The parcels with the yellow bubbles are owned by Edgewood Companies in South Lake Tahoe and will be affected by the Edgewood Lodge project.

By Kathryn Reed

To accommodate the Edgewood Lodge, which could break ground in August, some changes to planning documents are necessary. And this involves South Lake Tahoe because part of Edgewood Tahoe Golf Course is in the city limits.

Holes 8 and 9 cross into California from Stateline. Part of No. 8’s green complex is in the city as well as the tee boxes for No. 9.

Edgewood owns about 10 acres on four parcels in South Lake Tahoe that go from the lake to about Manzanita Street. The parcels are odd shaped. The Julia Morgan-designed house that is on one parcel will not be touched.

Edgewood Companies is now planning to alter holes 7-8-9 to accommodate the 159-room hotel. The hotel will be repositioned slightly.

“It’s not a big change, but it hits all the right buttons. It will be a better hotel guest experience, better community guest experience and it reduces the impact to beach soils,” Patrick Rhamey, executive vice president of real estate for Edgewood Companies, told Lake Tahoe News.

By modifying Hole 9 more than what was approved in 2012 it will add 130 lineal feet of public beach access to the already 500 feet that was allocated. It also means having more of the golf course on high-capability land and not on beach soil.

Hole 7 is being altered for the entrance road to the hotel. It will generally be in the same location, but have better exposure to sun.

The big change for Hole 8 is that the tree in the middle will be on the right. The creek along this hole will also be restored.

Hole 9 will have the most dramatic changes. Today it starts in California, plays south to north and finishes by the parking lot. In the future it will dogleg right near Lake Parkway in a westerly direction and end with a dogleg right to finish in front of the hotel.

By June 2015 all the changes to the course should be ready for golfers to test.

Because there are changes to the original plans the company will need the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency to approve an amendment. South Lake Tahoe officials must vote on the negative declaration as well as changing the Edgewood General Plan and approve an amendment to the plan area.

The Tourist Core Area Plan that was just approved does not cover this area. In the past, Douglas County incorporated the California part of the golf course in its plans. That was eliminated last year when its area plan for Stateline was approved.

The changes affect Plan Area Statements 70 and 89. The changes would allow golf where it currently is prohibited. No additional development would be permitted.

Changes to the course will not occur until after the July celebrity golf tournament. It’s possible for a bit the course will be 15 holes or the three affected holes could temporarily be modified.

The lodge is expected to take 20 months to build. It could be open in May 2016.

Expanding the south banquet room in the clubhouse is also planned. It’s likely that won’t happen this year. It will not impact the restaurant.

“We have put a hold on taking weddings after the second or third week of September until we figure out the schedule for the south room,” Rhamey said.

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Notes:

• Feb. 13 3pm South Lake Tahoe Planning Commission meeting at Lake Tahoe Airport regarding Edgewood General Plan/Plan Area amendment.

• Feb. 24 is the deadline to comment on the draft negative declaration for the proposed General Plan and Plan Area Amendment. Send comments to South Lake Tahoe Planning Department, 1052 Tata Lane, South Lake Tahoe, CA 96150.

• March 13 3pm South Lake Tahoe Planning Commission meeting at Lake Tahoe Airport regarding negative declaration.

• March 18 the South Lake Tahoe City Council will take up the Edgewood negative declaration. The meeting starts at 9am at Lake Tahoe Airport.

• The Tahoe Regional Planning Agency could hear the changes at its March meetings.

To the community,

Design Workshop, a local landscape architectural company, was the generous sponsor for Bread & Broth’s dinner served on Jan. 27 at St. Theresa Church’s Grace Hall.

This was their first time hosting a B&B dinner. Gina Montecallo, one of Design Workshop’s landscape designers, said, “Great to give back to the community and everyone appreciated the dinner. Glad to see a program like this in South Lake Tahoe.”

Montecalla and her fellow Design Workshop crew members, Xue Yao Wei, landscape designer, and Ben Fish and Sarah Nitchman, both landscape architects, spent the evening on the serving line, running the dishwasher and assisting B&B volunteers with the dinners cleanup.

“So happy and satisfied to see the smiles everywhere”, said Wei, summing up her volunteering experience.

Bread & Broth is fortunate to have sponsors like Design Workshop who support our efforts to provide a weekly full course dinner to the members of the Lake Tahoe South Shore community. Design Workshop has beautified Tahoe with its design projects at Heavenly Village and Harrison Avenue and with the sponsorship of an Adopt A Day, they helped beautified the lives of those less fortunate in our community.

To help B&B as a donor or sponsor, contact me at (530) 542-2976 or carolsgerard@aol.com.

Carol Gerard, Bread & Broth

By Wray Herbert, Huffington Post

I went to college long before the era of laptops, so I learned to take notes the old-fashioned way: ink on paper. But that does not mean my note-taking system was simple. Indeed it was an intricate hieroglyphic language, in which asterisks and underscoring and check marks and exclamation points all had precise meaning, if only to me.

It’s a lost art. Many college students have some kind of electronic note-taking device nowadays, and most will swear by them. And really, only a Luddite would cling to pen and notebook in the 21st century. Typing is faster than longhand, producing more legible and more thorough notes for study later on.

But has anyone actually compared the two? Is it possible that laptops somehow impair learning — or conversely, that pen and paper convey some subtle advantage in the classroom? Two psychological scientists, Pam Mueller of Princeton and Daniel Oppenheimer of UCLA, wondered if laptops, despite their plusses, might lead to a shallower kind of cognitive processing, and to lower quality learning. They decided to test the old and the new in a head-to-head contest.

Read the whole story

Tree limbs fell in the last storm because it was wet and heavy snow. Photo/LTN

A winter weather advisory for the Lake Tahoe Basin is in effect from Feb. 6 from 4am to 10pm.

The National Weather Service in Reno is calling for 2 to 6 inches at lake level, with 5 to 10 inches above 7,000 feet.

This will be followed by another weather system on Friday and into the weekend. Friday’s storm will bring strong winds, with the brunt being Saturday near sunrise. A high wind watch has been issued for Gardnerville and Virginia City.

Rain and snow are in the forecast for the basin on Saturday and Sunday.

Highs will remain in the 30s and overnight lows in the 20s through the weekend.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report

The Jan. 29 fire threatened surrounding structures. Photo/Denise Haerr

It could be a month before officials know the ignition source of the fire that destroyed a house last week in South Lake Tahoe.

The fire on Long Avenue erupted Jan. 29, causing more than $300,000 in damage. It was unoccupied while repairs were being made from prior frozen pipe damage.

Police and fire officials are working the investigation to determine who set the fire.

“The lab samples take about a month, so the fire investigation is still open and undetermined at this point,” Fire Chief Jeff Meston told Lake Tahoe News.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report

By Karen Kaplan, Los Angeles Times

Americans consume too much sugar, and our collective sweet tooth is killing us.

So says a study published Monday by the journal JAMA Internal Medicine. It finds that 71.4 percent of U.S. adults get more than the recommended 10 percent of their daily calories from added sugars in foods and drinks – and that higher levels of sugar consumption are correlated with higher risk of death due to cardiovascular disease.

Researchers used data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, or NHANES – a large study updated each year by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – to measure changes in sugar consumption over time and to see its effect on health. Added sugars were defined as “all sugars used in processed or prepared foods, such as sugar-sweetened beverages, grain-based desserts, fruit drinks, dairy desserts, candy, ready-to-eat cereals, and yeast breads, but not naturally occurring sugar, such as in fruits and fruit juices.”

Read the whole story

By Leigh Ann Caldwell, CNN

WASHINGTON — The similarities are plentiful. Both congressmen are Republican. Both represent central California — their districts share a border. Both are recently elected to Congress. Both have outspoken positions on immigration reform.

And that’s where the similarities end.

Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Granite Bay, represents the California side of Tahoe in Congress. Photo/LTN file

Rep. Jeff Denham, who represents California’s 10th Congressional District, is actively lobbying his Republican colleagues to get on board behind immigration legislation that includes a path to legalization.

But Denham’s views don’t cross district lines. His congressional neighbor and fellow Republican, Rep. Tom McClintock, couldn’t disagree more. While his 4th District is next to Denham’s, a wide gap exists between the two on this issue.

“We have a path to citizenship and it’s a path that has been followed by millions of legal immigrants who have obeyed all of our laws,” McClintock said. “It’s unfair to have 11 to 20 million illegal immigrants cut in line ahead of them.”

Read the whole story

A Southern California man died Tuesday while snowboarding at Heavenly Mountain Resort.

An autopsy showed Wyatt James Colvard, 18, of Fountain Valley died due to internal injuries from blunt force trauma, according to the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office.

Deputies and Tahoe Douglas paramedics were called to Boulder Lodge on Feb. 4 at 11:45am to help an injured boarder. Advanced life support could not save him.

According to deputies, witnesses said they found Wyatt lying in the snow unconscious and he was having a difficult time breathing. Ski patrol transported Colvard down the hill to awaiting paramedics.

Deputies are investigating the death.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report

By Bruce Kennedy, MoneyWatch

The ongoing severe drought in California is much more than a statewide emergency or a local news story. It will likely have ripple effects nationwide, affecting grocery store receipts in all 50 states, and putting a dent in the nation’s economy.

California is a major player in the country’s economic engine. If California were its own country, it would be the world’s eighth-largest economy – surpassing the GDP of Italy and Russia.

A big part of the Golden State’s wealth comes from its agricultural base. The state’s 80,500 farms reportedly generated a record $44.7 billion for their production output in 2012 – making California the top U.S. state in cash farm reciepts, accounting for more than 11 percent of the overall national total.

Read the whole story

By Kathleen Miles, Huffington Post

California may soon require the highest minimum wage of any U.S. state.

State Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, introduced a bill Monday to raise the state minimum wage to $11 per hour in 2015, $12 per hour in 2016 and $13 per hour in 2017. Beginning in 2018, the state minimum wage would be adjusted annually with the rate of inflation.

Leno said that, in part, he is responding to President Obama’s State of the Union address last week urging mayors, governors and state legislators to take the lead on raising the minimum wage.

California is already ahead of the pack in the national movement to raise the minimum wage. In the fall, California Gov. Jerry Brown signed a law that raises the state’s current $8 an hour minimum wage to $9 per hour in July and to $10 per hour in 2016.

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