The pursuit of a joint New York City-Lake Placid bid for the 2042 Olympic Winter Games and Paralympic Games continues to draw attention and is gaining traction across the Empire State.
On Monday, Aug. 3, Gov. Kathy Hochul built on that momentum as she toured the Lake Placid Olympic Center, home to the iconic Herb Brooks Arena where the upstart 1980 men's U.S. Hockey team defeated the dominating Soviet team on its successful quest for the gold medal. Hochul's visit to the Olympic Village, which included members of the state press corps, was designed to bring new attention to the exploratory effort she launched in June.
"I want to have a conversation about what 2042 could look like," Hochul said alongside Team USA athletes and Olympic and Paralympic
hopefuls, as Albany correspondent Emily Barnes reported. "It would include both Lake Placid and New York City. It would build on what we saw in Milan and Cortina — there's a lot of synergy — but I also think if we got New York City involved, it would really enhance our chances of being selected as the bid."
We agree, Governor.
Hochul's exploratory committee, chaired by Ashley Walden, CEO of the Olympic Regoinal Development Authority, the state agency that operates Lake Placid's 1980 Olympic venues, began meeting in July. Comprised largely of state, New York City and federal officials, as well as a selection of private-sector leaders from New York City and the Adirondacks, the exploratory committee is expected to spend the balance of the next year evaluating the possibilities of a joint bid, a concept first advanced by Assemblyman Robert Carroll, a Brooklyn Democrat, and former Assemblyman D. Billy Jones, a North Country Democrat.
Speaking with the USA TODAY Network New York Editorial Board meeting after Hochul's visit to Lake Placid, Carroll, the Brooklyn assemblyman who helped conceive the concept, stressed the opportunities a joint New York City-Lake Placid Olympic bid holds.
"I’m focused on how we can build on Lake Placid’s extraordinary winter sports infrastructure by pairing it with New York City’s world-class arenas, stadiums, transportation network, and hospitality assets," Carroll told us. "Together, we have an opportunity to create a uniquely New York vision for the Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games. This effort is about more than hosting the Games. It’s about bringing upstate and downstate together around a common purpose and showing that the distance between our communities does not need to be measured in miles, but only in imagination.”
The New York-Lake Placid Olympic bid must happen
The opportunity Carroll describes is real and we hope the exploratory committee will deliver a definitive decision to pursue a bid for the 2042 Winter Games.
Such an endeavor, we believe, could be the defining civic effort for the Empire State in this century. Harnessing Lake Placid's storied place in American sports history — not only for the Miracle on Ice of 1980, but also as the cradle of winter sports competition in our nation dating back to the 1932 Winter Games — with New York City's singular capacity as a global center with limitless capacity to host international crowds is nothing short of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for our state.
Put simply, it's one of the best ideas proposed to advance the public good — for both upstate and downstate — we've seen in decades.
To work, though, as we have suggested in earlier columns on the proposal, the effort must attract a large critical mass of private dollars. New York state, which has already invested more than $750 million in Lake Placid's sports venues in the last decade, cannot afford to carry the vast costs involved with such a complex joint bid. The private sector — in particular, the private sector in and around New York City, must play a commanding role in funding a bid for the games.
The exploratory effort now under way, must also answer some critical questions:
- Can the owners and operators of New York City's sports and entertainment venues be convened to support an Olympic bid?
- How will the state's role — as owners and operators of Lake Placid's venues — be involved in a bid?
- How will state investment in Lake Placid's competition sites — all fresh with improvement, but still aging — be sustained? And at what cost to New York taxpayers?
- How can a bid help solve critical statewide problems — including affordable housing and access to mass transit?
These questions and more should all be pondered with thoughtful transparency. Again, we believe New York is up to the task — but can we marshal our forces in a single unified way to deliver the public-private partnership that will be required to drive a successful bit for 2042?
We believe New York can and should build such a partnership — and with all necessary speed.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Yes, let's pursue a Lake Placid-NYC winter Olympic bid | Editorial
