{"id":71953,"date":"2025-12-16T05:58:15","date_gmt":"2025-12-16T05:58:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/71953\/"},"modified":"2025-12-16T05:58:15","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T05:58:15","slug":"olympic-authority-says-it-lacks-expertise-to-maintain-its-625m-facilities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/71953\/","title":{"rendered":"Olympic authority says it lacks expertise to maintain its $625M facilities"},"content":{"rendered":"

After spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars building up the state\u2019s winter sports facilities in recent years,<\/a> the Olympic Regional Development Authority\u2019s leaders acknowledged Friday that ORDA lacks the ability to plan repairs to the ice rinks, ski centers and sliding tracks.<\/p>\n

Without the expertise within the 1,500-employee organization, ORDA President and CEO Ashley Walden and Chairman Joseph Martens on Friday called for the authority\u2019s board to authorize a $3 million consulting contract to evaluate the facilities and come up with a regular fix-up plan to avoid breakdowns and costly repairs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

They said current staff is too busy or untrained to put together a strategic plan for keeping the facilities running. But, the board declined hiring a consultant at this time.<\/p>\n

Instead, the board asked for more information on what a consultant would do for what board members considered an expensive one-year look at ORDA and accompanying multiyear maintenance plan.<\/p>\n

Walden said the authority operates in a \u201cstate of triage\u201d because of unknowns of what needs to be fixed and when. She said the ORDA facilities are worth more than $625 million in insured value. Those assets extend from Belleayre Mountain in the Catskills to Johnsburg, Lake Placid and Wilmington in the Adirondacks.<\/p>\n

Board hesitant on consultant costs<\/p>\n

The board of directors showed widespread reluctance to agree to retaining the consultant chosen by Walden, Facility Engineering Associates<\/a>. Several said they are generally uncomfortable with the price of the contract and with the potential of paying millions of dollars for a report that will gather dust.<\/p>\n

Walden said she does not expect venue managers to know when to repair roofs or service power equipment and they do not have time to develop maintenance programs.<\/p>\n

Board member Arthur Lussi, a hotel and golf course operator in Lake Placid, said he understands that during the busy winter months the general managers are unable to do such work, but suggested that they could plan from May to October.<\/p>\n

Walden said the responsibility is too vast. \u201cWe don\u2019t even have our arms around the assets we own,\u201d she said. Further, she and Martens said they want to make sure that any upgrades or fixes done don\u2019t interfere with long-range event possibilities.<\/p>\n

Walden said she hopes to get the facilities up to standards to host World Cup events.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think there\u2019s anyone to do this in-house,\u201d said Martens. \u201cI\u2019d rather tackle it on the front end and go through this process and have a handbook \u2026 on how we\u2019re going to keep what we\u2019ve got in good shape. We need a roadmap on how we keep the facilities up.\u201d<\/p>\n

The call for using the Denver-based Facility Engineering Associates on such a strategic plan drew disfavor by several board members. Betty Little, the former veteran state legislator from Queensbury, said she couldn\u2019t support the cost of such a contract. \u201cThat seems like a lot,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

RELATED READING: Olympic facilities funding questioned in budget talks <\/a><\/p>\n

Walden and Martens framed farming out the work by saying the authority needs to preserve and protect the investment the state has made in the ORDA-managed facilities. Gov. Kathy Hochul has said her administration has sought to make New York \u201ca global winter sport destination\u201d by investing more than $600 million in ORDA facilities.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we don\u2019t maintain our assets correctly, we\u2019re going to wear them down faster,\u201d Walden said. She said the authority may have to hire some skilled workers for maintenance depending on what the consultant\u2019s report lays out.<\/p>\n

Ski jump cancellation spurs action<\/p>\n

Their proposed consultant deal came about after ORDA had to scrap hosting a World Cup ski jumping competition in Lake Placid this December. The jumping event was moved to Germany after ORDA discovered midyear that the deck on the taller of its two ski jumps required repairs.<\/p>\n

RELATED READING: ORDA\u2019s most recent audit<\/a><\/p>\n

With a strategic repair and replacement plan in hand, Martens said, ORDA will be armed with more data on which to base its annual state budget requests.<\/p>\n

ORDA\u2019s board also approved a budget for the 2026-27 fiscal year. It lists $94.4 million in revenues and total expenses of $225.9 million. It anticipates $131.5 million in capital funds from the state plus subsidies of $13.9 million from the state and $500,000 from the town of North Elba.<\/p>\n

Gore Mountain lodge delayed by wastewater issues<\/p>\n

At Little\u2019s request, Walden updated the board on the authority\u2019s inability to open a new lodge<\/a> for Gore Mountain, the crowning element of its $40 million investment in upgrades at the North Creek Ski Bowl.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She said the authority is trying to ascertain how long it will take Johnsburg to complete its wastewater disposal system that the lodge would hook into. The municipal disposal lines and treatment plant may be finished in the spring, she said. The authority is trying to figure out whether it wants to commit to paying for a temporary alternative\u2014sending up to 12,000\u00a0 gallons of wastewater daily into holding tanks and then trucking the material to a disposal plant in Queensbury. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars building up the state\u2019s winter sports facilities in recent years,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":71954,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[9,11,10,49,51,50,36654,13950],"class_list":["post-71953","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-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news","tag-olympic-regional-development-authority","tag-orda"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71953","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=71953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71953\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}