At a public hearing in Kings Beach last month, Alterra Mountain Company’s president of real estate, Bryan Elliott, took to the podium to tell us all what motivates their proposal to transform Tahoe with massive development in Olympic Valley.
“We’re looking for the guests to spend more, not ski more,” he said.
“For what?” a commissioner asked, incredulous.
“To get more wallet capture out of the guests,” Elliot said. “It’s really just as simple as that.”
And there it is. Cut through Alterra’s marketing about community investment and mountain culture and you get to what really drives their relentless pursuit of high-rise condos and an indoor amusement park: “wallet capture.”
Of course, Alterra has every right to try to squeeze each penny out of their speculative investments. They are a private equity-backed, multi-billion-dollar investment vehicle. It’s what they do. But when their private profits run smack into broader principles — public safety, natural resources, and community health — we have every right, even a responsibility, to defend our mountain values. United as the movement to keep Tahoe Truckee True, that’s what we do.
At that same public hearing, Alterra’s outgoing President Dee Byrne announced that they would drop some of the water park features from their proposed indoor amusement park. That words like “waterslides” and “lazy river” have been redlined from their proposal might make it appear slightly less offensive to our mountain sensibilities, but it is no less of a threat to Tahoe.
Alterra still wants to cram 850 condo and hotel units with 1,493 new bedrooms and a 90,000-square-foot indoor amusement park into Olympic Valley. New development would cover more than six city blocks with more bedrooms than three of South Lake Tahoe’s Stateline casinos combined. Alterra would pump 78,000,000 gallons from the watershed every year and add 3,300 new daily car trips to our traffic every day.
It would be so big, it would take 25 years of construction.
And if you look at their own environmental review documents, it’s clear that the impacts of Alterra’s proposed development threaten everything we value about the Tahoe Sierra.
Do you care about public safety? Alterra proposes development in a Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone – lots of people with only one way out. By their own estimates, it would take evacuees more than 11 hours to drive 3 miles. Those stuck in the valley would be told to shelter in place in the smoke on a golf course or in a parking lot.
How about the natural resources of the Sierra Nevada? Alterra’s thirst for water threatens to drain the famous meadows of Olympic Valley. And the project poses a clear danger to the most basic natural resource in the region: the clarity of Lake Tahoe. It would generate traffic that adds to the pollution – in airborne nutrients and ground-up microplastics – destroying the clarity of Lake Tahoe.
And what about the health of our communities? One of the biggest strains on residents, on families, and on towns is the lack of affordable housing. Alterra’s project, with its relatively low-paying jobs and high-end development, would make the workforce housing crisis worse. According to the Town of Truckee, Alterra would create “a shortfall of housing for 939 employees.”
As former Nevada County Supervisor Richard Anderson put it, “Having hundreds of service-wage employees compete for affordable housing in a supply-constrained region would seem a situation that will lead only to heartbreak.”
So, the real price of Alterra’s profits would be paid by the rest of us – in fire danger, pollution, and heartbreak.
Clearly Tahoe deserves better than “wallet capture.” We expect another public hearing in Tahoe in November. To learn more and join our shared commitment to keep Tahoe Truckee True, visit sierrawatch.org.
~ Tom Mooers has been a leader in defending great places in California for more than 20 years. Before joining Sierra Watch as its founding executive director in 2001, he worked for the Greenbelt Alliance and the League to Save Lake Tahoe. He lives in Sierra City, California.
