Brian Moggre of Flower Mound, Texas, competes in the 2024 Lake Placid Horse Show Grand Prix at the North Elba Show Grounds, which he won. (Enterprise photo — Parker O’Brien)

LAKE PLACID — The North Elba Town Council met Tuesday to discuss final changes as they work to finalize a new lease with the Lake Placid Horse Show Association. At the same time, they accepted bids for new roofing at the show grounds and new pavement at Lake Placid Airport.

The new lease with LPHS is expected to be finalized within the week, town Supervisor Derek Doty said. The current lease is expired and the new lease will be for 10 years, in contrast to past leases that were only for a few years at a time. This is intended to help the LPHS give confidence to their donors that the horse show association is investing in the venue and has a commitment from the town.

Doty said they are keeping the vast majority of the language from past leases, and have only negotiated a few things. They want a higher limit on the umbrella policy since insurance rates have gone up over the years. The umbrella policy is an overarching insurance policy that covers anything that could go wrong at the events.

The vision for the North Elba Show Grounds goes beyond the horse shows — Lake Placid Horse Show and I Love New York Horse Show — each held for six days in early summer.

The town wants to work toward making the facility available to be used by more events, according to Doty. Typically, the LPHS has exclusive use of the show grounds from June 1 to July 31 because the large tents require heavy equipment, time and labor to set up. As a part of the town’s master plan, they are exploring the possibility of replacing the temporary tents with permanent steel structures, which would reduce the time the LPHS needs to set up for the shows.

“In our effort to have a successful show grounds for the whole community, we’re trying to open up as much time as we can for other events there,” Doty said. “We’re not trying to push the horse show out. We just want to make the operation more efficient.”

However, the focus for the North Elba Show Grounds right now is to facilitate the success of the horse shows as they work to bring their facilities up to standard, Doty said.

As one part of the show grounds renovations that the town is responsible for, the council accepted a bid for new roofing at the current showgrounds buildings. The Metal Guyz of Ray Brook won the bid, which was priced just over $149,000. This was the lowest bid the town received, the other bids ranging from about $170 to $189 thousand, according to Doty.

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Airport runway project

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At Tuesday’s meeting, the board also accepted a bid for a project at Lake Placid Airport, which is set to re-pave the main runway. Rifenburg Construction Inc. of Troy won the bid, for just over $1.7 million.

The funding for this project will be about 90% federal, 5% state and 5% town, Doty said. In August, the airport was awarded $1.8 million from the Federal Aviation Administration. The runway is 4,200 feet long and it has been at least 15 years since it was repaved, Doty estimated at the time.