A Denver-based engineering firm will catalogue and create maintenance plans for New York state\u2019s alpine, Nordic and skating facilities in the coming months as well as strategic planning at a cost of $3 million.<\/p>\n
The decision to use the firm was approved by the board of the Olympic Regional Development Authority <\/a>on Friday after the directors were reluctant to accept such a plan<\/a> at the last meeting.<\/p>\n All but one of the opponents changed their mind on Friday. In December, those same board members voiced opposition to the deal<\/a>, and wondered if an in-house solution might be found, such as hiring staff or using existing personnel.<\/p>\n Keep up with the stories that matter. Google recently introduced a feature allowing you to customize your search results to prioritize content from sources you trust. ADD THE EXPLORER AS A PREFERRED SOURCE<\/a><\/p>\n A look \u2018under the hood\u2019<\/p>\n In recent weeks ORDA President and CEO Ashley Walden set up question and answer sessions between the chosen firm, Facility Engineering Associates<\/a>, and board members.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a $3 million project, $2 million of which really is a facility evaluation,\u201d said board chair Joe Martens, who said he strongly endorsed the deal.\u00a0<\/p>\n Readers weigh in on ORDA\u2019s maintenance dilemma<\/a><\/p>\n Martens had said it may help the authority when it appeals for state money and should save New York taxpayers by avoiding breakdowns and emergency repairs.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a comprehensive look under the hood of a very complex organization,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The proposal to hire the consultants came up after the authority cancelled an international ski jumping competition in December 2025 in Lake Placid because of disrepair of the tallest ski jump. Board members suggested at the December meeting that such problems may have been a sign of the need for maintenance planning.<\/p>\n The project would begin in the first quarter of this year and be complete in a year, perhaps 18 months, Walden said.<\/p>\n \u201cFor this project, they will look at the current state of the facilities and the infrastructure including its age, materials, and expected lifespan. Based on these results they will create there a preventative maintenance strategy and a capital investment strategy to ensure we meet or exceed the lifespans.\u201d Walden said.<\/p>\n Reluctant approval<\/p>\n Only Betty Little, the former state senator from Queensbury, continued to oppose the deal, saying it is too expensive. \u201cI don\u2019t understand the need for this,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Martens said the consultant will help the authority look forward as it plans maintenance with potential future events, particularly at Whiteface Mountain, in mind.<\/p>\n Arthur Lussi, who had argued that the managers of Belleayre, Gore and Whiteface mountains should be able to find time to do this type of planning, said he still has problems with the use of consultants despite voting in favor. \u201cI\u2019m going to call this company technical advisors,\u201d he said Friday.<\/p>\n Walden told the board that the insured value of assets involved is greater than $625 million. The replacement value is more than $1 billion, she said.<\/p>\n Diane Munro, a board member from the Catskills, said the price of the consulting deal is a modest investment against those figures.<\/p>\n What the plan will cover<\/p>\n After the winter sports season, engineers from the consulting company are expected to meet with authority operations employees as well as board members to gather information for their report. The firm will also evaluate the organizational structure and make recommendations to streamline operations and improve overall performance, including workforce planning and staff training to ensure continuity throughout the organization, according to ORDA\u2019s Public Information Officer Darcy Norfolk Rowe.<\/p>\n Board members questioned whether the finished strategic plan will be implemented and whether the authority will attract the talent needed to execute maintenance.<\/p>\n The consultants are supposed to lay out a workforce plan as well as a routine maintenance plan, Walden said. The analysis includes repair schedules for the various holdings, from roof replacements to servicing of compressors, refrigeration systems or vehicles.<\/p>\n She selected the consulting firm from companies pre-qualified for work by ORDA and did not put the contract up for competitive bid.<\/p>\n The company has done work for Wyoming and Tennessee government units and a project for the U.S. Olympic Committee, she said.<\/p>\n In an unusual move, Martens tabled the vote on the contract in December because of the amount of pushback by board members, particularly concerning cost.<\/p>\n Other business<\/p>\n In other meeting news, Walden discussed her trip to northern Italy amid the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics, where she participated in a \u201cfriendship reception.\u201d She reported that revenues at ORDA-managed facilities are up 10%, partly because of increased retail sales of apparel and goods at its visitor shops, and noted that Olympic coverage has enhanced notoriety with more than 2,100 media mentions of the Lake Placid-based authority\u2019s facilities and 6.2 million views of stories. <\/p>\n There was no public discussion by the board of Gore Mountain\u2019s gondola failure Feb. 4, which stranded 67 skiers who had to be evacuated<\/a>, or of the deaths of two skiers at Whiteface<\/a> in January and February.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Denver-based engineering firm will catalogue and create maintenance plans for New York state\u2019s alpine, Nordic and skating…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":141138,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[9,11,10,36654,13950],"class_list":["post-141137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-olympic-regional-development-authority","tag-orda"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141137\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}