The San Francisco Chronicle has written an article about Squaw Valley/KSL’s proposed 101.5-acre village plan.
They point out some other large projects that did not come to fruition in the Lake Tahoe area including:
1. 1860s Proposal: A tunnel from Lake Tahoe to Sacramento to drain Lake Tahoe for Sacramento’s water needs in the 1860s
2. 1960s Proposal: A concrete encasement of Lake Tahoe with subdivisions and a 2 and 3 lane highway that went along the shore of the lake with a bridge across the mouth of Emerald Bay.
Work together to save Lake Tahoe
by Tom Mooers, San Francisco Chronicle
But developer KSL Capital Partners‘ proposals promote a very different version of the Squaw Valley experience – based not on the great outdoors but, instead, on indoor amusement.
All told, the proposed development would be 10 times as big – and twice as tall – as the existing village. New development would include as many bedrooms as the four big high-rise casinos at Stateline, Nev., combined. And it would encourage us to turn our backs on what makes the Tahoe Sierra so special in the first place.
One indication of the scale of development is the projected construction time: 20 years. In other words, developers propose so much that Squaw Valley would be a construction zone for two decades – raising big questions not only about what we leave behind for future generations, but also how we experience Squaw in our own lifetimes.
At the heart of the proposal lies a dangerous, publicly asserted misconception of the Tahoe Sierra – a false notion that “there is nothing to do here in the summer.” So, instead of opportunities to swim in Lake Tahoe, hike the Pacific Crest Trail or raft down the Truckee, the development would be built around a massive, indoor amusement park – about as big as an average Costco warehouse store – with indoor water slides, a fake “action river” and an arcade. It sounds like fun, but does it sound like Tahoe? – Tom Mooers/San Francisco Chronicle
Read the full San Francisco Chronicle article here:
$34m was spent on the Tecoma-TC road (with Homewood chipping in merely $250k) and there’s $25m of federal grant to re-route the hwy to (they hope) the 64 acre bus stop in TC. There’s the amalgamation of water boards, .plans for bike-only lanes and 20mph car crawl zones …and these geniuses at TARP and Placer come up with a great plan – buses. It’s brilliant. Poor local people should use buses so the Bay Area Millionaires can park under their condo. That is clever isn’t it????
There just isn’t room for this thinger. Time to re-design.
Boom.
Wow, that was brutal. KSl will feel that one.