ROOST in the News: August 4, 2014: Press Republican: Essex County Tourism off to Strong Start - Lohr McKinstry

Ticonderoga, NY – September 3, 2014 – The Ticonderoga Area Chamber of Commerce will continue to host monthly Open Houses with the North Country Small Business Development Center. Services provided by the North Country SBDC will be available at the Chamber office typically on the second Tuesday of each month (unless otherwise indicated). The open house will be from 9:00 AM – 3:00 PM (unless otherwise indicated). The Ticonderoga Area Chamber of Commerce office located at 94 Montcalm Street, Suite 1 in downtown Ticonderoga. Fall/Winter 2014 Open Houses: Tuesday, September 9th from 9 AM – 3 PM Tuesday, October 14th from 10 AM – 3 PM *Note a business seminar will be held from 8:00 – 9:30 AM Wednesday, November 12th from 1:00 – 4:00 PM *Note a business seminar will be held from 5:30 – 7:00 PM In addition the Chamber is working with the North Country Small Business Development Center to host a variety of business seminars for the fall of 2014. All seminars are free for Ticonderoga Area Chamber of Commerce members. Look for information on the 2014 Fall Business Seminars to be announced. The North Country Small Business Development Center (SBDC) at Plattsburgh is part of a statewide network of 24 regional centers located throughout New York State. The New York State SBDC (NYS/SBDC) is accredited by the Association of Small Business Development Centers (ASBDC) and has more than two decades of serving the small business community. Their core services are: Free and confidential one-on-one counseling, Market/industry research assistance Customized business training seminars The North Country SBDC is supported by the State University of New York and the U.S. Small Business Administration to provide high quality business counseling and training to New Yorkers who want to start a business or improve the performance of an existing business. Due to this support, their services are free of charge. We are physically located at 194 US Oval at the former Plattsburgh Air Force Base. The SBDC business advisors provide support to North Country entrepreneurs by providing information, counseling, technical assistance and training to help them meet the challenge of today’s complex economy. Counselors will tailor one-on-one counseling to meet your needs. Some topics commonly addressed include: Business plan development / Cash flow projections Financial analysis / Legal and regulatory information Marketing assistance / Business start-up information Buying and selling a business / Human resource development Import/export assistance / Government procurement Their staff is comprised of business professionals with either small business ownership or executive management experience. They can help you develop practical solutions to deal with the challenges of starting and operating a successful business. For more information about the Open House at the Chamber Office visit www.ticonderogany.com, email chamberinfo@ticonderogany.com or call 518-585-6619. For additional information on the North Country Small Business Development Center or to make an appointment with their staff while they are at the Chamber Office call 518-564-2524 or visit www.northcountrysbdc.org. The Ticonderoga Area Chamber of Commerce – The Ticonderoga Area Chamber of Commerce (TACC) is a non-profit organization that serves, markets, and promotes the Ticonderoga area including, Ticonderoga, Crown Point, Hague, Moriah, and Putnam, NY. TACC’s vision is to be the leading advocate for business, serving as a driving force in the economic vitality of the greater Ticonderoga Area, uniting communities and maximizing resources. The mission of the TACC is to initiate and provide programs, services, and leadership which will enhance a cooperative business community and create a vibrant economy, making the Ticonderoga Area an exceptional place to live, work, and visit. The Ticonderoga Area in New York is located in the Adirondacks along Lake Champlain and Lake George. For more information on the Ticonderoga Area Chamber of Commerce or the Ticonderoga Area please visit www.ticonderogany.com, “like” the Chamber on facebook or “follow” TiconderogaADK on twitter. ###

WHAT: Cycle Adirondacks Community Bicycle Ride WHEN: Friday, Sept. 5, at 6 p.m. WHERE: Berkeley Green in Historic Downtown Saranac Lake, NY Saranac Lake, NY – Sept. 3, 2014 – The new Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) Cycle Adirondacks event is inviting community members and their families to join its organizational team on a fun bicycle ride through the historic Village of Saranac Lake on Friday, Sept. 5 at 6 p.m. to kick off a test ride of the route for the inaugural tour, slated for August 2015. The community ride will begin at the Berkeley Green in downtown Saranac Lake and circle Moody Pond before returning to the Berkeley Green. Announced on Aug. 26, Cycle Adirondacks is the first fully supported, week-long road bike tour through the Adirondack Park, featuring daily routes that will allow riders to be immersed in the forests, lakes, streams and abundant wildlife habitat of the famed Adirondacks region. The Aug. 23-29, 2015, tour starts and ends in Saranac Lake, the headquarters of the WCS Adirondack Program, and includes overnight stops in Star Lake, Boonville, Camden, Old Forge and Long Lake. Cycle Adirondacks will benefit host communities by bringing roughly 600 riders and 100 volunteers to each town. Cycle Adirondacks will also enlist local volunteers to help stage the event in each community. This past year, WCS received a marketing grant from I Love New York through the Mohawk Valley Regional Economic Development Council to help build and promote Cycle Adirondacks. The regional economic impact of the event is estimated at well over $1 million. Registration is open, along with a volunteer application for the 2015 event, at www.cycleadirondacks.com. Photos, blog posts and other coverage of the organizational team’s Sept. 6-13 Preview Tour will be available daily through the event’s social channels. Follow Cycle Adirondacks (@CycleADK) on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. To see a promotional video for the event, click here. About the Adirondack Park Spanning 6 million acres, Adirondack Park is one of the largest intact temperate forests in the world. Roughly the size of Vermont, the park is a mosaic of publicly and privately owned lands, and includes more than 100 towns and villages among its forests and lakeshores. The region is within a day’s drive of over 90 million people, and in close proximity to many major urban areas such as New York City, Boston, Montreal, Toronto, and more. Established in 1894, the Adirondack’s state-owned lands are constitutionally protected as “forever wild.” The vast network of connected wilderness areas intermixed with private lands is a model of successful conservation work and provides wildlife habitat for some of the most iconic wildlife species in the northeastern U.S., including black bear, bobcat, moose, and loons. About the Wildlife Conservation Society MISSION: WCS saves wildlife and wild places worldwide through science, conservation action, education, and inspiring people to value nature. VISION: WCS envisions a world where wildlife thrives in healthy lands and seas, valued by societies that embrace and benefit from the diversity and integrity of life on earth. To achieve our mission, WCS, based at the Bronx Zoo, harnesses the power of its Global Conservation Program in more than 60 countries and in all the world’s oceans and its five wildlife parks in New York City, visited by 4 million people annually. WCS combines its expertise in the field, zoos, and aquarium to achieve its conservation mission. Visit: www.wcs.org; http://www.facebook.com/TheWCS; http://www.youtube.com/user/WCSMedia Follow: @thewcs.

Our destinations in the mediaSeptember 5, 2014: The Style and Beauty Doctor - "What Happens when a Beauty Blogger Roughs it in the Adirondacks" ROOST hosted NYC's Danielle Gray and her photographer to familiarize them with the Adirondacks - and they were pleased to learn that they wouldn't likely encounter bears while hiking Owl's Head... :) READ THE ARTICLE

Lake Placid, adirondacks usa - The Regional Office of Sustainable Tourism (ROOST) is pleased to announce the launch of adirondacksusa.com, a user-controlled Virtual Guide to the Adirondack Park in Upstate New York.The Adirondack Park is a unique patchwork of private and public lands that covers over 6 million acres of New York State, and contains more than 2,000 miles of marked hiking trails, 3,000 lakes and ponds and 1,200 miles of rivers fed by 30,000 miles of brooks and streams. The new site contains a series of interactive 360-degree views from various locations throughout the Park, conveying its scenic beauty and grand scale via stunning imagery. Clickable links will transport visitors from sweeping vistas at the top of an Adirondack High Peak to the deck of a boat on the middle of a lake, to the interiors of art galleries and businesses. New 360-degree “spins” will be added on a continual basis to enhance the consumer experience and highlight the unique juxtaposition of the region’s communities set in the midst of the Adirondack forest preserve.A Google Maps icon is located at the bottom of each 360-degree “spin”, which users can click to launch the map interface. Those images with an information icon will link to details about that location on the appropriate destination website. “Digital marketing trends continue to point toward the increasing importance of visual media,” said Carol Joannette, ROOST VP of Marketing. “These 360-degree images, while they certainly can’t replicate the real thing, are a perfect way to showcase our gorgeous Adirondack product to potential visitors.”“Do we need yet another website about the Adirondacks? Not necessarily,” said James McKenna, ROOST CEO. “But adirondacksusa.com is not bound by the invisible municipal and political boundaries that can confuse the traveling public; it’s representative of everything inside the Blue Line that defines the Adirondack Park. It is a visual exploration of the park that contains almost no descriptive copy, so it won’t be in competition with the existing regional destination websites for search engine ranking; rather, its purpose is to drive traffic to those sites.”For more information about adirondacksusa.com and opportunities to add businesses and new geographic locations to the site, visit the site’s sales page. Followers of the site’s social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter and Google+ will be notified as new “spins” are added. ROOST is a 501(c)6 nonprofit corporation that is responsible for promoting the Schroon Lake Region, Lake Champlain Region, Whiteface Region, Saranac Lake, Lake Placid/High Peaks, Tupper Lake and Hamilton County regions of the Adirondacks to the traveling public.They operate a main office in Lake Placid and one in Crown Point. To learn more about the organization, visit www.ROOSTAdk.com. adirondacksusa.com