*UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED
When I go to see Mike Pratt at the Olympic Regional Development Authority’s glossy new state-funded headquarters in Lake Placid, the first thing he does is spread out photographs of Olympic sports venues and stadiums in Beijing, Berlin and Sarajevo that lie abandoned and in ruins. His message is plain: This almost happened here.
Pratt’s an unimposing guy in his early 60s, a soft-spoken Lake Placid native, a veteran ski-mountain manager who looks a little out of place in the corporate boardroom where we meet. When he took over as CEO of the Olympic Regional Development Authority (ORDA) six years ago, one newspaper described him as “some random guy in a red baseball cap.”
The description sort of fits. It’s still hard to see Pratt as a major power player in Albany and one of the most important figures shaping the Adirondack Park’s economic future. But by all accounts, he’s the guy who convinced New York State to plow huge amounts of taxpayer money into a financially-troubled, poorly managed sports authority that had been bleeding cash for decades.
“The last six years, the total capital investment in the Olympic Authority was $552 million,” Pratt told me proudly. “These are unprecedented investments in our facilities, no question about it. But the return on investment is immediate.”
Half a billion dollars is a hell of a lot of money. The vast majority of it, more than $400 million, went to projects in the Lake Placid region, home to some 20,000 year-round residents—and it turns out, that breathtaking sum is only part of the story.
Adirondack Life found New York State has actually pumped far more taxpayer dollars into ORDA since Pratt took the helm than previously reported, including a separate infusion of subsidies needed to cover the Olympic Authority’s annual operating losses. Total public spending during Pratt’s six-year tenure now tops $620 million.
New York also agreed to fund an additional $46.5 million in grants to bankroll last winter’s World University Games, a kind of mini-Olympics held in Lake Placid in January, and spent another $6.5 million helping refurbish Lake Placid’s Main Street.
Taken together that’s more money than New York spent hosting the 1980 Winter Olympics. It’s also more money than the state committed, amid growing controversy, to help build a new NFL stadium in Buffalo, a city with a population more than 10 times that of the Lake Placid region.
There’s also no sign ORDA’s hunger for taxpayer cash will shrink anytime soon. In fact, it appears to be growing. The Olympic Authority is already slated to receive operating subsidies and capital investments next year that total another $119 million.
To put that amount in context, the entire
