The new $100 million Edgewood Tahoe Lodge has opened on the south shore of Lake Tahoe after more than two decades of difficulties of strict regulations regarding the environment and four years of reviewing plans and obtaining permits for construction to begin in 2012. The Edgewood Tahoe Lodge’s completion was dependent on limiting storm water runoff that is harmful to Lake Tahoe, as well as protecting wetlands, according to the Tahoe Daily Tribune. The Edgewood Tahoe Lodge was an addition to the Edgewood Tahoe Golf Course that Brooks Park built in 1968, where a nationally televised celebrity golf tournament is hosted.
“What you see here today is the culmination of a vision that was formed 25 years ago when Brooks Park and [general manager] Bobby King thought it would be a good idea for golfers to have a place to stay after they completed their round of golf,” says John McLaughlin, president and CEO for Edgewood Companies. Brooks Park, also a major cattle rancher and property owner in northern Nevada, died in 2001.
“It’s going to employ 240 local residents and give them incredible and meaningful jobs,” Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval said at the lodge’s grand opening earlier this week. Just as important, he said, “is pairing redevelopment with conservation.”
While the addition of the lodge was monumental to the area, the environmental implications of this addition were also were very important. “There’s some conservation as a result of this project that wouldn’t have happened otherwise. It’s going to help preserve and protect the lake,” says Sandoval.
According to Joanne Marchetta, the executive director of the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, the Edgewood Tahoe Lodge’s completion includes a series of environmental restoration projects on the Edgewood Creek watershed, which is important because the watershed runs directly into Lake Tahoe, in addition to Edgewood’s golf course. The Edgewood Tahoe Lodge is a component of the 1990s effort to filter runoff into Lake Tahoe from casino parking lots, in order to improve the clarity of the lake.
“It’s the environmental benefits that really outshine here. We have enhanced wetlands, new fish and wildlife habitat, and improved storm-water systems,” says Marchetta. “The restoration of the golf course is actually improving more than 53,000 square feet of stream environment zone. These are the kinds of new wetlands that filter polluted storm-water runoff before it enters the lake.”
The Edgewood Tahoe Lodge has 154 rooms for its guests, and a 200-seat bistro and bar, a ballroom, a lakefront swimming pool, a kids camp, an adventure center, high end shops, a Great Room with a wall of windows providing views of the pool and lake, and a spa and salon, for a grand total of 169,000 square feet.
South Lake Tahoe Mayor Austin Sass remarked that the Edgewood Tahoe Lodge is a great development for the South Shore, both in Nevada and California.
“The South Shore of Lake Tahoe is enjoying a rebirth. Coupled with what has happened within the city and Douglas County, we have seen over three-quarters of a billion dollars in capital investment over the last five years with the completion of this lodge,” he says.
