Team USA begins their march on the ice of the 1980 Herb Brooks Arena Thursday, Jan. 12, 2023, during the opening ceremony of the Lake Placid 2023 FISU Winter World University Games, which run until Sunday, Jan. 22. (News photo — Lauren Yates)

LAKE PLACID — A year ago, residents and visitors of this village were experiencing what the Lake Placid News staff has decided was the biggest story of 2023 in the Olympic Region — the FISU Winter World University Games.

The community spent years preparing for the games, which were tapped for Lake Placid as the host city in the spring of 2018.

Since that time, hundreds of millions of state taxpayer dollars were spent upgrading venues operated by the state Olympic Regional Development Authority: the Olympic Center, Olympic Speedskating Oval, Mount Van Hoevenberg and Olympic Jumping Complex in Lake Placid; Whiteface Mountain Ski Center in Wilmington; and Gore Mountain Ski Resort in North Creek.

There were also private investments to improve business properties and create affordable housing, and there were multi-million-dollar renovations to the Saranac Lake Civic Center for the curling events.

All told, it took about five years to prepare for the games. That doesn’t include the bid groundwork needed to secure the games from FISU. And it wasn’t just ORDA. The town of North Elba, village of Lake Placid, Regional Office of Sustainable Tourism, other state agencies and the games’ organizing committee — Adirondack Sports Council — all played important roles.

On the evening of Thursday, Jan. 12, 2023, the Olympic Center’s Herb Brooks Arena hosted the opening ceremony of the FISU Winter World University Games — on the iconic “Miracle on Ice” rink made famous during the 1980 Winter Olympics.

Gov. Kathy Hochul officially opened the games on the ice, welcoming the 1,443 collegiate-athletes (ages 17-25) from more than 540 universities and 45 nations (plus Hong Kong, China) who gathered to celebrate the biennial multi-winter sports event. The ceremony included greetings from the Oneida Indian Nation and St. Regis Mohawk Tribe, elegant on-ice performances, athletes’ and officials’ oaths, and the lighting of a flameless cauldron. Athletes paraded on the ice before taking their seats in the stands.

“With New York’s North Country known as a global winter sports destination, I can’t think of a better place than Lake Placid to host the 2023 FISU World University Games,” Hochul said. “After more than $550 million in state-supported renovations and investments in the North Country to prepare for the games, New York is ready to welcome athletes and spectators from all over the world to our state. I wish the best of luck to the athletes competing, and I thank FISU, the organizing committee and partners at every level of government for ensuring that this event is a resounding success. Let the Games begin.”

The Jan. 12-22 games featured competition in 85 medal events in 12 winter sports: Alpine skiing, biathlon, cross-country skiing, curling, figure skating, freestyle and freeski, ice hockey, Nordic combined, short-track speedskating, ski jumping, snowboarding and speedskating. The games were held at venues in Lake Placid, Saranac Lake, Wilmington, North Creek, Canton and Potsdam.

FISU Acting President Leonz Eder was also a guest speaker on the ice.

“After the harsh years of the global pandemic, we finally meet again here in Lake Placid,” he said. “The world’s young people suffered hard on behalf of the greater good and the global population. To see so many of them gathered here today is a particularly emotional moment, which should make these World University Games a truly festive occasion, especially after the cancellation of Lucerne 2021. Lake Placid is a special city that has created both legends and a legacy that endures.”

The glow of the electronic flame inside the FISU cauldron in Brewster Park dimmed at 8:51 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 22 as 12 days of sports competitions — fueled by more than five years of planning and nearly $550 million in state-funded upgrades to local winter sports venues — came to a close.

After state, local and FISU officials gave remarks of thanks to state elected officials, organizers, volunteers and locals during the closing ceremony at the 1980 Herb Brooks Arena on Jan. 22, touting Lake Placid as a “friendly” and “hospitable” host for the FISU games, Ashley Walden, the executive director of Lake Placid 2023 — the local organizing committee for the games — relinquished the FISU flag to Eder.

“There can be no doubt: Lake Placid is the place of legends for winter sports. We are reminded of this, just walking into this building and seeing the reminders of the ‘Miracle on Ice.’ We knew this was and is a very special place. And we had the privilege to be part of it,” Eder said.

ROOST CEO Jim McKenna — chairman of the Adirondack Sports Council — told the crowd, “New York state has shown to the world that international sporting events have the power to unite peoples and nations. Records were broken and friendships were made as the entire world watched. To all residents and businesses of Lake Placid and New York’s North Country for showing the world what wonderful hosts we are. It is impossible to relate all the comments and stories about the friendliness of our local communities and their willingness to help that have been shared.”

U.S. athletes earned a total of 17 medals in the 2023 games — ranking fifth in medals earned by country, with Japan ranking the highest at 48 medals.

At the time of the closing ceremony, around 58,000 tickets for FISU events had been sold — about 9,000 tickets short of organizers’ 67,000 goal — according to Secretary of State Robert Rodriguez.

“The 11-day competition brought hundreds of athletes and thousands of spectators to New York state shining a global spotlight on everything the North Country has to offer,” Rodriguez said. “Our newly renovated world-class Olympic complexes provided athletes with exceptional state-of-the-art facilities to compete while visitors from all over the world were introduced to an iconic tourist destination.”

While the organizers and state officials touted the 2023 FISU Winter World University Games as a success, they were met with criticism from some community members, saying the event didn’t have the economic impact promised by the state because it didn’t draw as many visitors to the region as expected.

Critics also said that Lake Placid’s Main Street shouldn’t have been closed in daytime hours during the games, a move, they asserted, hurt business activity.

Yet there was no dispute that the FISU games sparked a spending spree that made the local sports venues internationally viable again.

Darcy Norfolk, who wrote the bid dossier for the 2023 games in 2017, said the years leading up to the 2018 bid were filled with conversations about the need to upgrade ORDA’s winter sports venues, which were falling out of venue standards for high-level competitions like world cups. Bidding for a multi-sport competition like the FISU games was one way to secure the upgrades in a fast-paced time frame, she said.

“(These games) were a way to kind of drive that investment,” Norfolk said.

As the director of communications for ORDA, Norfolk watched many components of her 200-page dossier for the 12-day competition come to life. Most noteworthy for her was the regional approach she outlined for the event, with events proposed as being held in Canton, Potsdam and North Creek as well as in Lake Placid.

Now, with the local venue upgrades, Norfolk said the region is more poised to host high-level winter sports competitions at any given time.

“We’re seeing kind of a repositioning of ourselves in the market, essentially, as being in demand,” she said.

For example, in 2023, Lake Placid hosted the FIS Ski Jumping World Cup, the International Biathlon Union Cup and the ISU World Synchronized Skating Championships.

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Adirondack Rail Trail

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Another big story for the Olympic Region in 2023 came to a climax on Dec. 1. That’s when local, regional and state officials converged on Fowler’s Crossing, where the trail crosses state Route 86 just outside of Saranac Lake, for a ribbon-cutting ceremony to open the first phase of the Adirondack Rail Trail.

The 10-mile stretch of the trail between Lake Placid and Saranac Lake officially opened to the public just in time for the snowmobile and cross-country skiing season.

State Department of Environmental Conservation Commissioner Basil Seggos said this was a significant milestone for the ADA accessible 34-mile Adirondack Rail Trail connecting Tupper Lake, Saranac Lake and Lake Placid.

Construction of the second phase — from Saranac Lake to Floodwood Road in Santa Clara — is on track to be complete by the fall of 2024. The third phase — from Floodwood to Tupper Lake — is scheduled to be finished in 2025.

Construction on Phase 2 has paused for the winter to allow for people to use it for activities such as cross-country skiing, snowshoeing and fat-tire biking. Snowmobile access is also currently available on the trail from Lake Placid to Tupper Lake.

This first phase of construction was carried out by Kubricky Construction through a $7.9 million contract funded by NY Works, with an additional $225,000 supported by the state’s Environmental Protection Fund.

Prior to the rail trail, the section from Lake Placid to Saranac Lake was used by the Adirondack Railway Preservation Society to run a scenic tourist train.

In 2023, the DEC designated the Adirondack Rail Trail Association as an official friends group for the rail trail, allowing ARTA to share stewardship and management responsibilities with the state.

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Housing, STRs

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Housing and short-term vacation rentals continued to be hot topics in 2023 in the Olympic Region.

After months of multiple public meetings and hearings about — and revisions to — the new short-term vacation rental regulations, the Lake Placid Village Board of Trustees and the North Elba Town Council on Jan. 3 approved the new STR law.

The law will prohibit the issuance of new unhosted STR permits in residential neighborhoods, among other new measures that elected officials say are intended to preserve the Lake Placid community while still inviting the economic benefits STRs bring to this village — specifically, through the 5% occupancy tax on STRs and all hotel, motel and bed-and-breakfast stays.

The new STR regulations essentially ban new unhosted STRs from residential areas in the town and village, cap the number of permits that would be issued in the town and establish a wait list for when the cap is exceeded, increase fines for STR law violations, remove the definitions “rooming/boarding house” and “bed/breakfast” from the land use code and change the definition of “hotel/motel,” and require that STR permits be renewed once a year, among many other changes.

To bolster compliance with the STR law, the town council had previously raised STR permit fees to pay for new “STR compliance monitor duties” assigned to Building and Planning Department Clerk Britt Isham Waite, including scrubbing software and websites for noncompliant STRs on a daily basis and streamlining communication about STR noncompliance between town code enforcement officers, the Lake Placid Police Department, and town and village boards, among other tasks.

In the town of Wilmington, STRs were debated among town officials and residents. It was an issue discussed by the town council and supervisor candidates during a public forum in October, and in August, the town’s STR committee presented its recommendations for new regulations.

STR owners in Wilmington are required to obtain a STR license from the town clerk’s office. But as the STR market in Wilmington grows, and the region continues to face an affordable housing crisis, some residents have pushed for additional regulations, leading the town board to appoint a nine-member committee to research and assemble suggestions.

“How many STRs is too many?” committee co-chair Nancy Gonyea asked. “Should there be a cap? We think ‘yes.'”

Gonyea presented a map of STR properties in the town of Wilmington, noting properties at which there are multiple STRs within a single plot. At the time, there were 106 STR sites and 110 STR permits issued in Wilmington. The gap in recorded STR permits and the committee’s 120 recorded STRs was accounted for by “holdouts” who have not sought an STR permit for their STR.

The committee suggested that STR permits should be capped at 120 and limited to two permits per person. Every STR would need its own permit.

In addition, the committee proposed a noise ordinance from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. and a related ban on fireworks and barking dogs on STR properties in an effort to preserve the peace of neighbors. Additionally, campfires would need to be extinguished by 10 p.m. STRs would have occupancy rules — two guests per bedroom, with an additional two guests allowed in the living area.

The property owners would no longer be allowed to let guests park in yards and each property must have either a landline or Wi-Fi available in order for caretakers to contact guests in a timely manner, should a complaint be lodged by neighbors. Yurts, lean-tos and RVs would no longer be allowed to operate as STRs. STR caretakers would need to provide both a property map and a “good neighbor” packet to guests in order to respect neighbors’ privacy and property.

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Look to the sky

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Skyward ho! The region was impacted by a few stories in 2023 that had residents looking toward the heavens, including preparations for the 2024 solar eclipse, hazy skies and poor air quality due to Canadian wildfires, and Lake Placid’s Dark Sky Initiative.

On April 8, 2023, tourist officials across the region and state began their year-long countdown to the 2024 total solar eclipse.

“People should be planning now, absolutely,” said Seth McGowan, president of the Adirondack Sky Center & Observatory Board in Tupper Lake.

According to NASA data, portions of the Adirondacks have been in the path of totality for total solar eclipses at least four times in the past millennium — on Jun. 16, 1806; Sept. 10, 1569; Jan. 21, 1395; and Dec. 10, 1349.

“It should look like Woodstock up here,” McGowan said. “That’s why we’re planning a year in advance.”

On April 8, totality will start in the United States in Texas and move northeast to Maine. Much of New York state is in the path of totality; therefore state and regional tourism officials are hoping to bring tourists — and their dollars — to local communities that usually don’t get a lot of visitor traffic at that time of year — mud season in the Adirondacks and a time for spring break at many schools in the state.

On April 5, 2023, the Regional Office of Sustainable Tourism in Lake Placid announced its plans for preparing the region — businesses, communities, residents and visitors — for the solar eclipse.

The tourism marketing and management organization has created two webpages for the eclipse — one, focused on businesses and preparation at roostadk.com/eclipse2024 and another focused on marketing for solar tourists visiting the area at that time at 2024-eclipse.com.

State tourism officials at I Love New York are also trying to attract tourists for the event, and they have set up a webpage — iloveny.com/eclipse-2024 — with resources and a map showing the path of total solar eclipse. Buffalo, Watertown and Plattsburgh are directly in the path, with all of Franklin, Essex, Clinton, St. Lawrence, Jefferson and Lewis counties between the center line and the edge of totality.

In the summer of 2023, starting in June, a thick layer of smoke from wildfires burning in central and northern Quebec blanketed the Olympic Region.

Scott McKim, the science manager at the University at Albany’s Atmospheric Sciences Research Center at the summit of Whiteface Mountain in Wilmington, provided the Lake Placid News with graphs showing that black carbon in the air reached up to 2,000 nanograms per cubic meter on June 6. It had been at zero two days earlier.

The hazy conditions prompted the state departments of Health and Environmental Conservation to issue air quality health advisories for the Adirondacks and other regions of the state for fine particulate matter exceeding an Air Quality Index value of 100. These levels can be the same indoors with sources like tobacco smoking, candle or incense burning or fumes from cooking.

The state classifies this as “unhealthy for sensitive groups.” For these groups, the state suggested avoiding strenuous activities at those times. High particulate matter can exacerbate existing respiratory issues, like asthma and heart disease, or among children and the elderly.

Also in the summer, officials at the Dark Sky Initiative began promoting their efforts to reduce nighttime glare around the Olympic Region so residents and visitors could clearly see the stars above. And on Sept. 7, the planned power outage in Lake Placid was just the proof they needed to make their point.

“When Main Street went out, you saw the stars beautifully standing right in the middle of the road,” said Heather Clark of the Palace Theatre, who was at the movie theater at the time.

The power outage was planned from 10 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 6 to 6 a.m. Thursday, Sept. 7 in the 12946 zip code. It was necessary to give National Grid a chance to work on their transmission line from Ray Brook to Lake Placid.

Clark’s comments were made Tuesday morning, Sept. 12, during the Lake Placid Business Association meeting at the Lake Placid Baptist Church. John Winkler was giving a presentation to LPBA members about the recently formed Dark Sky Initiative, which aims to lessen light pollution in the village of Lake Placid.

“It is a reversible form of pollution,” he said.

Winkler told the News on Sept. 11 that there was a “buzz” — in a positive way — after the power outage because so many people were able to see the stars from the heart of Lake Placid when the lights went out.

“I’m not on Facebook, but people were saying that Facebook was a little bit lit up with people saying how nice it was to go out in their backyard in the village of Lake Placid and actually see the Milky Way,” he said. “It’s exactly what we want. A, to be able to see the night sky, but B — and, to me, kind of more important — is taking away some of the negative effects of light pollution on folks who live in the village.”

Winkler is using that buzz to get the word out.

“I think that people being excited about the night sky is an awesome catalyst to keep the awareness going,” he said.

Winkler moved to the Adirondack Loj Road five years ago.

“For the 15 years prior to that, as my kids were growing up … we would come to the Adirondack Mountain Club Loj and stay there every August for a couple of weeks,” he said Monday. “And just being able to walk around at night with no headlamp — by the light of the moon or sometimes by the light of the stars — was totally eye opening.”

As soon as he moved here, Winkler enjoyed seeing the stars from his home during the warm weather months, but during the winter, he was in for a shock.

“When we moved up here, and I started to see the glow from the (Mount) Van Hoevenberg cross-country skiing center, from the bobrun, and seeing on cloudy days Lake Placid glowing there in the west, it started to kind of bug me that we weren’t respecting that resource,” he said.

So when Lake Placid-North Elba Community Development Commission officials decided to add a Dark Sky Committee to its ranks, Winkler raised his hand to lead the group.

The committee’s goals are to broaden awareness of light pollution and its impact on the community; educate the community on how to prevent and reverse light pollution; create a community that is attractive to those who wish to pursue activities under a dark sky; and pursue certification of Lake Placid as a Dark Sky Community.

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Health care

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In 2023, Adirondack Health shout down two of its health care offerings in Lake Placid, making them noteworthy news stories for the year. The part-time emergency room at the Lake Placid Health and Medical Fitness Center closed on Aug. 20. The next-closest emergency room to Lake Placid is at the Adirondack Medical Center in Saranac Lake, roughly 10 miles away.

Adirondack Health’s dental facility in Lake Placid’s Outpost Plaza shopping center also closed permanently in 2023.

“The closure of the part-time emergency department will not result in the elimination of any jobs at Adirondack Health,” Adirondack Health stated in a news release. “Full-time, part-time, and per diem employees will have the opportunity to work at Adirondack Medical Center in Saranac Lake, or in outpatient departments across the health system.”

The remainder of the Lake Placid Health and Medical Fitness Center continued to operate — including the physical therapy and rehabilitation, medical fitness, primary care, laboratory, medical imaging and the Lake Placid Sports Medicine orthopedic surgical practice.

One of the most vocal opponents of Adirondack Health’s closure plans was Wilmington town Supervisor Roy Holzer.

Without the emergency room in Lake Placid, Wilmington’s volunteer ambulance squad will need to travel farther to emergency rooms in Saranac Lake or Elizabethtown.

“Clearly, I’m disappointed,” Holzer said before the closure, adding that he’d hoped the health department would ask Adirondack Health to try other things.

Adirondack Health spokesman Matt Scollin cited financial “stressors” and staffing issues as the reasons for seeking authorization to close the dental office, saying that the dental practice typically adds $350,000 to health network deficits each year. The hospital had also been searching for a new dental hygienist to work at the facility for the last three years.

The ER and dental facility closures came as the health network faces mounting financial challenges that mirror those of many rural health care facilities across the country.

Adirondack Health — one of the largest private employers in the Tri-Lakes region, supporting hundreds of jobs — suffered a financial shortfall of more than $14 million last year alone, according to the network’s finalized financial statements.

(The following staff writers and editors from the Lake Placid News and Adirondack Daily Enterprise contributed to the stories that made up the 2023 Lake Placid News list: Sydney Emerson, Andy Flynn, Elizabeth Izzo, Aaron Marbone and Lauren Yates.)