Boulder Bay developers Heather Bacon and Roger Wittenberg have received the final permits for conversion of The Biltmore, which will remain open at least during the early phases of construction, according to local paper The Record-Courier. The project, which was initially approved five years ago, was on life support as recently as last year but undisclosed private-equity financing has given Boulder Bay a new lease on life. The project's leaders had hoped to get their shovels in the ground by last May but had to settle for a July start: They had to prove they had financing in place before they could begin work.
CEO Wittenberg blamed the lingering effects of the Great Recession for banks' reluctance to underwrite the project. "The banks are basically not in business right now. You have to make a relationship with a private equity group. It is fortunate for the country that [they] exist and they are moving the ball forward," he said.
The private-equity funding came through when Boulder Bay was facing an April 12 deadline to pay a half-million dollars in back taxes or be seized by Washoe County. (The project had dodged a similar bullet in 2014. A still-earlier loan went up for grabs when the bank that issued it was taken over by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.) Preliminary work has been done, including installation of a water-filtration system. Maintenance of the construction permit is contingent upon "continuous diligent pursuit" of completion.
When finished, Boulder Bay will be an eight-building development with a casino (downsized to 10,000 square feet), retail, restaurants, a 300-room hotel, 59 condos and 14 units of affordable housing. The casino will be dwarfed by the nearby health-and-wellness and fitness centers (an aggregate 30,000 square feet) and their amenities. "Roger, as a visionary, was the person who came up with the original idea to have Boulder Bay focus on health, wellness, relaxation and rejuvenation," Bacon said of Witttenberg, who also happens to be her father.
The latter explained, "If you look at the experiences people have when they come up to Lake Tahoe, back in the 1960s there was only gaming, which was a terrific time for a certain group of people. That is changing now because gaming is everywhere. So you have to create a different experience, one that is based on the outdoors and on the natural beauty of Lake Tahoe."
Boulder Bay, whose inception dates back to 2007, has been described as "one of the most heavily criticized and vetted proposals in the region’s recent history." The North Lake Tahoe Preservation Alliance tore into it and the local Sierra Sun ran over 300 stories about the project's ups and downs. Even when Boulder was initially approved, in April 2011, it was expected that it would take another year to begin construction – potentially months longer, as Boulder Bay wended its way through Washoe County bureaucracy. It was, for instance, required to invest in public transit. Among the other mandates imposed on the project were the maintenance of The Biltmore's 75-foot height and the creation of a four-acre public park.
One of the original upsides of Boulder Bay was its environmental friendliness and the reduction of erosion from the old Biltmore site. "With science showing us that we can reverse the decline of Lake Tahoe's clarity by encouraging environmental redevelopment of our town centers, the cost of doing nothing is just too high for the lake," Tahoe Regional Planning Agency Director Joanne Marchetta said. "Redevelopment projects like Boulder Bay are an important part of the public-private effort to restore Lake Tahoe."
