Sometimes it’s the little things that change, and sometimes it’s the big ones. In August 2019, we moved the rest of our staff – namely our editor – to the Saranac Lake office of our sister newspaper, the Adirondack Daily Enterprise, closing our office on Mill Hill. (We can be contacted at the Enterprise.) That was a big change.

And Lake Placid is going through some major changes that will spill over into 2020.

Solving problems: Planning for a Main Street overhaul continues, as do the issues of hiker overuse in the High Peaks, excessive salt running into Mirror Lake and the AuSable River watershed, and short-term vacation rental reform in the town of North Elba and village of Lake Placid.

Creating opportunities: The state of New York -?through the Olympic Regional Development Authority – is overhauling many of the Olympic venues. Although we are celebrating the 40th anniversary of the 1980 Olympic Winter Games in February, the construction at Mount Van Hoevenberg and improvements at other facilities look more like 1977, 1978 and 1979 when a lot of the construction for the 1980 games was going on. This multi-million-dollar investment is expected to create new opportunities for ORDA, including more revenue and the chance at hosting other World Cup events at venues such as the ski jumps.

As we head into a new decade, there are signs that this will be the beginning of something exciting. Will it be another Roaring Twenties? Maybe. But let’s hope it doesn’t end like the last one.