In the afterglow of the 1960 Winter Olympics, historians say, the future looked bright in North Lake Tahoe.
The Games highlighted Tahoe to the world as a premiere winter sports destination. Anticipating a boom in visitation, developers scrambled to build lodging around the lake and surrounding areas. Cal Neva was in the hands of none other than Frank Sinatra. It must have seemed like the good times were just beginning.
New construction arrived before the environmental awakening of the decades to come. In time, it became clear that hasty development was contributing to more sediment in the lake, clouding the clarity of our natural treasure.
Regulatory agencies responded by capping development in the Basin and making standards for improvements more stringent. Lake clarity, thankfully, has improved. Yet regulations also increased the cost of doing business. We haven’t seen a new hotel built in North Lake Tahoe in 50 years. Some might say that Tahoe has been frozen in time.
Smaller hotels built in the 1960s boom haven’t been able to keep up with evolving visitor expectations. Many of them have closed. Since 2010, we’ve lost more than 200 hotel rooms in Placer County’s part of the Basin alone.
Yet interest in outdoor recreation is growing, as are regions within a day’s drive of Tahoe. Between the Bay Area, Sacramento, and Reno metro areas, the population is expected to grow by more than 2 million people by 2050.
Where will visitors stay when they inevitably come up to the mountains? Will they stay? Will the demand be filled by more nimble short-term rental units? Unless we can give them other options, they’ll continue to rely on what the market has adapted to provide.
Private home rentals have always been a part of the lodging opportunities for decades. Many of them have belonged to local families for generations.
Still, as housing prices rebounded after the Great Recession and then skyrocketed during the Covid pandemic, resulting market forces encouraged the conversion of smaller homes where local workers have traditionally rented into short-term rentals (STRs).
The Placer County Board of Supervisors intervened to cap the number of STRs allowed. But to ease that market pressure in the long run, we need to restore balance in our lodging options by adding quality hotel rooms to our town and village centers.
More hotel rooms hosting visitors in our town centers keeps them closer to the businesses that serve them. That reduces their need to drive, which reduces traffic congestion and air pollution, and keeps the lake cleaner and locals employed.
It also ensures the money spent by visitors stays here in the community, funding trails, housing, and public transportation improvements, reducing congestion and pollution even more. Improvements to existing properties bring more opportunities to undo the environmental harms aging buildings continue to cause.
Recognizing these benefits, our board has expressed interest in reducing the number of short-term rental permits in parallel with the addition of new hotel rooms, potentially shifting the opportunities for lodging units into our town centers.
It won’t be easy. Expert studies for years have identified the need for more hotel rooms, but also the challenges of building them. To pencil at today’s prices, new hotels will need to have more rooms than our older hotels, and publicly funded incentives.
We’ve done our part by putting in place the Economic Incentive Program to attract hotel interests, and after 50 years, new hotel projects are finally moving forward. The evo Hotel in Tahoe City is a great example of this potential but it can’t stand alone.
Projects have been improved by community input, and there is still more public process to come for the 39° North project in Kings Beach before it is considered by decision makers. Though we remain committed to a thoughtful and transparent public process for every project that ensures it will meet our community, environmental, and economic needs, we know they may not all be exactly what everyone envisions.
What we are sure of is that North Lake Tahoe’s future still looks bright, not despite new hotels, but because of our renewed hope for them.
~ Stephanie Holloway is Placer County’s deputy county executive officer for North Lake Tahoe. She has overseen the county’s North Tahoe County Executive Office since 2021 and worked on Tahoe projects for Placer County for more than 20 years.
