Estimated read time: 4-5 minutes
- Ogden leaders are preparing for the 2034 Winter Olympics and the potential bump in tourism.
- Snowbasin will host skiing events, and Weber County leaders say Ogden could serve as a stopover for those heading to the resort.
- Organizers of the Utah Winter Games met Monday with Ogden officials on the planning efforts and will meet with leaders in other locales.
OGDEN — While most events during the 2034 Winter Olympics in Utah will be clustered in and around Salt Lake City, leaders in Ogden are hoping to see a piece of the action.
Planning to that end is already underway, and Olympic organizers met Monday with Weber County officials to discuss the efforts here as part of a "listening tour" to the varied locales outside Salt Lake City likely to experience an Olympic boost. Nearby Snowbasin ski resort, as during the 2002 Winter Games in Utah, will host skiing events, while hotels in and around Ogden are likely to accommodate some of the many visitors who come to Utah to see the Games.
"We would like to make sure we're taking advantage of all the positive benefits of the visitor economy, bringing those visitors into our community. We know international visitors stay longer, they spend more — all of those things that are of benefit to our local community," said Sara Toliver, president of Visit Ogden, which promotes tourism in Weber County.
Toliver and Weber County Commissioner Jim Harvey participated in Monday's meeting with Brad Wilson, chief executive officer of the Utah Olympic organizing effort, and others involved in the planning.
Wilson, the former speaker of the Utah House of Representatives, said organizational plans in Weber County are moving along, even if the Utah Olympics are more than eight years away. "There's no community that's been working harder and has come to the table more aligned around the opportunity that 2034 presents than the Ogden-Weber (County) community," he said.
Abby Osborne, a member of the Olympic organizing committee board of directors and a participant in the Monday meeting, echoed that, also hinting at the likely boost the Olympics would bring to Utah locales like Ogden.
"This community is embracing the Olympics, it's been defined by the Olympics, and it's just going to be the greatest gift going forward for the next generation," Osborne said.
The listening tour will continue to West Valley City, Provo and other cities hosting Olympic events through the spring and summer, giving Olympic organizing officials the chance to hear "what communities want out of the Olympics, need out of the Olympics and need out of our executive committee."
While Ogden isn't hosting any Olympic events — unlike 2002 when curling was held at the Ice Sheet on the Weber State University campus — Snowbasin will host several more skiing events in 2034. In 2002, the Weber County ski resort hosted downhill skiing events. For 2034, it will host downhill, slalom, super-g and combined events, which will translate into more days of Olympic skiing action at the resort.
Harvey said the Ice Sheet, focus of planned renovations, could serve as a practice facility during the Olympics and will be ready to host events "should something happen in another venue." Harvey and Ogden Mayor Ben Nadolski are serving on an advisory committee tasked with working with local communities to help them prepare for the Olympics.
Beyond that, Toliver spoke of Ogden as serving as a host location, of sorts, for visitors traveling between the Salt Lake City area and Snowbasin.
"If we can encourage folks to utilize FrontRunner to get up here, and then take some kind of shuttle system or transportation system to Snowbasin, that would be great," she said. On their return through Ogden, she went on, "They're back in the heart of the activations downtown and hopefully benefitting our community overall."
She spoke of putting up large viewing screens in downtown Ogden to broadcast Olympic events, while Harvey noted the dining and other amenities in the city. Wilson hinted at the possibility of Ogden, which holds a Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association event each summer, hosting a "winter rodeo" during the Olympics.
At a more practical level, Toliver said she used Monday's meeting with the Olympic committee leaders to tout several transportation initiatives in the works that would augment accessibility to Ogden and Snowbasin. Those initiatives include plans to improve I-84 access to Trappers Loop Road in Morgan County, a key access point to Snowbasin, and to expand the I-15 interchange at 24th Street, a key access point to downtown Ogden.
The looming Olympics, she said, could serve as a "catalyst" to ensure those projects, as well as planned double-tracking of the FrontRunner rail line to Ogden, proceed. Double-tracking is meant to allow more trains to travel simultaneously along the FrontRunner route, speeding traffic flow.
With the Olympics more than eight years off, Wilson said a lot of planning remains to be done. The varied members of the Olympic organizing committee were publicly announced last February while some of the members of the subcommittees that will aid in the process were identified just last week. "There's a lot of planning that still needs to be done and we're just getting started," said Wilson, in charge of day-to-day organizational efforts.
