SAM Magazine—Olympic Valley, Calif., July 10, 2025—The massive planned base area development at Palisades Tahoe appears to be moving forward after the resort and two Tahoe-area environmental conservation groups agreed to various reductions in scope, ending a 14-year legal battle that has delayed the project from breaking ground.

Prior to the agreement, the most recent plan that was unanimously approved by the Placer County Board of Supervisors in November included construction of 850 hotel, timeshare, and residential units; nearly 300,000 square feet of commercial space; and a 90,000-square-foot entertainment and recreation center that was envisioned to include an indoor waterpark. 

Following the approval, the League to Save Lake Tahoe and Sierra Watch sued Placer County to stop the development. It was the second lawsuit filed against the county by Sierra Watch. The first came after the board’s 2016 approval of the project, which led to a 2021 opinion issued by California’s Third District Court of Appeal that the environmental analysis for the development violated California law, stripping the board approvals and forcing the county to redo the environmental impact report. 

The revised report used for the board’s November decision found that the project wouldn’t significantly impact Lake Tahoe, according to a report from SFGATE, an assertion at the heart of the challenge to the approval filed by the two groups in December. 

Comments from leaders of the two conservation groups at the time pointed to Palisades Tahoe parent company Alterra as being inflexible. However, following the latest suit, the resort’s president and COO Amy Ohran and other Alterra officials sat down for face-to-face negotiations with Sierra Watch and the League to Save Lake Tahoe leadership—an approach that yielded the agreed-upon changes in scope to the project.

The agreement includes substantial downsizing, including 40 percent reduction in total bedrooms, 20 percent reduction in total new commercial space, affirms the permanent elimination of an indoor waterpark within the village area, creates a conservation easement for two lots at the base of Shirley Canyon that were slated for development but will now be forever preserved for trail access and recreation, and prevents additional development within the village plan boundary for 25 years. 

“We really spent 14 years holding off reckless development, 14 years of fighting, so that we could pivot into six months of collaborative discussions,” said Sierra Watch executive director Tom Mooers in an interview with SFGATE this week. That “was a major change and a welcome change.”

Ohran said in a video posted to the Palisades Tahoe website that, after more than a decade of setbacks, it was time to take a different approach in order to get a different outcome. “It was more about alignment for our resort and for our community,” she said. The outcome is “reflective of earnest and forward-thinking conversations with Sierra Watch and the League to Save Lake Tahoe. And the conversations were really just grounded in listening and a willingness to find common ground. Real progress happens through collaboration over opposition, and we feel good about the next chapter ahead …”

The resort said it will be engaging in community meetings over the coming months “that will culminate in the revised plan being reviewed by the Placer County Board of Supervisors for approval.”