BOSTON — Carol Oldham was enjoying lunch with a friend on a park bench in Boston Common on Tuesday, one day after the United States Olympic Committee pulled the plug on the city’s bid to host the 2024 Summer Games.
The Olympic organizers had somewhat incongruously envisioned transforming the Common, the oldest urban park in the country, into the site for beach volleyball, with a temporary 16,000-seat stadium and tons of sand strewed across the sloping greenery.
Ms. Oldham, 43, executive director of a nonprofit group, was still slightly aghast at the prospect. “How many of these beautiful old trees would they have had to chop down?