Fearing Worse, California OK's Higher Densities Around Lake Tahoe

Last week's agreement by the California Assembly to amend a regional plan for the area came after Nevada threatened to withdraw from the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency for the seventh time - a step that would result in more local land use control. "A revised plan will allow higher density and taller structures — the sort of glitzy development that California sought to curtail when it entered into a joint planning compact with Nevada four decades ago and created the Tahoe planning agency," writes Julie Cart.

"Critics of the plan have warned that it will lead to pell-mell development and a Reno-ization of the picturesque lake," she notes. "Public officials on both sides of the lake say that is an exaggeration."

"But everyone agrees that Lake Tahoe's foreshore will take on a new look: denser and taller development squeezed into town centers and fewer of the region's dowdy but affordable mom-and-pop '60-s era motels."