Question of the Day - 03 October 2024

Actually, the Tropicana is being imploded on October 9, though very early in the morning, but still two and a half hours after October 8.

As for the defunct Tahoe Biltmore, it's not quite in Incline Village. It's located in Crystal Bay, across from the Cal Neva Lodge, 100 or so yards from the California state line, roughly three miles west of Incline. 

Anyway, the Biltmore has a rich history as one of the older establishments in the Lake Tahoe region. 

It opened in 1946, built right after World War II to attract post-war travelers and gamblers. The building's architecture is a mix of styles, including Midcentury Modern, Tudor, and a tipi-like sign. At that time, in fact, Incline Village didn't exist (it was established in the early 1960s by a land developer and is still privately owned), but the Biltmore was originally part of the first casino boom on the east shore of Lake Tahoe, driven by the popularity of gambling and the area's appeal as a scenic resort destination.

It was built by one Joseph Blumfield who, according to legend, was looking to offer a bargain alternative to the well-established and expensive "megaresort" (for the time) across the street, the Cal Neva Lodge. In our peregrinations around northern Nevada over the decades, we also learned that Blumfield's hidden agenda was to flip the Biltmore to the owners of the Cal Neva and that's exactly what happened in 1951, when it was renamed the Cal-Neva Biltmore, becoming an annex to the often-sold-out resort. 

In 1956, another would-be casino mogul, Joby Lewis, built a small joint on land right next to (just west of) the Biltmore, opening it as the grandiloquently named Lewis' Monte Carlo Casino. Only a couple of years later, both the Biltmore and Monte Carlo were picked up by Lincoln Fitzgerald, who combined the two into one property, remodeled both, and renamed it the Nevada Lodge. Fitzgerald owned a couple of casinos in Reno at the time, including the eponymous Fitzgeralds, and his story is full of color and intrigue, good for another QoD, if anyone's interested. 

From there, the historic trail gets a little murky, but Lincoln Fitzgerald died in 1981 and his management company operated the Nevada Lodge until 1985, when it was sold to Tahoe Crystal Bay Inc. and the name reverted to the original Tahoe Biltmore. 

The revolving door of owners continued into the 2000s and the Biltmore struggled to maintain its former glory, if you could even call it that. The property went into a long slow decline and has been the subject of numerous owners and redevelopment plans, some of which we delineated in a QoD from 2016.   

Most recently, it was owned by Newport Beach-based EKN Development, which announced big big plans for the property in 2021, but nothing ever happened -- except closing the place in 2022, with a half-assed boarding-up job leaving an unsightly scar on Tahoe Blvd. in the middle of Crystal Bay. EKN defaulted on its mortgage last spring. And the foreclosure auction on October 8 brings us full circle back to the question.

Will it sell? Perhaps. Will it fetch the balance owed to the lender, more than $110 million? We'll see. It's certainly a scraper; the 15-acre site is the entire asset.  

We remember the Biltmore for a pretty good 24-hour $1.99 breakfast, the second-floor Nevada Room lounge where we saw Phyllis Diller, and for Mary, the ghost purported to haunt the place. According to numerous reports, Mary dates back to the '60s, as evidenced by the mini-skirt she's worn in sightings throughout the Biltmore, including the front desk, employee breakroom, laundry room, even the boiler room. She's also credited, or blamed, for turning lights on and off and footsteps heard in the dressing room near the Nevada Room stage. 

We wish Mary well in whatever happens to the Biltmore as a result of the auction, though if history is any indication, she'll have a nice home there for the foreseeable future.