'Finally, somebody listened': The 14-year battle to save Tahoe's largest ski resort

A milestone agreement resolves a 14-year conflict over a development at Lake Tahoe's largest ski resort, Palisades Tahoe. (Courtesy of Palisades Tahoe)

Environmental watchdog groups in Lake Tahoe reached a monumental agreement with Palisades Tahoe, the largest ski resort in the region, to significantly downsize a controversial development. The agreement resolves 14 years of conflict over the future of Olympic Valley, located a few miles northwest of the Tahoe Basin.

The downsized development plans are part of a settlement reached after seven months of negotiations between the League to Save Lake Tahoe, Sierra Watch and Palisades Tahoe.

"This is a resolution to the 14-year fight, and everyone who cares about Tahoe and joined us in standing up to keep Tahoe Truckee true should feel good about this outcome and what we've all achieved together," said Tom Mooers, executive director of Sierra Watch, in an interview Tuesday morning with SFGATE. 

In November, the Placer County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a plan to build 850 hotel, timeshare and residential units, intended to increase tourist accommodations at the ski resort. The development plan also included nearly 300,000 square feet of commercial space in the narrow alpine valley. One of the sticking points of the development that critics repeatedly called out was a 90,000-square-foot entertainment and recreation center the ski resort had originally envisioned as an indoor water park. Palisades Tahoe is a world-class ski resort and destination for outdoor recreation, and critics repeatedly said an indoor water park would be grossly misaligned with Tahoe's culture and values.

View of skiers from Palisades Tahoe ski resort, in California. (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

A month after the county approved the project, the League to Save Lake Tahoe and Sierra Watch sued to stop the development. The "massive new development" would "remake the region," the lawsuit stated. 

The turning point came after the lawsuit was filed, when representatives from Palisades Tahoe and Alterra Mountain Company - the Denver-based private equity company that owns the ski resort - sat down and negotiated with the two environmental watchdog organizations.

"Tahoe is important enough that we're going to fight for it no matter what, with any tools available to us. But the best solutions come when we can sit down and talk together about how to get there," said Jesse Patterson, chief strategy officer for the League to Save Lake Tahoe, in an interview with SFGATE on Tuesday morning. "And you get there faster. As soon as we had that conversation, you can see how quickly we got to something."

Out of those discussions, the private equity company agreed to reduce the number of bedrooms in its development plans by 40% and shrink commercial space by 20%. Alterra permanently removed the indoor water park features from the plans, though a recreation facility is still included, at a reduced size.

The ski resort also promised to protect a beloved hiking trail that accesses waterfalls in Shirley Canyon, at the far end of Olympic Valley, with a conservation easement, instead of building timeshares as the development plans originally called for. 

In return, the League to Save Lake Tahoe and Sierra Watch have agreed to drop a lawsuit the groups filed in December to stop the development. 

"This agreement really does reflect a new direction," said Amy Ohran, Palisades Tahoe president and chief operating officer, in an interview with SFGATE. "Our progress has been stalled for over a decade and we really felt that, to get a different outcome, we had to take a different approach."

A milestone agreement resolves a 14-year conflict over a development at Lake Tahoe's largest ski resort, Palisades Tahoe. (Courtesy of Palisades Tahoe)

Most of the development is slated to be built on a sprawling parking lot at the bottom of Palisades Tahoe that all stakeholders have universally agreed from the outset is a blank slate for something to get built. 

But for more than a decade, the ski resort pitted itself against longtime Olympic Valley residents, environmentalists, housing advocates and community leaders by sticking to a plan put forth in 2014 that critics said was too large and at odds with Tahoe's culture and values. 

For years, the project remained stuck in a stalemate. Placer County first approved the project in 2016, but five years later, California's 3rd District Court of Appeal sided with Sierra Watch in its first round of litigation against the project. The court decision rescinded the county's approvals and sent the project back to do more environmental analysis about its impact on Lake Tahoe.

After years of grassroots advocacy and organizing, Mooers said the agreement announced on Tuesday is a meaningful enough reduction to alleviate Sierra Watch's longstanding opposition to the development. 

"We really spent 14 years holding off reckless development, 14 years of fighting, so that we could pivot into six months of collaborative discussions," Mooers said. That "was a major change and a welcome change."

The development site is located 4 miles beyond an invisible line outlining the Tahoe Basin, which meant the ski resort did not need to comply with Tahoe's strict environmental standards that curtail the size and scope of such projects. 

Still, the League to Save Lake Tahoe and Sierra Watch were pointedly concerned about the traffic the development would bring to the region and the impact thousands of additional cars would have on Tahoe's clarity. The development would put 1,353 more cars on roads in the Tahoe Basin on a normal day, according to environmental analysis conducted by Placer County.

The landmark agreement announced on Tuesday will reduce the total number of car trips created by the development by 38%, according to the League to Save Lake Tahoe. While the development will still put more cars on the road, the decrease is sizable enough to mitigate, Patterson said.

"We've been consistent and transparent for like a decade now, and we've been saying the same thing," Patterson said. "I think, finally, somebody listened."

The agreement also keeps in place commitments Alterra already had made to build employee housing for 386 people and pay a $2 million "mobility fee" to the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency to improve transit in the region. 

Next, Placer County needs to approve the revised plans. Once that happens, the environmental groups will drop their lawsuit against the county. 

"We're not the only mountain community that feels threatened by private equity ski ownership and real estate development," Mooers said. "I think Tahoe has shown the world how to stand up for its mountain culture and protect what makes these places so special in the first place."

This breaking news story has been updated.

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