According to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, outdoor recreation is a $34 billion industry in New York State, responsible for more than 250,000 jobs.
In the Lake George region, outdoor recreation buttresses the tourism economy, which, according to the most recent data available, generates $850 to $887 million a year in sales. In 2023, tourism supported between 6,000 and 8,500 local jobs.
Lake George, Bolton, Hague and Warren County’s other recreation-based communities are also responsible for the highest level of spending by second home owners in the Adirondacks – $91.3 million in 2023.
“Obviously, there is a long-standing relationship between outdoor recreation and tourism in Warren County; people are always looking for a real experience,” said Alex Belensz, whose firm helped draft the Department of Planning & Community Development’s recently completed “Outdoor Recreation Economy Strategic Plan.” “The experiential economy has weathered different trends and fluctuations in consumer demand.”
According to County Administrator John Taflan, the study found that what draws visitors – younger visitors especially – to Warren County is the opportunity for outdoor recreation.
“We’re not offering those opportunities as much as we could or publicizing them as well as we should. That will be a focus of ours over the next several years,” he said.
Leveraging Opportunities
Alex Belensz said the proximity of almost every Warren County community to recreational assets – from mountains to lakes – presents opportunities for economic revitalization that have yet to be fully explored or leveraged.
Currently, Warren County hosts 160 privately-owned businesses which capitalize on those assets, offering opportunities for boating, skiing and sport fishing, among other things.
“We also have campgrounds, summer camps and guiding services as well as businesses focused on outfitting recreational enthusiasts, on kayak rentals, retail sales and even trail building,” said Belensz.
Among the businesses monetizing the county’s recreational assets are Revolution Rail, a rail bike business that runs between Tahawus to Hadley, and white water rafting companies, which, collectively, attract roughly 80,000 visitors to Warren County every year, according to Jim Siplon, CEO of Warren County Economic Development Corporation (EDC).
“Ever since the nineteenth century, ours has been an experience economy; people came for the outdoor experience and that hasn’t changed,” said Siplon. “Today, tourism represents roughly one third of economic activity in the county and that’s unlikely to change in the future.”
“The Outdoor Recreation Economy Strategic Plan,” which took sixteen months to complete, suggests that the economic impacts of outdoor recreation in the Lake George region could not only be even greater than they now are but could, perhaps, reverse certain negative trends, such as the depopulation of up-county communities and the loss of their school aged children.
“Fortunately, Warren County is well positioned to leverage outdoor recreation for the benefit of its communities and its economy,” said Sarah Brugger, Warren County’s Principal Planner.
“Warren County has an extremely impressive array of outdoor recreation assets, comparable, in diversity and quality, to any county in the country,” said Alex Belensz, “We not only have premier destinations such as Lake George and the Adirondack Mountains, but any number of lakes and ponds, three ski areas and three hundred miles of natural surface trails.”
Gaps in Recreational Infrastructure
According to Sarah Brugger, the Strategic Plan was crafted, at least in part, to help Warren County officials identify gaps in the recreational sector’s infrastructure and any opportunities that may exist be to expand and improve it.
By taking greater advantage of its recreational assets, Warren County can promote “broader goals – the quality of life for residents, the attraction and retention of businesses and jobs, as well as the generation of higher tax revenues,” said Belensz.
As of now, at least some of the existing recreational infrastructure, which includes trailheads, boat launches and hiking trails, is in poor condition or, in the case of dedicated mountain biking trails, sparse.
At a public town hall-style meeting hosted by County Administrator Taflan in Chestertown in March, a couple from Thurman wondered why the railroad track from Hadley to Thurman, which is owned by Warren County, and the 30 miles of track between North Creek and Tahawus, which was purchased by the rail bike company with help from the Open Space Institute, haven’t been removed and replaced by a multi-use recreational trail.
According to Taflan, the cost of converting the rail line to a recreational trail has been estimated to be $30 million. Nevertheless, he said, “we’ve been thinking about this for a long time and we’ve even been talking to the Open Space Institute, which is well-funded, about a rail to trail conversion.”
Among other things – things more feasible in the short term, perhaps – the report recommends that the public sector: improve trails and trailheads; expand public access to the water; and build more mountain bike and other types of single use trails.
Warren County could also help collect, update and disseminate information about the county’s outdoor growing recreational opportunities and create a unified brand that would enable communities, destinations and recreation-based businesses to cross-promote one another.
Opportunities for the private sector include the upgrading of aging motels and the construction of new lodging facilities and investing in start-up businesses.
“We want to enhance the connections between the outdoors and the towns so that people get the message, ‘Hey, after your hike, your paddle, or your mountain bike ride, come downtown and get a bike to eat,’” said Belensz.
Public Education
The report also recommends that more effort be made to educate the public about the economic impacts of outdoor recreation.
While outdoor recreation is responsible for a sizable portion of Warren County’s tourism jobs, the return on public investment in recreational assets is not always easy to quantify, said Warren County planner Ethan Gaddy.
“Most publicly accessible outdoor rec sites are free, so it’s sometimes hard to make a direct link between outdoor recreation and visitor spending. I think you’ll find, however, a correlation between the construction of purpose-built trails and increases in use,” said Gaddy. “The greater the investment, the higher the visitation.”
A version of this article first appeared on the Lake George Mirror, America’s oldest resort paper, covering Lake George and its surrounding environs. You can subscribe to the Mirror HERE.
Illustration: Warren County Bikeway (photo by Jaynie Ellis provided by Warren County Tourism Department).
