Board to hear Palisades at Tahoe Specific Plan item at Nov. 19 meeting in North Lake Tahoe

Published Oct. 18, 2024

The Placer County Board of Supervisors will reconsider the Village at Palisades Tahoe Specific Plan at its Nov. 19 meeting in North Lake Tahoe. The board will consider the plan's project entitlements and certification of the project's environmental impact report, including both the original EIR and the partially revised EIR.

The meeting will be held at the North Tahoe Event Center (8318 North Lake Blvd. in Kings Beach) starting at 9 a.m. and is anticipated to be live-streamed via YouTube on the Placer County channel. The meeting agenda will be published here at least 72 hours prior to the meeting.

The Village at Palisades Tahoe Specific Plan proposes an 85-acre resort village that redevelops the existing ski resort base area at the west end of Olympic Valley. The plan includes 8.8 acres for employee housing, a community market, shipping and receiving and employee intercept parking. Known as the eastern parcel, this portion of the development would be located 1.3 miles east of the resort near the entrance to Olympic Valley.

The specific plan would allow for a hospitality and recreation-based, all-season mountain resort community with up to 850 hotel, condominium-hotel and fractional ownership residential units. The developer would be limited to a maximum of 1,493 resort bedrooms with 297,000 square feet of new and replacement commercial space for restaurants, retail, private recreation uses and skier services.

The proposed plan includes public trail improvements such as flushable restrooms and parking at the trailheads to Granite Chief and Shirley Canyon trails, a new sewer connection and flush restrooms at Olympic Valley Park and restoration of Washeshu Creek to correct impacts from prior channelization in 1960. Construction of a new fire station within the proposed village at the west end of the valley, employee housing for 386 workers and public transit improvements are also written into the proposal.

The project was approved by the Board of Supervisors on Nov. 15, 2016, and was subsequently litigated. The appellate court determined the EIR had deficiencies with four specific analyses: wildfire evacuation traffic control responsibility, construction noise impacts, public transit and regional impacts to the Lake Tahoe Basin as they related to water quality. On Nov. 8, 2022, the Board of Supervisors took action to decertify the Final EIR and rescind the project approvals in accordance with the appellate court decision.

Alterra Mountain Company, owner and developer of Palisades Tahoe, worked with county staff and an environmental consultant to revise portions of the EIR analysis. While the project proposal itself is unchanged from what was approved in 2016, the proposed development agreement between Alterra and Placer County would include much more benefits for residents, including more constructed workforce housing units and a requirement that all 386 local worker housing units will be constructed or developed with the first project phase.

The proposed plan also includes multiple added measures to reduce the impacts of vehicle trips in the area - including a lodging fee that would generate an estimated $20 million over the life of the project to fund vehicle-miles-traveled reduction efforts. A Tahoe Regional Planning Agency mobility fee would also be implemented generating an additional $2 million of mobility improvements and VMT reduction strategies within the Placer County portion of the Lake Tahoe Basin. The plan would also require Alterra to improve the state Route 89/Olympic Valley Road intersection and develop traffic management and parking plans on higher visitation days, as well as annual traffic analysis and reporting.

At the Sept. 5 Planning Commission meeting, Alterra proposed revising the specific plan to remove the following uses from the mountain adventure camp: simulated skydiving, skate park, BMX park and course, action river, lazy river, rafting, stand-up paddle boarding, rope swings, wakeboarding, water games, water skiing, water slides, waterfalls, wave pool and wave rider.

Learn more about the Village at Palisades Tahoe Specific Plan here: www.placer.ca.gov/8213/Village-at-Palisades-Tahoe-Specific-Plan.