The sad part is that this is not the same development for which the permit was issued. A new permitting process should have been required so we really know what is coming.
This first development piece is said to be the bottom floor of a 3 story structure which might be built later. It is built on 6 of the 29 original parcels. The owner of 9 of the remaining parcels has already stated to the council that they intend to sell, not develop. This alone proves it isn’t the same project. The other 14 parcels are being held back by Owens Financial so they can sell them off as well with no requirement to build what was permitted.
How the city attorney said this is just an approval of the original plan is beyond me.
That said, we need some development. The fact that it is different doesn’t bother me. That fact that the City believes the public can’t see through this deception does. All this to avoid having to get a some new environmental reviews and permits.

I basically agree with the sentiments in Crawford’s letter, but the parting shot toward Hal Cole was unnecessary and cheapens the argument. I don’t know if he is looking for redemption but he is not alone.

No one can fail to understand that Cole believes in what he does and that despite his obvious wealth and ability to build great custom homes, he has been over his head from the beginning about planning and particularly the financing of complex projects. The long ago, pre-collapse performance bond issue and how bonds were unavailable and not needed clearly indicated that.

The city council in its entirety got taken in by the Lane interests, believing they were far more substantial than it turns out they were. The entire council, not just Mr. Cole, colluded in making this travesty a reality. Who knows what individual benefits other than polishing their egos they dream of. TRPA, El Dorado County and many others were actively involved.

It is widely assumed that if you have money and influence you must be smarter than most of us, a supposition that is obviously not true in the case many of the parties owning a piece of this disaster.

The city has been castigated often and by many for hiring expensive consultants for this and that study and decision. It is too bad that they didn’t seek and use truly independent opinions on the Convention Center’s likelihood of success, and a risk/reward review on the financing plans.
Perhaps they might have recognized and avoided the if-you-build-it-they-will come mindset in the original plan. Tahoe is too remote and with too many access issues to attract the kind of conventions discussed.

The larger event management and convention planners recognize Tahoe as not appropriate for the class of conventions that generate the income and business the promoters were talking up.
Convention attendees, especially the very busy and important business leaders are simply not likely to favor a convention venue where half an entire business day is spent sitting on a smelly, often not so clean BUS getting from and back to the airport in Reno.
Large conventions do not generally support the before and after vacation days that were discussed officially and unofficially in finding reasons to support the original project in the first place.

SLT is seemingly in the greed and panic driven mindset of the early sixties Olympic frenzy, which caused all the substandard development we are trying to rid ourselves of now.

The current project is truly, as Crawford suggests, a piecemeal, vaguely planned series of non purpose built structures that have little chance to be significantly different than what existed before the hole was dug.

We may find out if the old saw that says “once something is screwed up, whatever is done to try to fix it usually makes it worse”