FREE! TAKE ONE! VOLUME 4 ISSUE 19
MAY 8 - 14, 2015
The Official Newspaper
www.EllicottvilleTimes.com facebook/theEllicottvilleTimes
of the Village of Ellicottville, the Town of Ellicottville and the Towns of East Otto, Great Valley and Mansfield, New York
American Advertising Awards 2014 Silver ADDY Award Winner Your Hometown Newspaper Serving Ellicottville, East Otto, Great Valley, Little Valley, Mansfield, Olean, Randolph, Salamanca, Springville and Beyond
Calendar of Events
Sky High Aerial Park and Climbing Forest Open Friday
May 8 Sky High Adventure Park opens
Mountain Coaster Opens May 22
May 9 Zoar Valley Fest Gowanda
By Alicia Dziak
For adventure seekers who long for high-speed thrills, the wait is over! Holiday Valley’s Sky High is opening for the season this weekend. If you’ve been there before, you know how addictive the fun is; if you haven’t made it there yet, what are you waiting for? You’ll wonder how something this unique and exciting is so close to home. Sky High is made up of three separate areas—the Aerial Park, the Climbing Forest and the Sky Flyer Mountain Coaster—all located by the Tannenbaum Lodge. Aerial Park Sky High’s Aerial Park is a series of platforms, bridges and zip lines built in the trees that lead through the woods and high above the ski trails. Visitors can choose from 13 courses of varying levels of difficulty, and can squeeze as many courses as possible into each three hour session. Everyone is securely locked into the course using a lanyard system—don’t worry, everyone is equipped with the right gear and the right knowledge before they’re allowed on the course. Minimum age is seven. Rates start at $49 per person for three hours, with group discounts available for groups of 20 or more. In addition, a late afternoon session (3:30 to 6 p.m.) is $39 per person, and
May 16 GeoBash X Allegany State Park May 22 Sky Flyer Mountain Coaster opens May 29-31 Allegany Nature Pilgrimage
© 2015 Keystone Designers Inc.
June 5-6 Cycling Weekend Holiday Valley
June 5-7 Dairy/Ag Fest Springville June 20 Mudslide Obstacle Run Holiday Valley June 20 Randolph Arts & Crafts Festival June 27-28 Raccoon Rally Allegany State Park July 3-5 Summer Music Festival
See Sky High page 5
EVGV Trail Hires Fundraiser, Marketing Director By Jennie Acklin
Joe Wright, newly appointed fundraising and marketing director for the EVGV Trail
June 6 Relay for Life Ellicottville Central School
At the monthly meeting of the Ellicottville-Great Valley Trail on Tuesday, May 5, the board and committee members ended a six-month search by unanimously agreeing to hire Joe Wright as their fundraising and marketing director. Wright, who lives with his family in Orchard Park, will be seen in and around Ellicottville frequently from now on as he adds the trail to
his job description as marketing director for EllicottVillas. EllicottVillas was acquired last April by Buffalo business leader Jim Cornell, a business advisor and strategist who focuses on turnarounds, performance and value growth, succession strategies and exit planning, business transitions, capital formation and mergers & acquisitions. He is president of Praxiis, LLC,
Sneak Peek: ECS Construction on the Fast Track Ellicottville Central School Superintendent Mark Ward (r) and Senior Maintenance Mechanic Kevin Blendinger gave the Ellicottville Times a hard-hat tour of construction progress at the school on Wednesday, May 6. Workers are moving as fast as they can to catch up after winter’s delays. The outline of the entire new addition is now clearly visible as walls for the locker room are up and connections to the old building are being made. See page 10 for more photos.
AMSOIL Returning to Seneca Allegany Resort & Casino
See EVGV Trail Update page 7
By Daniel Meyer
Noah Morlock Takes 7th in National Wrestling Competition
Frank (left) and Noah Morlock of Ellicottville at the Middle Atlantic Wrestling Association Nationals in Ocean City, MD
Noah Morlock, age 7, took 7th place in the Middle Atlantic Wrestling Association Nationals on May 3 in Ocean City, MD, in the bantam weight class. The competition started with 100 athletes in the 73-pound, 8-andunder bantam group. After two qualifying rounds, Morlock was one of 16 in the finals. During the 2014-15 season, Morlock had 62 matches and ended the season with a 47-15 record. He finished 4th in the New York State competition and 2nd at the Eastern Nationals in Syracuse in April. Noah’s father, Frank, said that Noah practices four nights a week at Olean’s Prescott Wrestling School during the 9-10 month long season and works out all year long. He has been wrestling since age 4 and was named an All-American in the last two seasons. He is in the second grade at Ellicottville Elementary School. Congratulations Noah! We can’t wait to see what you achieve next year.
Photo by Joelle Wolters
As part of their long-term vision to continually expand opportunities to attract more people to a facility that has strategically been developed into a 12-month destination, officials at Seneca Allegany Resort and Casino recently secured two contracts connected to special events
that will take place in the region. Seneca Gaming Corporation recently announced the signing of a three-year agreement with AMSOIL Championship Snocross to continue to host the organization’s major winter competition at Seneca Allegany Resort and Casino. See AMSOIL Returning page 8
EVL Supports Trail Grant
By Jann Wiswall
The Town of Ellicottville’s board held a special meeting on Friday, May 1 to discuss its role in a grant application for federal funds to build a portion of the Ellicottville-Great Valley Recreational Trail. Under the terms of the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Transportation Investment
Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grant, the Trail Board must identify a local entity that will serve as the project’s sponsor and commit to providing 20 percent of the funding total over a period of five years. Members of the Trail’s board of directors attended the meeting to ask the town board
to serve as that entity. The town board has sponsored two other grant applications over the past two years (which were not funded) and has funds earmarked in its current budget for this purpose. While the town would be the responsible funding party, the See EVL Supports Trail page 7