Lakeside Inn wants to become a bigger player on the South Shore. Photo/Kathryn Reed

By Kathryn Reed

Driving into Stateline from the east there isn’t anything to go “wow” about – at least not in a positive sense. Lakeside Inn wants to change that.

“We are the gateway from the Nevada side to South Lake Tahoe. Right now the welcome to South Lake Tahoe is not a pretty sight,” Stacy Noyes, quality insurance and inn manager for the Stateline hotel-casino, said. “We have an opportunity to capitalize on Kahle Drive and Highway 50.”

Lakeside has ideas about what it would like to do on the 7.5 acre parcel, but isn’t ready to release renderings until a developer has been lined up.

It’s likely the Kahle-50 corner will become a focal point, with the hotel moving there. Today the sales center for the Tahoe Beach Club occupies that land. Lakeside owns the first block of Kahle drive, which has three buildings on it.

“Our hotel is clearly past its useful life,” Noyes said. Owners are doing the minimum in upgrades right now – like replacing mattresses.

The new hotel will be about a 3.5 star level property that will have bike and ski rentals, and valet. Higher end lodging is in the works with Zalanta, Edgewood and Tahoe Beach Club, so that is why Lakeside wants to focus on the mid-level market.

In the future Lakeside expects to downplay the casino aspect of the property. Photo/Kathryn Reed

Today there are 124 hotel rooms. The market study to determine the best use for Lakeside said 150 rooms would be ideal. Zoning allows for 200. More tourist accommodation units would have to be acquired to add any rooms. (TAUs are a commodity Tahoe Regional Planning Agency created as a way to curb development.)

The casino has long been a favorite of locals. Going forward higher ups want it to remain so, but they do not intend for gaming to be Lakeside’s main draw. An all-inclusive resort – minus a spa – is more the thinking.

It is walking distance to Nevada Beach via Rabe Meadow, is a short shuttle ride to multiple access points for Heavenly Mountain Resort, has Edgewood Tahoe Golf Course practically as a neighbor, ties into the Stateline-to-Stateline bike trail, and is not too far from Heavenly Village.

“What we recognized and everyone recognized is the South Shore is not viable as a gaming market,” Noyes told Lake Tahoe News. “It’s transforming into a world class outdoor recreation area. We saw this eons ago.”

The casino is likely to stay where it is, but with a face-lift. Everything else, though, could be demolished or gutted.

The goal is for the entire property to become more upscale and capture a greater portion of the tourists.

In addition to the study, the hotel-casino has been putting focus groups together to gauge how people would like Lakeside to evolve.

Latin Soul’s relocation would mean a smoke-free dining experience. Photo/Kathryn Reed

There will also be a separate retail portion. The study said 10,000- to 20,000-square-feet would be do-able.

It’s anticipated that the popular Latin Soul restaurant would move to the hotel or retail area. Relocating it out of the casino could mean more business because right now it’s hard to avoid the smoke drifting into the eatery. Today it takes up 2,000 square feet.

Also new would be an outdoor special events space where weddings could be performed.

Zoning allows for a four-story structure (56 feet). Rooftop dining is a possibility, which would provide views of Lake Tahoe and Mount Tallac.

“We are just waiting to find the right development partner to do it with,” Noyes said of the entire overhaul of Lakeside.

By Marissa Lang, San Francisco Chronicle

Long hours at multiple jobs may soon become the norm for American workers, but they may be happier that way.

In a survey aimed at identifying trends shaping the “future of work,” Adobe asked more than 2,000 office workers from the U.S., Britain and India a series of questions about their work habits, motivations and sense of fulfillment. The responses painted a picture of employees who, in spite of feeling overwhelmed by their jobs, reported greater happiness and sense of opportunity when working at more than one job, for longer hours and with “state-of-the-art technology.”

About a third of all U.S. workers, or 53 million Americans, are working a second job, or “moonlighting,” outside of their primary profession, according to Adobe research.

In the future, the poll found, that number will likely increase to more than half of all workers.

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Owners of what has been known for years as the Ferrari Crown Resort in Kings Beach plan to modernize the lakefront area.

Laulima Partners of San Francisco this spring bought the acreage, which spans both sides of Highway 28.

They are proposing a lodging and commercial-residential redevelopment project for the 4½-acre site once owned by the Ferrari family. However,  no additional rooms are planned. Today there are 117 rooms for tourists and 34 residential units.

“We believe this project really continues in the spirit of the Ferrari legacy, of the Kings Beach Vision Plan and of the $44 million spent on the Kings Beach Commercial Core Improvement Project,” David Bouquillon, managing partner with Laulima Partners, said in a press release. “Our goal is to complement the character of the community and act as an economic catalyst for business and tourism in town.”

The new owners are putting on a community workshop in June 21 from 6-7:30pm at the North Tahoe Event Center.

More information about the project is available online.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report

By Tracy Rucinski, Reuters
 
A U.S. judge on Wednesday temporarily halted lawsuits seeking $11.4 billion in damages from Caesars Entertainment Corp on Wednesday, urging the parties in the bankruptcy of its operating unit to settle before an injunction expires in August.

The bankruptcy of the operating unit, Caesars Entertainment Operating Corp (CEOC), in January 2015 has pitted some of the most aggressive investors on Wall Street against each other.

Several hedge funds that own bonds are suing the Caesars parent in New York and Delaware, alleging it reneged on guarantees from bonds issued by CEOC prior to the unit’s $18 billion bankruptcy.

Caesars is the parent company of Harrah’s Lake Tahoe and Harveys in Stateline.

Read the whole story

By Chris Megerian, Los Angeles Times

With concerns about the potential for another recession casting a shadow over this year’s budget negotiations, California lawmakers approved a new $170.9-billion spending plan on Wednesday that increases some funding for social services but stashes more away in a rainy-day fund.

Although lawmakers are finishing their work on this year’s budget, some of the most consequential decisions for the state’s financial future may not be made until the November election. Voters will likely be asked whether to extend higher taxes on the wealthy, increase the levy on cigarettes or borrow billions of dollars to build and renovate schools.

It’s a classic example of California’s dual-track system for managing its finances, with some decisions made in the Capitol and others at the ballot box.

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Placer County is getting aggressive with hotel tax collections.

Supervisors this month approved a $175, 000 contract with MuniServices of Fresno to assist with conducting more frequent inspections of records, and ensuring lodging operators are complying with the requirement. There are nearly 4,000 lodging operators in Placer County registered to collect transient occupancy tax. TOT must be collected by traditional lodging providers like hotels, but also by those who provide lodging through Internet-based services like Airbnb, Homeaway and Vacation Rentals By Owner.

In fiscal year 2015, the county collected nearly $14 million in TOT.

The county says it does not have the staff to do the job in house.

TOT helps fund public infrastructure projects, tourism marketing and promotion, public safety, transportation, libraries, parks, and historical and environmental preservation projects.

By Ryan Sabalow, Dale Kasler and Phillip Reese, Sacramento Bee

This year was supposed to be different. With Northern California’s reservoirs finally brimming and cities liberated from stringent conservation rules, farmers were expecting more water for their crops. The worst of the drought seemed over.

Or maybe not.

Despite a winter of fairly abundant rain and snow in the north state, federal fisheries regulators are considering a set of plans that would put Sacramento Valley reservoirs on a tight leash again this summer. Their aim is to prevent two endangered California fish species from going extinct.

Critics say two federal plans under discussion could cause another year of water shortages in farms and cities across the state. The Sacramento area’s main reservoir, Folsom Lake, could get drawn down below average levels once more, although the situation wouldn’t be as severe as last year’s record low. Fifteen members of Congress from California sent a letter urging the Obama administration to reject the dam-management proposals, saying they would “significantly reduce the water supply available to Californians.”

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By Ian Whitaker, Las Vegas Sun

Around this time last year, Nevada’s new Common Core test had only succeeded at being broken.

Due to the testing company’s technical problems, schools were thrown into chaos for weeks as teachers and staff struggled to get the computer-based Smarter Balanced test to work for the thousands of third- through eighth-graders required to take it.

Fast-forward to this year, and the situation has almost completely reversed.

The Smarter Balanced test assesses students’ mastery of English and math skills set out in the Common Core, and is mandated by the federal government to ensure schools are doing a good job of educating students. But due to last year’s issues, officials were unable to collect that information.

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By Bethany Barnes, Las Vegas Review-Journal

Nevada Legislature staffers last year quietly supported a bill that helped them win a legal battle to keep the state’s Ethics Commission from investigating legislators.

The new law flew under the radar as an “emergency measure” in the final days of the 2015 session and passed with little scrutiny. Commission officials would have testified against the bill, but by the time they figured out it existed, the bill had passed — born and approved in less than 48 hours.

The bill not only appeared to commissioners as being tailor-made to torpedo their legal stance, they believe it expanded what’s known as legislative immunity, making it almost impossible for the commission to hold legislators accountable for anything.

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By Reuters

Organizers of Burning Man, an annual counter-culture festival that climaxes with the burning of a wooden effigy in the Nevada desert, has bought a ranch in the southwestern state to run year round art and self expression activities, the group said on Friday.

Funded by donations from supporters, Burning Man paid $6.5 million for Fly Ranch, a 3,800-acre (1,538-hectare) property about 20 miles north of Gerlach, Nevada, it said on its website.

The festival, which has drawn more than 60,000 participants to create a temporary city in northern Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, will remain in its current location and not move to the ranch, the organizers said.

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