NORTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. – During its meeting in North Lake Tahoe on Thursday, the Placer County Planning Commission gave its stamp of approval on Alterra Mountain Company’s revised development plan for its Palisades Tahoe resort.
The downsized Village at Palisades Tahoe Specific Plan cuts more than 70 percent from the original proposal and does not include the most controversial feature of previous versions: a massive indoor waterpark. The approved plan will supply employee housing and a parking garage.
“This is a great example of how we can work together to honor mountain culture and defend our Tahoe values,” said Tom Mooers of Sierra Watch, the conservation non-profit that launched the grassroots effort to keep Tahoe Truckee True.
In July 2025, the League to Save Lake Tahoe (Keep Tahoe Blue) and Sierra Watch announced an agreement that reduced the size, scale, and impacts of the controversial Olympic Valley project. This came after years of discussion and lawsuits with one side wanting to develop the area and the other side wanting to preserve the valley at the northwest end of the Lake Tahoe Basin. The two groups and Palisades Tahoe made the announcement last summer (see their agreement here).
The proposal put before the Planning Commission represented the culmination of a fourteen-year fight over the future of Tahoe – and a flurry of collaborative negotiations between the developer and conservationists.
It began in 2011, when Alterra’s precursor, KSL Capital Partners, bought the famed Sierra ski resort then known as Squaw Valley. Their initial proposal called for new development of a size and scale the region had never seen: a series of highrises with a total of 3,187 new bedrooms.
Sierra Watch organized a grassroots movement of local residents and Tahoe stalwarts, working together in the campaign to keep Tahoe Truckee True.
By 2014, KSL had cut their project down to 1,493 bedrooms. The main attraction would have been a 90,000-square-foot indoor waterpark, designed to include North America’s tallest indoor waterslide and attract 300,000 visitors every year. Would-be developers claimed they needed “a wet amenity to compete with the lake.”
Placer County approved the project in 2016. Sierra Watch filed suit to overturn those entitlements – and prevailed. But in 2022 Alterra requested a new round of entitlements – for the exact same project.
Two years later, the Placer County Board of Supervisors again voted to approve the project. Sierra Watch filed suit – again; this time they were joined by the League to Save Lake Tahoe. After the two groups filed an initial brief, all parties involved came to the table to chart a different course.
Over six months of collaborative discussions, Alterra, the League, and Sierra Watch hammered out a settlement. Under the new agreement, Alterra promised to revise its project – cutting the number of bedrooms approved in 2024 by 40 percent, reducing commercial square footage by 20 percent, and permanently removing the indoor waterpark.
At Thursday’s hearing, they presented those changes to the Placer County Planning Commission. Amy Ohran, President and COO of Palisades Tahoe, characterized the revisions as the product of “years of input and a lot of dialogue.”
We really took a new direction and saw an opportunity to take a meaningful step forward,” said Ohran. “With a mindset focused on finding common ground.”
Gavin Feiger of the League to Save Lake Tahoe, known by its motto Keep Tahoe Blue, touted the record of advocacy and the spirit of collaboration.
“At Keep Tahoe Blue we believe we need to stand firm when it’s necessary but make progress when it’s possible,” said Feiger. “What we have now is a better project, and the environment and the community will still be protected.”
Mooers of Sierra Watch pointed to a slide shared by Placer County staff, demonstrating the drastic reduction in bedrooms over time.
“The difference in those two notches in the timeline, from 3,187 in 2012 to 895 today – what happened in between – is a beautiful thing,” said Mooers. “It’s the shared passion of thousands of individuals who love Olympic Valley, who maintain our multi-generational commitment to Tahoe, and who honor mountain culture.”
“It’s everyone who got involved to keep Tahoe Truckee True, and: we did it.”
After four hours of comments, questions, and presentations, the Planning Commission voted – unanimously – to recommend approval of the revised project.
Commissioner Robyn Dahlgren voiced her support, “This is a great model. It seems like you’ve all come together and the project respects what you want for the future.”
The Planning Commission vote is technically a recommendation; the County Board of Supervisors will make the final decision in a future hearing.
