris that has been described as not really part of France by far-right political leaders and has been the site of violent clashes with police, including after a Muslim teen was shot and killed during a traffic stop in 2023.

“It was modern and sleek. They had a nice variety to the buildings. I think for those that will go live there, it will look nice. While we were there, they told the story of (2012 Summer Games host) London doing the same thing. It seems to have revitalized part of London,” Randall said. “So I would be hopeful.”

There are some differences between the largely residential project and the all-student housing at the University of Utah. Randall said the ground floor spaces set aside for storefronts are being used by teams for meetings, something the Utah campus may now plan to provide, too.

An issue with the Paris housing that Utah will be able to avoid is the lack of traditional air conditioning. That’s resulted in a number of countries, including the United States, installing their own air conditioning units to keep athletes comfortable.

Randall said he didn’t see the individual rooms where athletes are staying, but did notice the recreation center was a little smaller than the University of Utah’s $50 million George S. Eccles Student Life Center that opened in 2015 with amenities like a four-story climbing wall and indoor and outdoor pools.

He ate lunch at the Paris village’s cafeteria, where a “pretty impressive” 48,000 meals a day are served that accommodate a wide variety of eating requirements. Much of his time at the village was inspecting services focused on the physical and mental health needs of the elite competitors.

While touring the medical facility for Team USA, the University of Utah president said he spotted something familiar.

It was a logo for University of Utah Health, a regional medical center for Team USA.

Seeing that in the Paris housing, Randall said, “was really kind of fun.”