My husband took me to the Cal-Neva at North Lake Tahoe on our second date (in 1968) and he showed me the Great Room, which was divided down the middle, California on one side and Nevada on the other. He took me in his arms for the first time and told me that he hoped our hugs would always cross any boundary we encountered. Well, it worked. We'll celebrate our golden anniversary next year. Any chance the Cal-Neva will be open again by then, so we can recreate that moment?
That’s really sweet and congratulations on your 50th. We'd say your chances of recreating that romantic moment recently got a whole lot better.
The Sacramento Bee sussed out bankruptcy-court documents pointing to a $38.5 million purchase of the Cal-Neva, situated on the lake in Crystal Bay, Nevada, by Oracle Corp. founder and Silicon Valley zillionaire Larry Ellison via his investment firm. A judge gaveled the sale on Oct. 16, no competing bids having emerged. The purchase amount is just walking-around money for Ellison, who spent $500 million to purchase the Hawaiian island of Lanai. Dubbed “... one of the nation’s most voracious consumers of trophy real estate” by the Wall Street Journal, Ellison’s interest in the Cal-Neva is no whim: He’s a resident of Lake Tahoe, where he sold one mansion in Glenbrook on the east shore for $20 million in 2014 and, according to the Bee, is in the process of building another with 18,000 square feet on the north shore near the Cal-Neva.
The previous owner of the Cal-Neva, Criswell Radovan, had labored for three years to try and get the Cal-Neva up and running again to the tune of $49 million, but ultimately fell short — hence the bankruptcy.
Ellison’s intentions for the casino side (literally: Gambling is strictly confined to the Nevada side of the lodge, which, as you experienced back in the late sixties, straddles the California-Nevada border) are unknown at this point. Would-be casino operator Strategic Gaming Management was handed its walking papers. “They’ve been radio silent,” said SGM’s Eric Dale. “I sat through many a court date and I’m not exactly sure what the intention is for the property at this point.”
“We haven’t heard anything from a new owner,” said Tahoe Regional Planning Agency spokesman Tom Lotshaw, adding that the TRPA would be “happy and willing and able to work with them to keep a good project going.”
“The resort had maintained much the same decor for the five-plus decades since that sale, though the ownership changed several times,” reports the Bee. One hopes that Ellison keeps that nostalgia cachet intact. According to Haunted Lake Tahoe by Janice Oberding, “It was an action-filled place where the coolest of the cool hung out. Judy Garland was discovered at the Cal Neva. Parts of the 1930 film Lightnin’, starring Will Rogers and Marie Dressler were filmed here. But there was a dark and sinister side as well. Rumors persist about the waters of the Cal Neva being a convenient body dump for hit men who had cadavers to dispose of.”
The 91-year-old Cal-Neva Lodge is most famous for having been co-owned by Frank Sinatra, an arrangement that ended in 1963 after an FBI agent spotted mobster Sam Giancana patronizing the establishment, an incident that cost Sinatra his Nevada gaming license. Without the Chairman of the Board, business was never the same.
Can Ellison bring some of that Sinatra-era magic back? We don’t know, but we’re pulling for him, the Cal-Neva, and you and your husband's anniversary celebration in Crystal Bay.
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Dave in Seattle.
Nov-03-2017
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