Then and now: From parking lot to Embassy Suites

The photos here are two views of Highway 50 in South Lake Tahoe from the same location, but about 40 years apart as seen from Harrah’s Lake Tahoe in Stateline.

South Shore Lake Tahoe in the 1970s./Lake Tahoe Historical Society

In the photo above, Harrah’s historic triangular marquee is seen bottom center at the entrance to Harrah’s California parking lot which extended to Paul Kennedy’s Tahoe Steakery — the low, flat single-story rectangular building on Highway 50. That parking lot became the site of the Embassy Suites, known today as Lake Tahoe Resort Hotel.

From the Steakery up to Park Avenue along the mountain side of Highway 50 were motels, hotels, gas station, restaurants, bars, miniature golf, groceries, retail, et cetera, all of which were razed in the 1990s during Re-development.

Today’s view of the same location. Photo/Bill Kingman

Today’s views from Harrah’s to Park Avenue includes the high-end hotel, condominiums, restaurants, movies, professional space, retail and the Heavenly gondola.

On the lake side of Highway 50, a bankrupt project in the first decade of the 2000s devoured multiple motels and retail businesses, leaving an empty 11-plus acre triangular area adjacent to Stateline Avenue which locals sardonically labelled the Ta-hole. After several years of dormancy, the site now has some Highway 50 commercial frontage built by investors in 2014.

— Bill Kingman