As climate change looms, New York bets big on winter sports tourism
Officials in New York are on track to spend $1 billion taxpayer dollars refurbishing 40-year-old Winter Olympic sports and tourism sites near Lake Placid. Critics doubt it will pay off.
Standing in the boardroom of New York's state-run Olympic Regional Development Authority in Lake Placid, CEO Mike Pratt spread out photographs of Olympic sports venues in Beijing, Berlin and Sarajevo that lie abandoned and in ruins.
His message was plain: This almost happened here.
Pratt convinced New York state to bet on a different future, investing huge amounts of taxpayer cash rebuilding and modernizing the sports authority's venues, most dating back to the 1980 Winter Olympics.
"The last six years, the total capital investment in the Olympic authority was $552 million," Pratt said. "These are unprecedented investments in our facilities, no question about it. But the return on investment is immediate."
NPR found New York
