After 14 years of legal battles, the Palisades Tahoe development plan finally appears to have been settled.
The owners of Palisades Tahoe have reached a settlement with two environmental conservation groups that challenged the resort’s proposed ski village development in Olympic Valley.
A joint statement from The League to Save Lake Tahoe (Keep Tahoe Blue), Sierra Watch and Palisades Tahoe announced earlier this week the deal will include plans to scale back some of the development.
The controversial project, known as the Village at Palisades Tahoe, has been battled in the courts and the Placer County Board of Supervisors since 2011.
The new joint statement said Placer County’s approval of the revised blueprint would end legal challenges for the development.
“We are listening and taking a different approach, and we feel good about the outcome. As leaders of Palisades Tahoe and Alterra Mountain Company, we (showed) our ability to collaborate, to find a way to evolve the resort, invest in the community, and find common ground,” Palisades Tahoe President and CEO Amy Ohran said in a separate statement.
Keep Tahoe Blue and Sierra Watch had claimed in filing their lawsuit that the development would worsen traffic congestion, increase air pollution, erode roadways, and degrade water quality in the Lake Tahoe Basin.
“Sierra Watch, Keep Tahoe Blue, and Palisades Tahoe negotiated in good faith to find a solution that effectively ends the 14-year conflict over Olympic Valley while supporting the social, economic, and environmental needs of Olympic Valley and the Lake Tahoe region,” the groups said in a collective statement.
The proposed expansion, which would have included thousands of bedrooms of new housing and a water park, sparked objections from not only the conservation groups, but concerns from area residents worried what additional vehicle traffic could mean in the case of a wildfire evacuation.
The groups said the agreement will lead to a 38% reduction in daily car trips to the area.
The environmental groups had filed a lawsuit against Alterra Mountain Company’s proposed 85-acre Village at Palisades Tahoe project in December 2024 after the plan was unanimously approved by Placer County supervisors despite a marathon meeting where many residents voiced concerns. That project had also been scaled back from the initial proposal.
The agreement includes:
- Reducing the total bedrooms within the plan by 40% from the latest plan and 60% from the initial proposal.
- Reducing total new commercial space by 20%.
- Eliminating plans for an indoor waterpark that had planned waterslides, indoor water skiing, a wave pool and an indoor river. Instead, the project will have a smaller Mountain Adventure Center.
- Preserving land for recreation and public trail access in perpetuity by creating a conservation easement for the area at the base of Shirley Canyon that had been proposed for subdivision development.
Under the initial 2011 application, Alterra had proposed construction of 2,184 bedrooms. That total was reduced to 1,493 bedrooms in a 2014 revised proposal where 850 housing units – a mix of condominiums, hotel rooms and timeshares – were planned.
The new agreement calls for a total of 896 bedrooms. A spokesperson for the conservation groups said the project will commit to 296 new beds for resort employees.
The previously approved proposal had allowed 278,000 square feet of commercial space. That has been reduced to 222,000 square feet under the new agreement.
“For 14 years, Olympic Valley has been at the frontlines for the biggest fight over the future of Tahoe,” Tom Mooers, executive director of Sierra Watch, said in a press release. “Now it’s another great example of how we can work together to protect the places we love.”
