By Kathryn Reed

STATELINE – Outdoor fun and buildings that match the natural beauty are the goals of Douglas County’s South Shore Area Plan.

“Our overall objective is to transform the casino area to recreation,” Brandy McMahon, senior planner with Douglas County, said at a meeting March 1. “We want to provide a wide-range of recreation in walking distance.”

It means making a seamless connection between Van Sickle Bi-State Park to the Stateline-to-Stateline bike route that is partially built at Rabe Meadow and will extend to Round Hill Pines later this year, to providing beach access via Edgewood when the lodge is developed, to getting people to Kahle Community Center.

Rabe Meadow in Stateline is part of the vision to develop a more recreation-focused community. Photo/LTN file

While the vision for the South Shore from Kahle Drive in Stateline to Ski Run Boulevard in South Lake Tahoe has been the subject of many intense discussions for more than a year, each jurisdiction must define its own vision. While they do so, the respective planning departments are conferring with each other to create similar design standards.

Douglas County has three community plans and 30 residential plan areas on the books. With the adoption in December of the Regional Plan by the Governing Board of the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, the five counties and one city in the Lake Tahoe Basin are tasked with creating area plans. In many ways they are like the community plans, but updated.

The South Shore plan for Douglas combines what was the Casino Core and Lower Kingsbury community plans.

A change for Douglas County is that the commissioners at a meeting in February agreed to take over permitting for residential construction. As of 2012, at the lake Douglas County has 102 vacant parcels. If nine building allocations are give out annually by the TRPA, this would mean those lots could be built out in a dozen years.

Only two single-family residences have been identified in the South Shore Area Plan. Those are on the Edgewood site. Today no one resides in them. And they are slated to be demolished when the lodge is built in the coming years.

This means it is commercial, recreation, public lands and multifamily housing units that will be affected by the South Shore Area Plan.

Paying attention to the various thresholds within the TRPA guidelines is critical to all the area plans, as well as looking at ways to reduce pollutants reaching Lake Tahoe.

Today, the Stateline area has not attained the scenic threshold because of its outdated built environment.

Douglas County contributes a negligible amount of fine sediment into Lake Tahoe – 3 percent of the total – or 125,000 pounds per year, according to the Lake Tahoe Total Maximum Daily Load Technical Report.

The mandate is to reduce that amount by 10 percent by 2016.

All documents related to the South Shore Area Plan are expected to be put on the county’s website as they become available. Comments are being sought and should be sent to Brandy McMahon at mbcmahon@co.douglas.nv.us.

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Dates to know:

• March 12, 5:30-8pm South Shore Area Plan workshop at TRPA, 128 Market St., Stateline.

• March 20, 6-9pm South Lake Tahoe is hosting a public workshop on the Tourist Core Area Plan, formerly known as the Stateline/Ski Run Community Plan, at Lake Tahoe Airport.

• April 9, 1pm Douglas County Planning Commission meeting in Minden. All documents related to the South Shore Area Plan area expected to be discussed, with action likely.

• May, Douglas County commissioners expected to vote on plan.

• June, TRPA Governing Board may hear Douglas’ plan.