STATELINE, Nev. – The Tahoe Regional Planning Agency’s (TRPA) meeting on February 26 covered the current conclusion of the Tahoe Blue Event Center’s compliance issues, the state of the thresholds used to evaluate environmental health in the Basin, and changes to Douglas County and Placer County’s area plans.

Attendance, not event caps

The Tahoe Blue Event Center has been out of environmental compliance after a failure to track its impact on some of the important thresholds for the environment: visits to the center, which impacts vehicle miles travelled (VMT). Previously, the Tahoe Douglas Visitor’s Authority was tasked with installing a method for tracking visits, which would have been done with Bluetooth sensors. But they were never installed. Others also had an issue with the event cap policy, which treated the impact of small conferences the same as seat-fillers like Tahoe Knight Monsters games or the recent Harlem Globetrotters event.

To set compliance standards for the future, three changes were made to the permit. First, the event center is shifting from an event cap to an attendance limit per year. Next, the TRPA will be monitoring the plan modification. Finally, the event center will also be doing additional mitigation to reach the goal of reducing VMT and car trips for locals.

The new cap for attendance is now 250,000 attendees per year, with 43,000 attendees as the cap for peak summer attendance. Dan Segan, TRPA’s chief science officer, said they’d looked at the data for car trips and attendance to decide on this cap, which would meet the goal of being VMT neutral.

The Tahoe Blue Event Center helped establish new microtransit routes in the area during its construction, and have committed to having specific bus routes for large events like hockey games. Tickets have a current surcharge of $4 that goes to funding transit in the city. Now, these surcharges will be adjusted for inflation per ticket, which Segan said at peak attendance could bring in $1 million.

The U.S. Highway 50 sidewalk from Kingsbury Grade to Stateline will also be improved to increase options for locals who are attending events, which will hopefully decrease car usage to the center. This will mobilize a US-50 street management project that has previously stalled.

Ashley Conrad-Seydah, governor of California appointee to the TRPA governing board, expressed that she felt the wording in the new compliance plan was still a little vague, saying that they “shouldn’t repeat the mistakes from the first time.”

In response to public comment concerned about the ambiguity in the settlement agreement, Shelly Aldean, the Carson City representative, proposed a motion to make it clearer that the event center’s mobility mitigation fee that could be proposed by TRPA would be used in the casino core or event center’s area of impact. The motion passed.

Threshold evaluation report

Segan returned to the microphone to present the TRPA threshold evaluation report. He, along with other TRPA members, facilitated a public discussion that would influence the final recommendations report for a future governing board meeting.

Overall, people were pleased with the successes in stream environment zones, microtransit and its accessibility, forest management, and efforts in managing aquatic invasive species. They expressed concerns with the lack of an updated Environmental Impact Statement (the most recent references data from 2012), affordable housing, egress from fire, and a potential lag in projects as state and federal funding changes. Some also suggested that TRPA could continue to work on its public image, forest management, and tribal involvement.

Some during public comment said that the report was confusing and an example of greenwashing from TRPA. Segan noted that the measurements for some thresholds were more difficult to quantify, as the threshold statement itself is qualitative. He also pointed out that they wanted to get public input for the final recommendations, a new practice for the threshold report.

Area plan changes

The Regional Planning Committee also met and discussed outcomes and area plan changes.

The Cultivating Community, Conserving the Basin project presented their defined outcomes, which were developed through community engagement. The project is in its third phase and Karen Fink, TRPA housing manager, said they are about 25% complete with addressing the development rights system, fees and permitting, and expanding the ability to engage with the community, especially for underrepresented groups. The motion to adapt the developed outcomes passed.

These outcomes were addressed in the amendments to the Tahoe Basin subdistrict, where Placer County did not adopt the Phase 2 Housing Amendments that would have brought them into alignment with the TRPA outcomes. Crystal Jacobsen, interim director of the Community Development Resource Agency in Placer County, said the county was working on their California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) reports and expected to be done by the end of the calendar year.

During public comment, Robb Olson stated he hoped it would help with workforce housing on the North Shore, and Erin Casey of the Tahoe Housing Hub urged the board to approve the amendments, while also noting its impact on the revision of bonus unit policy. The motion passed.

The Douglas County South Shore Area Plan addressed sign and zoning changes and TRPA’s Phase 2 Housing Amendments. The amendment added the Kingsbury Manor Mobile Home Park which fixed the site’s current split, and allowed an additional nine feet of height for 100% deed restricted housing developments, and up to 65 feet within the Kingsbury commercial town center. The sign cycles were also increased from four cycles per minute to 12 cycles per minute within the sign code. The motion passed.

The next governing board meeting is March 26.

Eli Ramos is a reporter for Tahoe Daily Tribune. They are part of the 2024–26 cohort of California Local News Fellows through UC Berkeley.