development rights

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. - City Council will be holding their next meeting on Tuesday September 22 at 9:00 a.m.

The agenda is a fairly short one with the last two regular council meetings lasting about eight hours each.

There will be a closed session meeting at 8:30 a.m.

Council will consider postponing or canceling all City permitted special events until November 17, 2020 or until public health officials deem it is safe to gather in larger groups. All permitted special events have been canceled since May 12, 2020, due to the pandemic.

Placer County has purchased the 11-acre Nahas property near Tahoe City for $3.42 million. They are working with housing developer partner Related-Pacific Companies to develop conceptual options for a potential mixed-use commercial and achievable housing project on the site.

While the purchase represents a step forward in bringing more achievable housing to North Lake Tahoe, development concepts for the site are still in early stages and no project proposal has yet been brought forward for formal consideration or approval.

2018 was an extraordinary year for Lake Tahoe, and one of the region’s most successful years in decades. The Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA) assisted by dozens of partners approved landmark programs and projects, including a new Shoreline Plan, a comprehensive update of TRPA’s development rights system, and the U.S. 50 South Shore Community Revitalization Project.

This September and October, the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA) Governing Board will move forward with hearings and final milestone decisions on two significant initiatives: A new Shoreline Plan and an overhaul of the agency’s transferable development rights system.

TRPA will hold hearings for both these initiatives at the Governing Board meeting on Wednesday, Sept. 26, and could hold final votes on them as early as Wednesday, Oct. 24.

The Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA) has published the summer 2018 edition of Tahoe In Depth. The award-winning newspaper, in its sixth year of publication, strives to provide residents, visitors, and policymakers with information about protecting, enjoying, and exploring the Lake Tahoe Basin.

The summer 2018 edition includes a special report on 10 years of fighting aquatic invasive species at Lake Tahoe, as well as the 10th anniversary of the watercraft inspection program that has successfully prevented any new introductions of aquatic invasive species over the last decade.

Like many communities across the country, the Tahoe Basin is facing an affordable housing crisis. The high cost to buy or rent a home is simply unaffordable for most Tahoe residents. It’s a problem for people of many economic backgrounds, including middle-income teachers, nurses, police, and firefighters.

LAKE TAHOE - The California Tahoe Conservancy Board today authorized $414,074 to the California Department of Parks and Recreation for projects that improve forest health and reduce the risk of wildfire at Tahoe State Recreation Area and Ed Z’Berg Sugar Pine Point State Park. The funding is the first allocation of more than $6.8 million in Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act funds awarded to the Conservancy at last year’s Presidential Summit.

With the warm spell of late, at lake level it looks like the big snow storms never happened. However, go up above 8,000 feet and you see a much different picture. Atop Heavenly’s Dipper Chair there is an information shack that is between 8-10 feet high. Next to it is 10 foot high signage indicating where the runs are. As of today, you can’t see either of these. Over 50 feet of snow fell up there and even with the melt and the settling, there is still a ton of white stuff. I expect our streams will be flowing into August and our mountains might stay white throughout the summer.

Twenty-five years ago, I finished my graduate work in Oregon and moved to Northern Nevada for a planning position at TRPA. Having spent a large part of my youth hiking and camping at Tahoe and in the Sierra, the move felt like coming home.

At the beginning of Tuesday's South Lake Tahoe City Council meeting, Austin Sass was voted in as mayor, Wendy David as vice mayor and new Councilmembers Jason Collin and Brooke Laine were sworn in.

It was an unanimous vote for Sass, but with three Councilmembers interested in being vice-mayor, the vote for that position was a much closer 3-2. Both Brooke Laine and Tom Davis also expressed a desire to serve under Sass. Collin was the only one not interested in either position, citing his being "the new kid on the block" and wanted to learn the job he was elected for first.

Like many communities that are highly-desirable places to vacation and live, Lake Tahoe has affordable housing problems. Two recent studies commissioned by the Tahoe Prosperity Center and Tahoe Truckee Community Foundation clearly illustrate the housing challenges our region faces.

Median home prices of more than $500,000 on the North Shore and nearly $400,000 on the South Shore are simply too high for our region’s low wages, putting the cost of home ownership and even rent out of reach for many working people.

An old, blue building on the corner of Highway 50 and Sawmill Road adjacent to the Upper Truckee River is being demolished, and the sensitive land it sits on will be restored to natural wetlands.

The building is near the site of the historic Ethel's Pie Shop.

The 1.05 acre parcel was acquired by the California Tahoe Conservancy under its Tahoe Livable Communities Program in December 2015.

Earlier this year the California Tahoe Conservancy (CTC) purchased three properties in order to provide open space, improve water quality and remove blight.

The first of these properties, the Alta Mira Building, was demolished this week.

"We hope these acquisitions will be just the first wave of our renewed
efforts to partner with the City in helping to revitalize South Lake Tahoe," Tom Davis said in May when the Conservancy Board voted to purchase the building for $2.5 million. He sits on both the Conservancy Board and South Lake Tahoe City Council.

The City of South Lake Tahoe's vision to recreate a community that encourages revitalizing commercial and residential areas got one step closer today with the TRPA's adoption of the South Lake Tahoe Tourist Core Area Plan. The area involved is the Highway 50 corridor from Fairway Ave at Bijou, up and down Ski Run Boulevard, and up to the Stateline.

Outdated development and pollution in the core of South Lake Tahoe could be on their way out with the adoption today of the City of South Lake Tahoe Tourist Core Area Plan by the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA) Governing Board.

For the first time since 1987, Lake Tahoe has a new regional plan for development and land use.
Twelve of the 14 voting members of the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency's governing board voted in favor of the new plan, with one member voting against it and another abstaining, according to TRPA spokesman Jeff Cowan.

Business interests say the plan is an overdue overhaul of regulations that will jump-start Tahoe's tourism economy while also protecting its environment.

A local South Lake Tahoe neighborhood will soon have something to cheer about because on Monday, April 30 from 5:30pm to 6 pm Edgewood Companies will join City officials, families, neighbors and community members at a celebratory groundbreaking ceremony. The groundbreaking will mark the start of construction on Bonanza Park, located at 1209 Bonanza Street.

With construction equipment ready to go at the Bonanza neighborhood site of the former C&M Lodge,