USFS may buy disputed campground site

Updated 3:29pm

By Kathryn Reed

Plans are in the works to permanently stop all development on a 120-acre site off Highway 267.

What was to become the controversial Brockway Campground may remain undisturbed forestland.

Sierra Pacific Industries owns the ridegtop parcel off Fibreboard Freeway. If a deal goes through, the U.S. Forest Service will be the owners.

In a proposal that was announced Sept. 7, the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit plans to buy the property from the timber company. Money to do so would come from the Santini-Burton Purchase Program via the Southern Nevada Public Lands Management Act. This funding source limits what can then be done with the land.

“The reason for buying is to protect it from development,” Bob Rodman Jr., lands program manager with LTBMU, told Lake Tahoe News. “We will not develop it. It will be managed for diversified recreation.”

The local USFS branch has already submitted the paperwork requesting the regional office in Vallejo to do an appraisal. The goal is to have all of that done next year, along with completing the purchase.

However, it will be up to SPI to accept whatever offer the feds make. The company could say no and the 282 sites on the resort-like campground could become a reality – pending approval by regulators.

While Mark Pawlicki with SPI said in the long run the campground was likely to make more money for the company, it was going to be years before it became a reality, assuming the permits were granted.

He said the appraisal will be based on the fact that a campground could go there, and does not anticipate the number coming in too low. Pawlicki told Lake Tahoe News if a price can’t be agreed upon, the campground idea could be resurrected.

An appraisal was done by the California Tahoe Conservancy, which helped bring the two parties to the table. Aimee Rutledge with CTC told Lake Tahoe News the appraisal, while paid for with taxpayer dollars, is a confidential document.

Mountainside Partners out of Truckee had wanted to turn the barren land into a high-end campground. This was met with a tremendous amount of opposition. That backlash led to this latest turn of events.

“The construction of the Brockway camping resort complex would have set a terrible precedent, as it would have added significant traffic and related pollution to the Tahoe basin. This announcement is also a win for Tahoe’s regional plan, which calls for the concentration of development in the basin’s already existing town centers,” Darcie Goodman Collins, the League to Save Lake Tahoe’s executive director, said in a statement.

While the land has been logged in the past, there are no permanent structures. The Tahoe Rim Trail goes through the parcel. There are also mountain bike and cross country ski trails that tie into Northstar ski resort.