Meetings between buyers and sellers at the 36th annual Go West Summit held in Stateline filled the floor of the Tahoe Blue Event Center.
Laney Griffo | Tahoe Daily Tribune
The 2,400 people, who attended a show by Saturday Night Live Weekend Update Host Colin Jost on July 13, 2024, might well have tipped the Tahoe Blue Events Center over its permitted maximum vehicle miles traveled, according to a report to the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency’s legal committee.
One of the conditions for the construction of the Tahoe Blue Event Center was that it not increase the number of vehicle miles travelled through the casino corridor.
That’s one of the reasons it’s been limited to only 130 events over the course of the year with a maximum total of 220 event days.
Jost’s show, which occurred during the American Century Golf Tournament, may have been the first time the center exceeded the net zero trip generation, but there’s no way to be sure because there isn’t a baseline count.
Retiring TRPA legal counsel John Marshall said the plan was to implement vehicle counters using Bluetooth at several locations before the center opened in September 2023.
However, the Tahoe Douglas Visitors Authority, which owns the center, never installed the devices.
There is some data available from gate counts that go back to January of 2023, and that’s the proposal going forward as the best way to count traffic, Marshall said.
While microtransit has been a key issue for Douglas County commissioners, it appears that annual paid parking is the main means to reduce vehicle miles travelled down to the net zero.
The paid parking appeared to be sufficient to offset increased attendance during the 2023-24 fiscal year that ended June 30.
But officials said there weren’t sufficient cars parked to obtain the zero level required by the permit.
The traffic count is one factor in determining the total vehicle miles traveled. The other is how far attendees came for a show.
That’s determined through surveys conducted of those people who come to shows.
People are coming from various distances and attending events in the center,” Marshall said. “It was zero primarily due to implementation of casino paid parking and to a lesser degree the new microtransit in South Shore. The whole concept was that they needed to be offset by the trips avoided and at a minimum balance out.”
The center’s first year saw 94 events and 143 event days.
“It turned into a significant gathering place for South Shore, not only for concerts, but also for smaller local events, weddings group events,” Marshall said.
The center has 5,000 seats but has been analyzed for up to 6,000 seats.
Some sort of large venue has been sought in the South Shore for a third of a century. Efforts to build one using California redevelopment dollars across the state line from the casino corridor ended when Golden State legislators scraped all that money into the state’s coffers during the Great Recession.
A redevelopment district for the casino core was established in 2017 and Douglas County commissioners agreed to devote $34.25 million to the project.
The redevelopment district was repealed after a ballot initiative, but that didn’t absolve the county of its financial commitment.
Funding is also provided from a $5 resort fee on hotel rooms rented in Tahoe Township.
The Tahoe Douglas Visitors Authority sold $100 million in bonds to finish the project.
