Court decision on Stateline’s Sierra Colina project favors League to Save Lake Tahoe
By Kathryn Reed
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has sided with the League to Save Lake Tahoe regarding one of five claims it made to stop the Sierra Colina project in Stateline. But that one aspect could derail the project.
The court in its Oct. 11 ruling will not allow the developers to use coverage in the way they wanted to, which involves bike trails. Plans called for conveying a public easement over a shared driveway for pedestrian and bicycle access and emergency ingress and egress for the neighborhood.
The League challenged that component of the project. The TRPA has limits on how much of a parcel may be covered. It all has to do with erosion and sediment that reaches Lake Tahoe. However, in the updated Regional Plan that is expected to be voted on by the end of the year, the designation of bike paths as coverage is supposed to be altered. How that change plays into this project remains to be seen.
The Sierra Colina project is in orange.
Sierra Colina is the name of the project Steve Kenninger and Gail Jaquish are trying to develop on the 18-acre bare parcel between the Lake Village housing area and the old Nugget building on the south side of Highway 50 and across the street from Rabe Meadow.
In a statement Kenninger gave to Lake Tahoe News he said, “The court’s opinion is an abuse of discretion of the highest order, and a complete disregard of the court’s authority and obligations under applicable law.”
A press release from Kenninger further says, “The League and the Ninth Circuit shattered this collaborative public/private partnership in the basin, at the expense of the general public.”
The League had sued the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency because the bi-state agency is the entity that issued the permits in June 2009 granting the coverage, along with allowing the whole project to proceed.
Tahoe Regional Planning Agency officials said they are reviewing the decision and did not have further comment Thursday afternoon.
“The League to Save Lake Tahoe is pleased that the Sierra Colina dispute has come to a close and that concerns over the extent of paving and roadways in this project will be addressed as the development goes forward. We are gratified that the court has endorsed existing protections on road building and removed the possibility of a precedent-setting relaxation of those protections,” the League said in a press release.
It is not known what the Sierra Colina proponents will do now that the decision by the court has come down.
However, environmental improvements have already been taking place in a cooperative effort with the property owners, Douglas County and U.S. Forest Service.
Sierra Colina was to be a LEED certified, 50-home, multi-family residential project that included nine moderate-income deed restricted homes, a network of public trails, with more than 10 acres of dedicated open space.
This town is doomed. If the League would put as much energy into knocking down some of the rattey looking hotels and vacant buildings then maybe we could live without these newer improvements.
YEAH! for the environmental community. As ol’ Ed Abbey usto say, “Nature Bats Last”!!!
Wonder what their passive solar emphasis looks like.
The developers just need to re-evaluate the projects coverage and where they can make reductions. The simplest thing to do would be to retire coverage elsewhere to get the “coverage credits” it needs to keep the project as is.
Sad, really. The only other viable project will be the construction of a McMansion. The community lost.
Also, I believe the official argument was concerning a road in the subdivision, not the actual bike path as perceived in this article, which seems to misleading.
Now its time to put that PIG farm there, kiss my %$# league!!!!!!!!!! Try and stop that
Sad, I walked the property and the creek before the sale to the current owners. Homeless camps, human waste and trash everywhere.
The developers have cleaned the parcel up a lot.
As one of the only folks who testified on behalf of this project (no thanks to the League & the Sierra Club’s ‘broadcast’ e-mail pleas to “fill the seats”), this was not to be simply a LEED project, it was to be a LEED Platinum neighborhood project, one of only a few in the U.S.
I testified on it’s behalf as all the “Town Center” focus by the TRPA will need better examples such as Sierra Colina to not short shrift the ongoing need to protect the air, water, soil, and silviculture of the Basin.
In “winning” this case, the backwardness and shallow understanding of the League, the Sierra Club, and a conservative legal system as to real sustainable benefits to be had with significant transformative green change, as Bob above suggests.
To “blow out” a project with such transformative potential as this one merely corroborates the dysfunctional nature of Tahoe’s embedded symbiotic (agency) relationships.
If even highest standards can not supplant mediocrity, then where are we. . .??
It was a great project for our community and done by people who cared about the environment. I went to their presentations a few years back. These nice people have now lost the millions they spent getting to this point, and why? Some selfish, rich people off the hill got their way.
Wow, when did Bowen turn into a League and Sierra Club hater?
Just because a development is supposed to be LEED certified doesn’t mean it can add more coverage. Where do we draw the line if every LEED certified project gets away with “coverage murder”?
I’ll say it again, the developers just need to either downsize the project a little, or buy and retire a parcel to cover the impacts of the road no longer in question. It’s not like they need to do a complete re-do and go through the full-permitting process again.