Ogden may no longer be the venue for Olympic curling at Utah’s 2034 Winter Games, but local leaders are still hoping to make the former railroad hub’s historic downtown a must-see for big-spending visitors.
How the community located about 40 miles north of Salt Lake City can take advantage of the state’s second Winter Games was the topic Monday of a closed-door meeting, the first stop of what will eventually be a statewide “listening tour” by Olympics organizers.
Having their Olympic venue left off the list for 2034 seems to be spurring Ogden’s planning.
“It was tough. Losing the venue was tough. But we understand that there’s a lot of other things at play,” Weber County Commissioner Jim Harvey told reporters about last year’s decision to move curling from the Weber County Ice Sheet built for the 2002 Winter Games.
The venue for the team sport featuring brooms and giant stones will instead be at the Salt Palace Convention Center so more spectators can be accommodated and more events located in downtown Salt Lake City, currently undergoing a publicly funded makeover.
“Look, we trust our partners here on the Olympic committee. They’re making decisions for the state, based on what’s good for the entire state. We’re just here to support whatever they decide to do,” Harvey said. “We’re still going to have a ton of people here.”
Tourism during the Olympics, he said, “matters a great deal.”
Brad Wilson, the CEO of the Organizing Committee for the 2034 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, said “there will be plenty of opportunity” for the ice sheet on the Weber State University campus to hold events ahead of 2034, like the world men’s curling championships next year.
“This really wasn’t part of the discussion today because this community is doing what they believe is best for the whole state and they want to be great partners,” he said, adding the area will be the site of “the world’s most amazing winter rodeo” in 2034.
With all of the alpine ski events set to be held this time around at Snowbasin, a resort about 20 miles away in Weber and Morgan counties, Ogden expects to see Olympic spectators coming through on their way to or from the resort.
Drawing those spectators as well as locals “into the heart of our community,” including Historic 25th Street anchored by Union Station, is the goal, Sara Toliver, president and CEO of Visit Ogden, said.
That could be by creating a downtown “live site,” similar to what organizers of the 2024 Summer Games in Paris set up throughout the French capital and even neighboring cities that included food and entertainment along with live coverage of Olympic events.
Wilson said Olympic organizers will cover the cost of some live sites, although communities may want to supplement that. It’s something that likely won’t be planned in detail, he said, for another four or five years.
Toliver visited a live site during last summer’s Olympics in Lille, a city outside Paris that hosted basketball events.
“I was so encouraged by the success that I saw there,” she said. “To just see the community and all these visitors out in that downtown square, watching on that big screen ... and just the excitement and spirt around that. I know that’s what we’re hoping to create here.”
There are also some transportation projects Ogden wants to see completed ahead of 2034, including an I-84 Mountain Green interchange leading up to Snowbasin, an I-15 24th Street interchange in Ogden, and the proposed double-tracking of FrontRunner commuter rail.
“If you look at 2002 and the legacy that the Games provided as far as transportation infrastructure for the state as a whole, it’s pretty incredible opportunity to try to take advantage of,” Toliver said, referring to projects tied to the last Olympics like the widening of I-15.
During Games time, she said organizers could look at setting up spectator transportation to Snowbasin so ticket holders would travel through Ogden’s downtown to catch a shuttle to the resort rather than using a remote park and ride lot like the one set up in South Weber in 2002.
Using FrontRunner to transport spectators to and from the stop near Union Station, Toliver said, “would be great. Because then when they come back, they’re back in the heart of the activations downtown and hopefully benefiting our community overall instead of bypassing it.”
Other projects include redeveloping Union Station possibly with state assistance, encouraging more youth to get involved in sports and getting the community ready to welcome the world, she said.
“There’s a deadline now,” Toliver said, to be prepared for an event that will bring international visitors known for staying longer and spending more during their stay. “You really want to highlight and shine your community in the very best light.”
The next stop on the organizing committee’s “listening tour” of venue communities has not yet been set, but it is expected to be in the Heber Valley, near the Soldier Hollow Nordic Center in Wasatch Mountain State Park.
Wilson said holding the meetings with venue community leaders in private allows participants to “be candid.” He said there will be opportunities in the future for Olympic organizers to hear from the public “when the time is right.”