The panel, wrapping up a four-day evaluation visit to the largest city in the United States, said the biggest challenge would be to build the Olympic Stadium and an Olympic Village in a relatively short time.
"The leadership of New York City 2012 has a can-do attitude and a can-do community," Charles Moore, a member of the evaluation team, said at a news conference. "You should be proud that this is a strong Olympic bid."
New York, with eight million people, a large immigrant population, home of the United Nations headquarters and a popular tourist destination for tourists, is one of eight cities competing for the US nomination.
The others are Cincinnati, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Tampa and Washington, D.C. The US nomination will be announced in October 2002.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) will choose the host city in 2005. Athens will stage the 2004 Olympics and Beijing will host the Games in 2008.
"You have a great international network and the diverse way the games are set. You have a plan for outstanding venues; You have scores of wonderful hotels with accommodations for the athletes, the Olympic family and spectators," said Moore.
"To the degree that the facilities are not built, that has to be a challenge," he added.
Moore said that even with the assurances from the bidders that the venues could be financed and built, "there is still mega-construction over a relatively short time...(for) the Olympic Stadium and the Olympic Village."
TRANSPORT CONCERNS
The president of the bid, Daniel Doctoroff, addressing concerns about transport, said he believed his group's plan was "the most compact in Olympic history in that no single venue is more than 20 miles from the Olympic Village."
The proposal calls for events in all five boroughs and basketball and soccer at the Meadowlands stadium complex in neighbouring New Jersey, despite state officials there saying that they would not cooperate with the bid.
Doctoroff said the bidding process was at an early stage and that he was "highly confident" that New Jersey officials would be brought onside if New York was nominated.
"We saw quite a few resources of transportation, not only for the athletes but also for the spectators," another member of the panel, Greg Harney, said. "I don't see a real big concern."
Proposed venues for New York Olympics include Central Park for the triathlon, Flushing in the borough of Queens for tennis, rowing and canoeing, boxing in Harlem and water polo in the Bronx.
The cost of the project is estimated at $3.3 billion and would involve building an Olympic Stadium on the West Side of Manhattan and the Olympic Village in Queens.
New York's international network, many hotels and plans to build new sports arenas amounted to a strong bid to stage the 2012 Summer Olympic Games, a United States Olympic Committee (USOC) panel said.
