LAKE PLACID – A new toboggan slide is supposed to be in place in this village for this coming winter after its popular predecessor never opened last year.

The North Elba Town Council unanimously passed a bond resolution Tuesday to finance the new slide. The construction will be completed by Jeffords Steel and Engineering of Plattsburgh at a cost of $273,996 to the town.

Demolition of the chute began Monday, with the chute’s wooden siding at the top of the slide and along the track leading into Mirror Lake having been removed. Demolition will be completed by the end of the week, town board members said Tuesday.

At Tuesday’s monthly meeting, town Supervisor Roby Politi said the construction will be completed by the end of November, in time for full operation by winter.

“It’s close, but not an exact replica,” Politi said of the new slide. “But it’s going to be close. Two lanes.

“This is such an important venue for the community that it’s a must,” he continued. “Everyone loves it.”

Toboggan chutes have been popular in Lake Placid since the early 20th century. The chute that’s being demolished had previously been a ski jump at the Lake Placid Club; no documentation of its original construction date has been found. It was installed at this site in 1965 and began use as a toboggan chute in January 1966.

This past winter was warm, and there was never enough ice one the lake to open the slide (a minimum of 12 inches is needed). Politi said Tuesday the town had budgeted getting approximately $25,000 worth of revenue from the slide last winter, which did not come through.

Meanwhile, the town board announced in early February the slide would be closed for the season due to unsafe structural conditions. Timothy Northrup of North Woods Engineering reported to the board that massive repairs were needed due to deterioration of the tower legs and of the stringers that support the decking and connect to the tower legs.

Northrup conducted an on-site structural inspection of the chute in January. North Woods worked as a consultant for the town and provided a conceptual construction cost for the chute’s replacement of $315,000, plus a $339,800 preliminary estimate of what the project would cost if publicly bid to a contractor. (Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly said North Woods Engineering bid on the construction of the new chute.)

Jeffords said the job would include demolition and removal of the existing toboggan run, with only the current chute’s piers in the lake to be reused for the new slide.

The foundation of the new slide, which Politi said will closely resemble the old one, will include 14 concrete piers and a 29-gauge metal roof framing, giving the top of the slide a fire tower appearance.

“(It’s a total replacement),” town Councilman Derek Doty said, “because when North Woods Engineering did the total inspection, they came back with a letter that said the main members had been compromised.

“It made more sense as we went along to replace the whole thing versus having it renovated and Band-Aided up,” Councilman Jay Rand added.

Doty also said the new slide would include a tailgate-like flap on the shore of Mirror Lake that would serve to “firm everything up so that we never have to get back underneath there and reinforce the shoreline.”

The walkway underneath the slide from Parkside Drive to the public beach is temporarily closed due to the deconstruction, since in Northrup’s January report he told the town parts of the structure spanning the pedestrian walkway were also damaged.

North Woods found extensive rust occurred on the tower legs, and the main stringer supporting the decking connected to the legs near the shoreline rusted completely and was disconnected from its support point. The structure’s center crossing diagonals were also separated at their crossing point.