Nearly 300 miles due north of Manhattan lies an idyllic village that lays claim to something the big city never will. Lake Placid (pop. 2.400), in New York’s Adirondack Mountains, is a two-time Olympic host city, one of few in the world.
Lake Placid Olympic Museum exhibits artifacts including team uniforms and medals.
Like other Empire State cities beyond the borders of New York City, Lake Placid offers a worthy alternative for meeting planners.
It boasts clean air, a charming Main Street, a lake at its center and the backdrop of mountain peaks (and all the year-round recreation they promise). There is another major selling point. In 2010, the Lake Placid DMO unveiled that organization’s new name—Regional Office of Sustainable Tourism/Lake Placid CVB (ROOST/LPCVB), to reflect the guiding philosophy that “in order for the region to achieve economic success through tourism, promotion of the existing product must be balanced with sustainable growth.”
The ROOST website states, “Sustainable tourism, in its purest sense, is an industry which attempts to make a low impact on the environment and local culture, while helping to generate income and employment without overtaxing any resources—whether environmental or man-made. The ultimate goal of sustainable tourism is to improve the quality of life for residents.”
Accordingly, the Conference Center at Lake Placid is LEED Gold-certified. It’s in a prime location on Main Street, next to the Olympic Oval. There are more than 90,000 sq. ft. of flexible meeting space, with a dozen breakout rooms, plus a pair of 20,000-square-foot convention exhibit spaces and a 9,000-square-foot ballroom.
From green meetings to a reception at the top of a ski jump (complete with a show by Olympic hopefuls) to team-building on the rink where the 1980 U.S. hockey team made history or an exciting bobsled competition, Lake Placid mixes its green with Olympic gold.
