As many as 11,000 tickets issued over 3 days of mountain biking event at Lake Placid’s Mount Van Hoevenberg
By James M. Odato
A month after hosting the inaugural World Cup of mountain biking in Lake Placid, state officials are still sorting how many paid and what revenues were collected. Over the 3-day event held Sept. 27-29, people holding 11,000 tickets witnessed the riding, in a combination of single day and multi-day passes.
The Olympic Regional Development Authority (ORDA) is sorting through various ticket programs and reconciling numbers with partners and may have a report by year’s end, said Darcy Norfolk, a spokeswoman for operators of the state ski centers of the Adirondack Park.
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In the days since the Union Cycliste Internationale Mountain Bike World Series at Mount Van Hoevenberg, ORDA lost its marketing director and received a departure notice from its events management director. They are among recent exits of key officers from the state authority.
Norfolk said she isn’t prepared to discuss event closeout data or the impact of staff departures.
Breaking down the numbers
The mountain-biking event did not reach the expectations of one director who said it would bring 8,000 people a day, Norfolk said.
ORDA’s draft report on the event lists 3,192 ticket holders showed on the first day, 4,177 the second day and 3,948 the final day, including a few hundred each day who were volunteers or recipients of free passes.
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The organizers offered various ticket programs, including a discounted three-day pass and other deals.
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Pictured here and above: Riders navigate through the rock garden during last month’s Mountain Bike World Series races at Mount Van Hoevenberg in Lake Placid. Photos courtesy of ORDA
Economic impacts from the event
Bhavik Jariwala, developer of the Cambria, a Lake Placid hotel and event sponsor, noticed an uptick in lodgers but couldn’t compare it to a year ago because the hotel hadn’t opened yet.
“Everyone should have seen something because it was business that wasn’t there last year,” he said.
ORDA also did not provide details during a meeting Thursday with business and community leaders. “They’re still crunching the numbers,” said Marc Galvin, president of the Lake Placid Business Association.
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He suspects the biking competition was more successful than the World University Games in January 2023 “when our business was flat.”
“I think it was successful,” he said. “I’m guessing they didn’t make money on the event.”
The authority estimates the economic impact from hosting its first-ever cross-country mountain–biking competition exceeded $3.5 million, Norfolk said.
She could not provide the expenses incurred to put on the event, which included an annual $420,000 hosting fee. The authority is under contract to stage two more of these competitions in succeeding years and intends to add the more popular downhill version next year as well.
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ORDA, she said, assumed 4,000 people stayed overnight for an average of three nights per person double occupancy with an average hotel cost of $135 per night and $160 spent per day on food and other items.
The event was a “win for mountain-biking and a win for the region,” Norfolk said.
She said the authority is awaiting data from the UCI Warner Brothers Discovery partnership and information on hotel occupancies and taxes from the Regional Office of Sustainable Tourism (ROOST) before divulging sales and expense data.
Mary Jane Lawrence, chief operating officer of ROOST, said the event seems to have been a positive for the economy.
She said lodging occupancy rates in Essex County dipped to 57.4% in September compared to 60% in the same month of 2023, although that may not be a reflection of performance of hotels in Lake Placid.
Staff changes at ORDA
As it plans for winter sports competitions, the Lake Placid-based ORDA is dealing with substantial turnover. Nine key staffers exited in recent months, some through retirement or resignation. Its human resources director and marketing director both left abruptly.
A new HR director, Brenda Smith, replaced David McKillip.
Chief Executive Officer Ashley Walden, who took over in September 2023, also hired area advertising and marketing professional Tait Wardlaw to the post of vice president for sales, marketing and communications.
Also in recent months, the organization, which is proposing land management changes for Mount Van Hoevenberg, lost its first-ever sustainability and environmental compliance officer, and its risk and safety officer, who took a job leading a ski center in Colorado.
ORDA’S long-time finance director retired and its deputy finance director departed (a new director was hired). Its construction and planning director retired and its vice president for operations stepped down.
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There are lots of hotels that were open last year. Why don’t you ask one of them about what they saw as far as business. Picking this one hotel that was recently opened seems weird?