A Decade-Long Battle Over Olympic Valley Is Over. Why Now?
The fight over the future of Olympic Valley and Palisades Tahoe has been going on for a long time. Fourteen years, to be precise. In that time, a 5-year legal battle ensued after Sierra Watch filed a lawsuit in 2016 against Placer County for approving the project. The environmental group eventually prevailed, but in 2023 the ski area resubmitted its plans with only minor changes. When the county approved the project again in 2024, Sierra Watch sued a second time, this time joined by Keep Tahoe Blue (also known as the League to Save Lake Tahoe).
The cycle of approvals and lawsuits seemed like it would go on forever until, out of the blue, the parties announced July 8 that they had reached an agreement — Palisades will reduce the total number of bedrooms by 40% and commercial space by 20%. In return, the plaintiffs agreed to drop their lawsuit.
So, what changed? Why were the two sides able to come to an agreement now, after more than a decade of fighting and getting nowhere?
What brought the parties together in January was a mandatory settlement agreement issued by the court, which was triggered by Sierra Watch and Keep Tahoe Blue’s lawsuit at the end of last year. As Sierra Watch Executive Director Tom Mooers explained, “It’s basically the court saying, ‘Get in a room and work it out before going through the expensive trouble of litigation.’”
Sierra Watch and Palisades had been here before after the 2016 lawsuit was filed. How were things different this time?
While all parties signed a confidentiality agreement, making the content of the discussions private, who was at the negotiating table is no secret. Sierra Watch and Keep Tahoe Blue’s representatives had not changed — Mooers had been leading the fight and discussions with Palisades and its parent company, Alterra Mountain Company (and before that, KSL Capital Partners), since the beginning, just like Keep Tahoe Blue’s representative, chief strategy officer Jesse Patterson.
But the people sitting on the Palisades and Alterra side of the table were not the same ones. Over the course of the proposed project’s lifespan, there have been four Palisades CEOs — Andy Wirth, Ron Cohen, Dee Byrne, and now Amy Ohran, who was named to the position almost 1 year ago. Last fall, Alterra also replaced its vice president of real estate, Bryan Elliot, with Arden Hearing.
“It’s like when you say the same thing over and over. It was the same voice on our end — it was me. It was Tom,” said Patterson about the League’s message that the project would have negative impacts on the lake. “It’s not like we had new people saying something differently. We had the same people saying the same thing and [this time] it landed.”
Ohran attributes some of the success of the negotiations to the fact that both she and Hearing were new to the discussions.
“I am new as is my partner at Alterra leadership, Arden,” Ohran said. “Being new really gives rise to listening in a different way. As we both got up to speed on the project, we really took to heart the opportunity to listen deeply and identify if we could come to some common ground. We took it as an opportunity to see if we could build a different relationship and understanding with both Sierra Watch and the League.”
A major motivation to reach an agreement was most likely the hundreds of thousands of dollars each side would spend on legal fees pursuing and defending the second lawsuit, and, for Palisades, the delay this would cause the development.
“We found at conference that we understood there could actually be resolution as an alternative to more years of litigation,” Mooers said. “All parties agreed to that and agreed to talk further.”
Ohran said that Alterra recognized the need to change course.
“We had support and empowerment from our company Alterra to come to a different outcome … and have the ability to move Palisades Tahoe forward,” she said. “Obviously, the original vision for the Village Specific Plan was conceived in a different era. The timing was right to take a look at how we could not only get a different outcome, but to evolve the plan to something that is more reflective of what we heard from the community and certainly in negotiations with Sierra Watch.”
Negotiations took 6 months, which Mooers said may seem like a long time, but considering the two parties had been fighting for 14 years, was an accomplishment in and of itself.
“These negotiations are a great example of how people can come to the table to be open to new ideas and negotiate in good faith and establish common ground, and the result is not just successful negotiations but a revised vision for the future of Olympic Valley,” he said.
Patterson and Mooers both said that while they would have liked to have seen the development reduced even more, the end result is a project that all sides can live with.
“Not everyone got what they wanted, but a lot of good came of it and we found alignment,” Patterson said.
The agreement also marks the end to a contentious chapter in Tahoe’s history.
“The uncertainty that hung over the valley for so many years was in and of itself a problem,” Mooers said. “I do get the sense that people are really grateful that we can move forward with a better sense of what the future holds for the region, not just furthering a cycle of litigation and uncertainty.”
Other changes in the agreement include a smaller Mountain Adventure Center with a recommitment to excluding the controversial water park (Palisades announced last September that it was removing all water park features), replacing the subdivision marked for the base of Shirley Canyon with a conservation easement, and no additional development in the specific plan area for 25 years.
Placer County still needs to approve the amended agreement, which Ohran said will happen at the end of this year or in early 2026.
