Dilapidated S. Tahoe motel to be resurrected
Trout Creek Motel’s new owner promises upgrades. Photo/LTN
By Kathryn Reed
One of South Lake Tahoe’s rundown hotels on Highway 50 is about to undergo some much-needed rehabilitation.
“By April 30 it will be looking good from the road,” Robert Durward said of the Trout Creek Motel.
He is the new owner of the 11-room lodging facility near the Town and Country Center. Durward also owns the Sky Lake Lodge next door and the El Nido down the road. He has refurbished both.
“My plans are not to tear it down, but have more curb appeal from the street and revamp the whole thing,” Durward told Lake Tahoe News.
The former owner had been cited and fined by the city numerous times for never making any of the improvements to the blighted facility.
Bill Potts, senior housing inspector for South Lake Tahoe, said Durward has promised to do what the former owner never did — remove the sign, rehabilitate the roof, paint the building and remove the foundation that is in the driveway.
In a letter from Durward to the city, he says he also plans to upgrade the rooms.
The three tenants have been given eviction notices. Once the place is renovated, Durward plans to keep it a weekly rental facility. He said it’s too hard to make it a tourist hotel because of the spring and fall shoulder seasons would mean too many nights with no heads in beds.
Durward said if the weekly rentals don’t work, he’ll think about converting the property into apartments.
Duward,
Please take your lessons on how to ressurect an old hotel/motel from events that had taken place at the Ski Haus Lodge between 2007 and 2011.
Hope you gave your tenants at least 90 days to 6 months to move on those eviction notices.
Best to you
Please, please, please, don’t touch the place. It has been the go to location for most of the drug dealing and homeless people for years, ever since the office burned down years ago. That is why you see so many people with binoculars and cameras sitting at the bus stop across the street.
Just checked county records and Mr. Durward dosen’t seem to own the place, just yet. I could be wrong. Hey man, record your deed.
Nice to know all you have to do when you want to operate an apartment building in South Lake Tahoe is just decide. Just throw a microwave in there and go!
On a more positive note, thank you Robert for cleaning up one of many eye sores in South Shore and I hope your plans come true for you.
Putting lipstick on a pig doesn’t make it beautiful or bring it up to comtempory standards no more than Joan Rivers or Jane Fonda getting another facelift and believing they look youthful. Bring on the Prozac.
Sam the sham,
Lipstick and pigs. Again? Argumentum ad hominem.:-)
OK, Laketoohigh, I should have said putting paint on stucco. Happy now? Sorry I bashed your heroes Joan and Jane.
The faces of both have seen more knives than a Benihanas. :-)
Remodeling sounds good in theory. I know he has to make it weekly rentals in order to survive but that will always attract the same shady people that move from one weekly to another to try to stay one step ahead of the law.
How nice of him to upgrade the rooms for his clientele. I’m sure having a nice room is a must have for their drug use and deals.
That entire 50 frontage neighborhood is very questionable all the way to Upper Truckee River. The league to save Lake Tahoe doesn’t even do snow removal on it’s sidewalk there.
Good luck to the new owner of Trout Creek Motel. Now what about “The Hole” people?