Denver-based Alterra Mountain Company has once again pushed its massive development proposal for the Village at Palisades Tahoe through Placer County’s regulatory system. All that remains is one meeting with a final vote to approve or deny a project that could change Tahoe and Truckee forever. Placer’s board of supervisors will make that decision on Nov. 19.
The Palisades expansion project has been discussed at dinner tables, while sitting in traffic, and in lift lines for more than a decade. During a Placer County Planning Commission meeting in September, a Palisades employee summed up a sentiment expressed by thousands since 2014: “I implore you to reject this proposal … the community is your constituency, not a Denver [private] equity firm.”
On behalf of the League to Save Lake Tahoe, we urgently hope that message is heard. The Palisades project is bad for Tahoe’s and Truckee’s environment. The expansion — without an equally large transit system and a plan to greatly reduce car trips to Tahoe — is just too big.
With its addition of 850 condo and hotel units, 1,493 bedrooms, over 2,000 parking places, and a 90,000-square-foot indoor recreation center, the Village development proposal would be built in Olympic Valley, outside Truckee’s and the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency’s regulatory reach. But the impacts won’t stay at the resort. The traffic, tailpipe emissions, erosion, and strain on emergency response it creates will spill into neighboring communities and Tahoe’s North and West shores.
Truckee’s town leaders said as much in a letter to Placer County: “At a regional level we share in the positive benefits of new investment in Olympic Valley, while we equally share in the impacts. These impacts cross jurisdictional boundaries and, in several areas, are acutely felt by the Truckee community … the proposed project should be required to do more to reduce overall VMT [vehicle miles traveled] impacts.” We agree.
Thousands of new cars don’t care about lines on a map. They’ll go where they please, including down Highway 89 and into the Tahoe Basin. But they won’t go as far as Denver, where Palisades’ parent company, Alterra, the driving force behind the proposal, is based. Alterra won’t feel the impact of 3,300 new car trips pouring into Tahoe City on gridlocked roads during busy summer days — the same roads that serve as evacuation routes not if, but when, the next wildfire tears through our region. They also won’t be here to see polluted runoff from traffic — the single-largest threat to Tahoe’s water clarity — slowly cloud our shimmering blue lake. And it seems they don’t care.
Alterra has ignored 10 years of widespread, fact-based, reasoned community opposition to the Palisades expansion. The company whose tagline is “we are the mountains” repeatedly dismisses the same local mountain people it claims to be. To secure approval from the county, they have offered some money to reduce the transportation problems they refuse to admit the development will make worse. But their promised “community benefits” are nowhere near enough to offset future decades of increased pressure from the project, let alone alleviate current traffic problems.
Take the common-sense test: Where will 3,300 additional Tahoe-bound cars go on a Friday in July? Imagine your own trip to the grocery store, your child’s practice, or your commute to work. It’s not a pretty picture.
Our region is carved up between two states, five counties, and several municipalities. But that doesn’t mean we’re isolated from one another. Traffic and pollution don’t care about jurisdictional boundaries, so neither do our efforts to Keep Tahoe Blue. The League will continue to do what is in the best interest of Lake Tahoe and the people who enjoy it. We oppose the Palisades expansion project and have for a decade. To join us, visit keeptahoeblue.org.
Together, we will Keep Tahoe Blue.
The Placer County Board of Supervisors will meet on Nov. 19, 9 a.m., at the North Tahoe Events Center in Kings Beach to discuss and vote on the Village at Palisades Tahoe Specific Plan.
~ Steve Spurlock is the League to Save Lake Tahoe Board chair and Dr. Darcie Goodman Collins is the CEO of the League, the donor-funded, science-based organization of environmental experts and Tahoe-lovers behind Keep Tahoe Blue. The League has led the protection and restoration of the region’s environment since 1957 so it can be enjoyed for generations to come.