New York’s Olympic Regional Development Authority (ORDA) has received $5.6 million in funding in a budget measure that passed in the New York state assembly on Friday and the state senate on Monday.
ORDA manages Mount Van Hoevenberg, the site of the cross country, biathlon and nordic combined events during the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid NY, and the other legacy venues from those Games.
The appropriation is about 16 percent of ORDA’s approximately $34 million budget, and is $1 million less than the authority received last year. In a budget document submitted to the state in February, ORDA had projected receiving $7.1 million from New York.
Travis Proulx, the New York Senate’s deputy press secretary, noted that “ORDA has cash on hand which will allow them to absorb this reduction.”
ORDA Communications Director Jon Lundin said that the $5.6 million appropriation was “the number we’ve been anticipating.”
“Each year,” he added, “we’re operating with less and trying to do more.” Mount Van Hoevenberg “will run a little bit leaner” in the coming year.
Lundin said that even if ORDA had firm information about funding earlier in the spring, their position on hosting the World Cup biathlon race next February wouldn’t have changed.
“We needed to be creative from the very beginning,” Lundin said. The hangups that prevented Lake Placid from hosting the events were the upgrades to bring the venue to current International Biathlon Union standards. Lundin cited computerized targets and an improved judges’ tower as required measures, though he was unable to provide an estimate of the cost of improvements.
