Popular Tahoe resort to open for winter skiing after planners agree to master plan amendments
Lake Tahoe’s popular Homewood Mountain Resort will stay open this winter, officials said Thursday just months after announcing their slopes would be shut down for the season.
Tahoe Regional Planning Agency approved amendments to the resort’s master plan that agency officials said would keep the resort open for skiing while pumping more reinvestment into the historic site.
“The Homewood Master Plan approval today includes enforceable standards that will ensure the beloved West Shore resort can be revitalized while remaining open to the public,” Julie Regan, the Tahoe agency’s executive director, said in a statement announcing the decision. “Reinvestment in Lake Tahoe’s communities brings critical environmental improvements and community benefits, and this underscores that it can also support sustainable and accessible public recreation.”
The 1,200-acre ski resort was bought in 2007 by JMA Ventures, a San Francisco real estate developer. Developers last October said a lack of financial support and challenges to finishing upgrades at the property had waylaid efforts to open the resort.
JMA Ventures at the time blamed Homewood’s planned closure partly on delays in approving the master plan amendments including moving the gondola terminal, reducing residential density and opening the “view corridors of the mountain and lake,” the resort said in October.
VMA in October said the delays led a financial partner to pull their support leaving Homewood no choice but to shelve its 2024-2025 ski season.
The ski resort has served the Tahoe Basin community since 1961.
Tahoe regional planners said the amendment approvals produced an “updated recreation master plan that reflects the central importance of Homewood Mountain Resort as a key gathering place for the West Shore.”
Construction could soon begin on a new gondola to replace the main chairlift at the North Base of the resort after Tahoe planning agency’s governors approved permits for the planned build.
Other projects to add accommodations and commercial uses at the base areas that were earlier greenlighted by agency officials are now smaller in size but feature updated architecture.
Meantime, Homewood will also work with North Tahoe Fire Protection District officials to expand service and help with evacuation efforts during wildfires, officials said.
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