Four months after Homewood Mountain announced it would not open for the 24/25 ski season, West Shore businesses are feeling the impacts of that decision.
“There is obviously less traffic down that way,” said Quinten Frye, who opened Cult Burger in Tahoma in April 2023. “It’s not a real draw anymore for wintertime with Homewood being shut down. There is visibly a lack of people around and numbers are down significantly.”
According to Frye, Cult Burger is down 20% to 30% from last year, which he attributes to fewer visitors to Homewood and Tahoma.
“We used to get a little après business after the resort would close down, now it’s local business,” he said. “I don’t think we have to close, but it definitely affects business. We had to downsize staff … we let go of at least two from last season.”
Cult Burger is not alone in experiencing a downturn this winter because of Homewood’s closure. Of the nine business owners and rental companies that Moonshine spoke with, the majority either said business is down, or they have made changes to adapt to the loss of the ski resort this season, the biggest generator of visitors to the deep West Shore in winter.
Rick Brown opened Dockside Trading Co. in the former Obexer’s General Store in the summer of 2022. He has already seen a decrease in sales at the market this winter, which normally relies on Homewood employees coming in to grab snacks and lunch. Brown says Dockside revenue decreased by 10%, which is significant with today’s inflation.
“In this day and age, when profits are a lot less due to the fact that everything is rising in price, profit margins have shrunk down, so it adds to the stress level,” he said.
His other Homewood business, Swiss Lakewood, has not been impacted thus far since it’s an evening-only operation in winter. “Swiss will continue along with average business because it’s more of a destination place,” said Brown, noting that the restaurant’s numbers were up from last year after the holidays.
However, Brown made the decision to close Swiss Lakewood for a longer period of time in the fall because of Homewood’s closure. Normally, the restaurant shuts down for three weeks in November, but this year it stayed shuttered until Dec. 20.
“The writing was on the wall,” he said.
Another business that made a preemptive call to adjust its operations this winter was Hauserman Rental Group. Even before Homewood announced it would not be opening this winter, the property management firm decided that it would not take on new ski leases in Homewood and Tahoma.
“We already had a hard time leasing the properties we had in that area,” said Dana Lipsky, a reservations and new properties specialist with Hauserman.
Another reason ski leases close to Homewood Mountain could be challenging to rent is because of years like last winter when Homewood didn’t get enough snow to open until early January, completely missing the busy holiday season.
Tahoe Rentals by Wells and Bennett Realtors handles around 20 homes in Homewood and Tahoma. Jack Casey, a property manager, said that bookings are down.
“That area is now that much further removed from a viable ski option, which is tough not only for us but also for local businesses,” he said. “While it’s a little too early to make a general statement for the entire winter, we expect that area to rent worse than in previous years.”
But perhaps the business that is most closely tied to Homewood Mountain is West Shore Sports, which is next door to the ski area and relies on ski and snowboard rentals and repairs as the heart of its business during winter. Owner Trevor Larkins said he already saw signs that the ski resort was becoming a less reliable generator of customers starting in 2022, when Homewood announced its intention to go private and raised day ticket prices to $229 on weekends and as high as $279 during peak times, making it the most expensive lift ticket in North America, according to peakratings.com.
“We were already starting to feel the effects with what Homewood was doing — basically jacking up lift ticket prices, charging more and providing less,” said Larkins, who opened West Shore Sports in 2005. “We were like, ‘OK, this is going to be a real clear indicator of what business will look like if we don’t have day-use ticket buyers going to Homewood.’”
Homewood’s high ticket prices last season, coupled with the loss of Christmas sales since the resort didn’t open until January, contributed to making 2023/24 West Shore Sports’ worst winter, with numbers down 30% to 35%. Larkins had to lay off two employees due to a lack of work.
“The writing was on the wall,” he said, echoing Swiss Lakewood’s Brown. “We had to recreate our winter business.”
Larkins considered moving his shop to a higher-traffic area and made an offer on the former Willard’s Sports Shop in Tahoe City. When that fell through, he decided to stay put and think outside of the box. In the fall, Larkins came up with the plan to offer snowshoe and cross-country ski tours in Sugar Pine Point State Park, giving customers the option to pair a tour with wine tasting from Tahoe Wine Collective. By mid-January, they had done two tours.
“I don’t think that Homewood is a reliable source of income for us anymore,” he said. “We are not going to plan it that way because there has been so much inconsistency so far. West Shore businesses are definitely suffering from not having people coming to Homewood. I don’t feel confident on relying on them [ski resort] for our business model, but I hope that I am proven wrong.”
Not all West Shore businesses are suffering, however. Both The Dog & Bear Tavern and Tahoma Market say that their numbers are the same as previous years or better.
“We are actually up right now compared to last year,” said Executive Chef Jesse Mathewson of Dog & Bear, which opened in 2021. “We had the biggest holiday; I didn’t even know we could do that much. One day we were up 180%. We were doing 200 pizzas a couple nights.”
Like most Homewood and Tahoma business owners, Mathewson wants what’s best for the West Shore — for Homewood to bring the ski resort into the 21st century with new infrastructure, be open to the public, and stay open.
“We are concerned with what’s going to happen with the future of Homewood not only this year but future years,” he said. “Who knows if it will open next year. Everybody just wants their jobs back … everybody wants Homewood to fix everything and have a killer mountain.”
On Jan. 22, the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency approved Homewood’s master plan amendments, green-lighting the project to move forward (read Moonshine’s Jan. 23 online story TRPA Approves Homewood Master Plan, Keeping Homewood Public). Homewood General Manager Andy Buckley said he is confident that the resort will open next year as a result. He hopes to break ground this spring on the new gondola, which will replace the Madden Chair. The gondola has been in storage in Reno since 2023.
