Village at Palisades Tahoe

• Up to 1,493 bedrooms in up to 850 units, including a mixture of hotel, condo hotel, fractional ownership, and timeshare units. 
• Approximately 297,733 square feet (206,211 square feet net new commercial) of commercial space is proposed for the entire plan area, including a 90,000 square foot mountain adventure center. 
• The 8.8-acre East Parcel proposes employee housing for a maximum of 300 employees, off-site parking, shipping and receiving, and a small retail market. 
• The project will also create 2,000 additional parking spaces.

Source: Placer County Planning Department  

• We worked collaboratively with Alterra and Placer County for a decade to find a solution that would modernize Olympic Valley without negatively impacting Tahoe. But Alterra wasn’t willing to acknowledge or mitigate its impacts to the Lake, compromise with thousands of concerned community members, or abide by the California Court who found their plan legally deficient in 2021. 
• Now that the project has been approved, all our other options have been exhausted. To protect Tahoe, we are left with no choice but to file a lawsuit.

Source: ”Lake Tahoe ski resort expansion blocked by appeals court,” Associated Press 

• Traffic: Tahoe is federally mandated to reduce car trips in the Tahoe Basin. However, the project’s own environmental studies estimate it would create an additional 3,300 daily car trips on a busy day, with 1,353 of those trips going from the Village at Palisades Tahoe into the Tahoe Basin. These same roads are where traffic can back up for hours between Truckee, Palisades and Lake Tahoe, preventing residents from getting to work, dropping their kids off at practice, or accessing essential services like groceries and healthcare.

Source: Final Environmental Impact Report, 2016, pg.3.2.X-7

• Lake Tahoe’s water quality and clarity: Thousands of new car trips will increase pollution to the Lake. Cars degrade our roads, and runoff from our roadways is the number one cause of Tahoe’s loss of water quality. More tailpipe emissions are also bad for air and water quality.

Source: Lake Tahoe Total Maximum Daily Load Program: 2022 Performance Report, pgs.3-4 

• This list of policies, studies and peer-reviewed reports show the link between cars on the roads and negative impacts to the Lake’s water quality and clarity. 
• The Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, a bi-state, federally approved body charged with protecting Lake Tahoe, sets environmental thresholds, including for the total miles traveled by cars in the Tahoe Basin, for a reason – to protect Tahoe’s environment and communities. 

Source: Threshold Standards and Regional Plan, Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, pg.4

• In conversations with Alterra, we proposed a smaller project with lesser impacts or a phased construction plan with checkpoints along the way so adjustments could be made that ensure minimal impacts to Tahoe. Alterra was not open to either of those options. While Alterra says their plan is phased, there are no requirements to adapt and ramp up mitigations if the environment is negatively impacted. This creates a dangerous scenario if left unchecked.
• The League is in favor of responsible, Lake-friendly development—especially that provides critically needed workforce housing—in existing urban areas.
• We engage with developers from the very start of project proposals through to the end of the public review process to ensure developments Keep Tahoe Blue. Over the past 10 years, we have worked closely with dozens of developers to shape their projects and ensure that their plans will improve Tahoe’s environment while benefiting the community. 

• Workforce housing is a serious challenge for the region, which is why we would support a scaled-down version of this project that provides affordable places for people to live. That housing does not need to come at the expense of the environment. The two are not mutually exclusive.
• The project will create 386 dormitory-style beds and potentially studio units for employees, while removing 99 existing beds. Together, the project will contribute 287 new employee beds, but it will also require 574 new full-time equivalent employees to staff the expanded Village at Palisades Tahoe. So, it won’t even provide enough accommodations for all its staff. 

Source: Final Environmental Impact Report, 2016, pg.3-11, 3-13

• Not based on their current plans. While Alterra is committing dollars to transportation, those payments 1) aren’t nearly enough to offset the pollution the project creates from new car trips, and 2) those payments don’t have any accountability in place to make sure the dollars are doing the job of protecting Tahoe from the harm of more car trips. 

• No. If the project was located inside the Tahoe Basin, just four miles away, it would not just have to pay a one-time fee of $2.5 million, it would also be required to design, implement, and pay for ongoing transportation projects and programs to reduce the number of vehicle trips it creates down to the common standard for Tahoe development projects. Those measures would very likely cost millions of additional dollars annually.
• Although the $2 million Mobility Mitigation Fee is an admission by Alterra that their project will send more cars into Tahoe, there is nothing holding the project accountable for those impacts.

Sources: Sources: Fee Schedule, Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, 2024, pg.16; Partially Revised Draft Environmental Impact Report, 2022, pg.2-16  

• There will be traffic monitoring, but there is no goal or trigger for the project to reduce the number of cars on the road and their impacts to Tahoe through that monitoring. 

• As a result of Sierra Watch’s successful 2016 lawsuit, the Court ruled that the plan fails to adequately address potential harm to air and water quality, as well as increased noise levels and traffic in the area. Alterra and Placer County say they have fixed the plan, and we disagree. Now it is up to the Court to decide. 

• No, and Placer County said as much in a newsletter published after the project was approved in November 2024: “The project proposal itself is unchanged from what was approved in 2016.” 
• The only two things that have changed since 2016 are the resort’s name, reflecting its proximity to the Lake (Palisades Tahoe), and the project’s Development Agreement, which admits there are impacts to Tahoe that need to be addressed, but without doing enough to offset those impacts.

Source: ”Board approves Village at Palisades Tahoe Specific Plan,” Placer County 

• The only future environmental analysis required for Alterra to receive permits for construction is a check to make sure the building plans are consistent with what was approved by the Placer County Board of Supervisors – nothing more. Those approvals are based on environmental studies dating back to 2016. Much has changed in the eight years since then.

Source: Letter to the Placer County Board of Supervisors, Shute, Mihaly & Weinberger LLP, pg.9/PDF pg.12

• That’s a question for the County. In our opinion they should not have approved the proposal without requiring the project’s impacts be properly analyzed and mitigated. 

On Tuesday, November 19, after a ten-hour meeting and more than 100 public comments, the Placer County Board of Supervisors voted to approve the massive development plan for the Village at Palisades Tahoe.

The vote of approval allows Palisades Tahoe to increase car-related pollution to the Basin, which decades of science shows is the primary driver of Tahoe’s clarity loss. In short, the project will do the opposite of Keep Tahoe Blue.

The League is disappointed by this outcome, yet we are grateful to our Tahoe supporters for writing and speaking to the Board of Supervisors on behalf of the Lake.

The project was the focus of yesterday’s Placer County Planning Commission meeting. The League was there to voice our concerns about the impacts – from new traffic and pollution – the project would have on our Lake in public comments. We also submitted a public comment letter.

After more than six hours of presentations, public comments and deliberation, the Commission decided to recommend approval of the project. We’re disappointed, but far from discouraged. We’ll continue pushing to make sure Lake Tahoe gets the protection it deserves.

Next, the Placer County Board of Supervisors will take up the project – date this fall TBA. Check this page for updates, and always Keep Tahoe Blue.

At a public meeting on Saturday, August 17, nearly 300 people attended in person with well over 100 more joining online. About 50 people commented, with all but two opposing the project. After an almost 7-hour meeting, the Olympic Valley Municipal Advisory Council voted not to support the project. They also sent a message to Placer County and the applicant that:

1) the community is overwhelmingly against the plan,
2) the County and applicant are encouraged to evaluate a different reduced-size plan with a reduced-sized Mountain Activity Center, and
3) the community wants collaborative input.

Photo: Tom Mooers, Sierra Watch

On Friday, August 9, the public was allowed its first glimpse of final environmental documents for Alterra Mountain Company’s proposed development at Palisades Tahoe. The release sets the project on a path for denial or approval by the Placer County Board of Supervisors this fall.

The proposal for the enormous Village at Palisades Tahoe—with 850 condo and hotel units, 1,493 bedrooms, and a 90,000-square-foot indoor recreation center—has been in this situation before. And disturbingly, it looks the same as it did in 2014, 2016, and 2023, including the added traffic, pollution, and negative impacts it represents for Lake Tahoe.