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Centennial to Kickoff Mayor’s Focus on Health

SARATOGA SPRINGS— Planning for the 100^th anniversary of Saratoga Springs’ incorporation as a city, is underway.

The centennial celebration is to highlight the city's heritage, much of which had started taking shape when the city was still a village. Saratoga Springs Mayor Joanne Yepsen has appointed a centennial committee to highlight the milestones as well as the current accomplishments of the city, and to hallmark the city’s headline monikers: health, history and horses. The arts and education will also get its share as a mainstay of the city’s identity and represented on the board, with Skidmore College President Philip Glotzbach sitting in for education.

Everybody that will be coming together to serve on the committee will focus on a different aspect of the celebration, whether it’s Field Horne, a local historian with a book release scheduled during the centennial year (history), or Susan Halstead, owner of Family Vision Care Center and chair of the Saratoga County Chamber’s Health and Wellness council (health).

The committee’s honorary chairs are philanthropists and socialites Marylou Whitney and John Hendrickson in light of their enthusiasm for the city itself, Yepsen said.

“They will be wonderful leaders and assets to the celebration,” Yepsen said. “They were excited when I called them to ask if they would do this because they just love Saratoga Springs so much.”

Whitney and Hendrickson already have some “special ways to celebrate the city”, she said.

Attorney at Law Eleanor Mullaney and Steve Sullivan, who was previously a strategic advisor for the New York State Restaurant Association, will act as the planning committee’s co-chairs for the centennial. 

There have already been many people and a lot of different organizations that have plans in motion for Saratoga Springs’ centennial. “It’ll be a matter of collaborating and coordinating ideas and activities and making sure that we touch on different aspects,” Yepsen said.

Looking ahead, of health, history and horses, Yepsen said that she is thinking of concentrating on the health and wellness aspect of Saratoga Springs to not only compliment the already growing interest in this area, but also to use the centennial as an event to further renew a focus on health.

What once revolved around the springs, health as a focal point has been gaining energy as organizations and businesses are finding new ways to channel interest.

“This health and wellness issue is bubbling up all around me and this is how things work in Saratoga Springs: they happen organically,” Yepsen said. “I think we can really focus on Saratoga Springs in the future as a healthy community and looking for the centennial to be the kickoff for that.”

Halstead echoed Yepsen in a separate interview that the city has a lot of organizations and plans to help promote the city as one of the healthiest in the country.

“I can’t believe what the county has already accomplished. We started making a list of what we already have, and what we need,” Halstead said. “Saratoga County is just packed with healthy stuff already.”

In retrospect of the changes that have taken place to make Saratoga Springs the city it is today, Deputy Mayor Joe Ogden commented: “The individuals that built the public and private sector have done a good job of keeping the soul of the city”.