Resort Communities Become Suburbanized

First there was suburban sprawl. Now comes high-country-resort sprawl.

In the Martis Valley outside Truckee, Calif., a small Sierra Nevada town, a wave of thousands of new homes is set to cascade over the ridge from Lake Tahoe, where the supply of new resort homes has been checked by regulation and a lack of land. The valley consists of forests and mostly-intact former ranchlands, which offer the same sweeping vistas as when scenes from the TV series "Bonanza" were filmed here 40 years ago.

By JIM CARLTON
Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

http://www.realestatejournal.com/buysell/salestrends/20041006-carlton.html

At resorts across the West, similar development is spilling over from established resorts into once-overlooked neighboring areas to meet the torrid demand for vacation homes and affordable places for workers to live. Some locals welcome the growth and the accompanying new jobs, while others worry about the impact on traffic, housing prices, the environment and their general quality of life. Planning experts say this spillover growth may eventually so congest areas around resorts that they will lose their appeal as getaway destinations.

"It’s the same general phenomenon where people who get priced out of San Francisco move to the East Bay, and on and on," says Jonathan Schechter, executive director of the Charture Institute. "What you are seeing here is the suburbanization of resort communities."

The skyrocketing price of real estate in Jackson, Wyo., has transformed neighboring Teton County, Idaho, into the nation’s 21st fastest growing county; it had grown to 5,999 residents in 2000 from 3,439 residents in 1990, according to the Charture Institute, an economic think-tank in Jackson. Booming growth has spilled over into Glenwood Springs, Colo., 40 miles down the Roaring Fork Valley from Aspen, and in Eagle, Colo., 30 miles down Interstate 70 from Vail.
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California’s Martis Valley, with the snow-capped Sierra Nevadas in the background, is threatened by development spilling out from nearby Lake Tahoe.

In many cases, growth is spilling over to places that have more available private land than the resort towns, which are often surrounded by federally protected national forests. Development around Park City, Utah has leapfrogged Interstate 80, about 10 miles away, while farms and ranches are being swallowed up by subdivisions in the rolling desert terrain of Blaine County south of Sun Valley, Idaho.

With the exception of the Martis Valley, this sprawl has gone on largely unchecked by environmental groups, which have concentrated more on trying to contain the expansion of resorts themselves. "They’ve been asleep at the switch," says Doug Robotham, Colorado office director of the Trust for Public Land, a San Francisco group pushing to protect open space.

Some environmentalists say that’s a valid criticism. "We have done a pretty good job defending iconic landscapes like Yosemite, but clearly the threats are to the surrounding areas and we really haven’t advocated for those as much as we could have in the past," says Tom Mooers, head of Sierra Watch, which is fighting the Martis Valley development.

Few developments illustrate the resort-spillover trend better than those in Martis Valley. The sheer magnitude makes it one of the biggest such developments in the nation. Last December, the local Placer County board approved a plan that calls for about 8,600 new homes, along with as much as a million square feet of commercial real estate as well as three new 18-hole golf courses. By comparison, about 12,000 housing units ring the entire 71-mile shoreline of Lake Tahoe. In addition, county officials have either approved or are considering requests from landowners to construct nearly 3,000 more homes in the valley. Other landowners are putting together development plans of their own that could add thousands more, including from timber giant Sierra Pacific Industries. Unlike the heavily public lands around the Lake Tahoe Basin, the Martis Valley is mostly in private hands.

"What’s going to happen is that people are going to come up here and feel like they’re back in the suburbs," says Mr. Mooers of Sierra Watch.

So far, much of the building has been confined to one corner of the valley around the Northstar-at-Tahoe ski resort, where more than 1,500 condominiums and other homes are mostly tucked out of sight in the fir and pine forest. Nearby, developers DMB Associates Inc. and Highlands Management Group have has also opened Lahontan, a gated golf-course development which is planned to hold about 500 homes.

County officials and local developers say spillover growth is inevitable, with the Lake Tahoe region being so close to San Francisco and other populated areas. They say this plan anticipates many of the impacts and is designed to help mitigate them — such as through widening roads and setting aside scenic buffers.

"What’s happening with this plan is the growth is being managed," says Roger Lessman, vice president of East West Partners, a Vail, Colo., developer that is seeking approvals to build 1,400 more homes around the Northstar resort, which is owned by Booth Creek Ski Holdings Inc.

But many local residents worry about the impact on the environment, such as overloading the Martis Creek — a prized fly-fishing sanctuary — with fertilizer and other runoff. And they believe the area’s existing problems of too much traffic and too little affordable housing will be made worse. Although some lower-income housing is being built, plans are for many of the new homes to be in exclusive golf communities. Meanwhile, home prices have more than doubled in the Lake Tahoe area, forcing some workers to commute from less pricey areas as far as 50 miles away.

Most directly impacted would be the 15,000 residents in Truckee, which sits across the Placer County line from where the Martis Valley projects are planned.

Some residents support development, saying it will generate jobs. Others worry it will add to the growing congestion. "All this development will put more money in my pocket," says lifelong resident Stefanie Olivieri, sitting in a restaurant above her clothing shop in downtown Truckee. "But it will destroy my quality of life."

Traffic, already a problem, is the biggest local concern. Current plans call for little in the way of significant roadway improvements to accommodate traffic from new homes, but Placer County planners say developers will be required to pay mitigation fees for road widening and other improvements.

Sierra Watch and four other environmental and conservation groups in January filed suit in state district court to try to block the Martis Valley development plan. They say the plan didn’t adequately address environmental impacts, a charge county officials deny in the pending case.

As insurance, Sierra Watch is taking the separate tack of negotiating for the purchase of as much undeveloped land as it can get from property owners to place it in conservation easements, including the valley’s sweeping meadows.