Fosv at Ilfeld S 6/30(Bring Folks up to Date & Next Steps)

FoSV at Ilfeld’s 6/30(bring folks up to date & next steps)

WHO are the Friends of SV? We are a group of concerned citizens and long time SV residents formed in response to KSL’s Village at SV Specific Plan. As you may or may not know, that plan calls for >1000 new units(~2200 rentable rooms), >100 acres of development, a >130000 sq.ft. indoor aquatic/amusement center, and 15-20 years of construction… over 1,000,000 sq ft of new development Our mission is to advocate for three things, Development that is: ENVIRONMENTALLY SUSTAINABLE, ECONOMICALLY VIABLE, & AESTHETICALLY COMPATIBLE W THE COMMUNITY CHARACTER & CULTURE

WHAT are our concerns? We want to be clear…we are not anti-development nor trying to STOP the project; on the contrary, we want a sensible & sensitive project that results in a vibrant & active rural Alpine village that is in harmony with our values, our culture & our needs. We are concerned that the KSL proposal is unfortunately, inconsistent with them. It is too dense, it is out of scale with the existing village, it creates shadows and blocks views, and it creates too few open spaces and gathering plazas. Worse, the aquatic center promotes indoor rather than outdoor recreation in a spectacular alpine valley & lake region that is so conducive to numerous outdoor activities. The end result is that it would have more of a city feel, not a rural Alpine village. As if that weren’t enough, the KSL plan would require more than 15 years of construction, with the resulting dust & dirt, traffic, noise and disruption of the lives of those who live & visit here, as well as those of the existing village businesses. And there are other negative effects of their plan: demolition of the last vestiges of our Olympic heritage(locker room & opera house), adverse effects on the day skier in deference to the destination skiers, and lastly, an influx of new non-resident owners whose interests in the community are likely dissimilar to ours. (In fact, in the KSL’s Original Project Description: “Benefits would include enhancing the economic base of the community and reducing the need for day-skier parking by replacing day skiers with overnight and week-long visitors.”) KSL is actually proposing removal of 1500 day skier parking spaces in their plan. 1 | P a g e WHY do we feel as we do? At its heart the KSL proposal is a corporate real estate venture by an out of state private equity firm from Denver that seeks to provide a maximum return to its investors; at the bottom line, this is simply about profit on real estate, and has little to do with concerns for our community or for its ski culture. Remember, for KSL, Squaw is an asset…but, for many of us, it is our home! And because of that, we want to insure that any development here reflects the vision & culture of the folks who live & visit here, since in the end, KSL will likely build it and move on, and we nor our children want to be stuck with their vision.

So, WHAT are our objectives? The main objective of the Friends is to positively influence the outcome of the proposed Village at Squaw Valley. To do this, we need to gather a critical mass of concerned residents, property owners, and recreational users to support a common message that we can deliver to the Placer County Planning Commission, the Board of Supervisors, and to KSL. That message is simply – “We recognize that Squaw Valley needs a better & somewhat bigger base village, but not the one being proposed by KSL. It just does NOT have to look like THAT”. That being the model in the Village at Base Camp…the dense & unsightly urban city currently being proposed.

To create this message, the Friends of SV have created a 4-part plan, that is being carried out through the generous donations that have already been sent in to us, and that we hope to continue to receive in the coming months. OUR PLAN, PARTS 1-4: 1. Through outreach meetings and surveys, we are creating a list of VALUES… those things that enhance our lives in SV and its surroundings 2. We want to then analyze the adverse IMPACTS on those values by the KSL project

2 | P a g e 3. We are collaborating with land use planners who developed base area villages at Whistler and Mammoth Mountain, to develop a set of DESIGN CRITERIA that are common to the more successful ski villages in N.Am. 4. Finally, working with a local ski village designer/planner, we will use these criteria to come up with a possible ALTERNATE Base Village conceptual design that seeks a balance between three things: the needs of the area for growth, the profit motives of the developer, and the values of the residents and users. Before I detail the 4 part plan, I’d like to spend a few minutes to tell you a little about what has been going on around the country with regard to ski areas. There has been considerable news about the wave of acquisitions of ski areas by large corporations and private equity companies. Their motivation is rarely the ski mountain, but rather the real estate play in the base area, with the mountain being the draw. It used to be that the mtn and skiing were the centerpiece, but that is no longer the case. They would like the village and its amenities to be the draw, so they build condos and hotels, sell the units to investors, and then they get out, leaving others to manage and operate the properties with the profits typically leaving the local community. This model has been repeated over and over, but these base villages did not always thrive, and now the trend is reversing somewhat with several, like CNL, owner of 19 ski resorts in No.Am, selling multiple properties in a firesale. KSL’s moving into Squaw and acquiring Alpine is just one more in this wave – they are really no different than the others – they are there to make money for their investors by increasing the asset value, and then selling out at some point (just like they recently did with the sale of 5 resorts to the Omni hotel group). Since we have to live with what they create, it is incumbent upon us to try to be sure it is done in keeping with our values & our needs. This real estate model raises another of our fears – that KSL will not find the investors to buy the units they want to build, nor the tourists to rent them, resulting in the halt of construction at some intermediate point (just like IntraWest & others did). With the phasing that they propose (Phase 1 includes the aquatic center, the Boutique hotel adjacent to the Funitel, and the massive Building B condo hotel next to Far East), with that phasing, we could very well be left with an incomplete un- integrated village, and at worst, a ghost town. So, back to our 4-part plan 3 | P a g e 1) CREATED LIST OF VALUES – Squaw Valley has a small town feeling and culture, receiving and entertaining thousands of visitors per year. The current village fits that small town mold, but we know that the retail base is suffering and the village is not sufficiently active nor vibrant in the summer. Growth is needed to make the village economically sustainable, but the real questions are how large is large enough? AND what is the impact of development on our values?

Outreach meetings and surveys have revealed that we value several things:

A LIFESTYLE that is CASUAL & FRIENDLY

THE NATURAL ENVIRONMENT – with mountains & a beautiful alpine meadow, w clean air & and water, beautiful vistas & sunsets, & a clear dark nite sky

NUMEROUS OUTDOOR ACTIVITIES – & our proximity to skiing, hiking, water sports, biking, golf & tennis.

AN INCREDIBLE SENSE OF COMMUNITY & OUR

GREAT LOCATION – close enough to LT but far enough from traffic & crowds

THE VILLAGE– with its compact and intimate scale & absence of large crowds

2) ANALYZED IMPACTS – If the development were to be built as proposed by KSL, the impacts would be considerable, and would adversely affect our values. Our casual lifestyle and spectacular environment would be forever changed. The focus on outdoor activities would be altered by a huge indoor water & amusement park. The sense of community might be lost amongst the thousands of transient visitors. The traffic in the valley, aside from the 15-20 years of construction traffic, would become heavy all year round. The current village would be dwarfed by a mass of condo-hotel buildings devoid of views, gathering places, & plazas. The emphasis would be on real estate profit & how many units could be squeezed into the available space.

3) DEVELOPED DESIGN CRITERIA – I’d like you to consider if we’d have started with a clean slate, what design criteria would have been used in creating the village

Buildings should: Complement the surrounding scenery and reinforce a mountain village character with a variety of sizes and clustered to frame views & provide sunlight

4 | P a g e Would use local and regional materials

Plazas should be like outdoor rooms - comfortable, intimate, & memorable - with a central area & adjacent shopping places, & with outdoor seating areas in full sunlight from noon to sundown, with direct views of the mountains, and with neighboring buildings not blocking sunlight

Streets

Should allow one to walk down a street with a pedestrian orientation, and suddenly burst into an open space or central plaza; they should vary in width, character & course for interest, and they should be oriented to maximize views and afternoon sun so as to minimize ice buildup

Should be maximized as to ski runs & lifts, as well as peaks, ridgelines & mtns

Should be Activity & Play areas that contribute to social interaction

Parking Parking should be out-of-sight, with minimal, if any, screened surface parking, & people should be able to exit from parking directly onto pedestrian walkways AND perhaps most important of all - Phasing The Village should evolve through a series of integrated phases such that at each step it will always appear to still be a complete resort community

4) ALTERNATE DESIGN - This is still being worked on, but it considers the feedback from the survey we sent out, as well as the realities of the situation. Any design that we come up with will be a compromise but still an attempt to balance the needs of the area for growth, the profit motives of the developer, and our values.

5 | P a g e So, to conclude, these are the elements that we believe to be important:

Limit the number of the units to allow for enough rooms to support the meeting business KSL is after, and limit the size & height of the buildings to those of the current buildings. Fewer rooms would reduce the number of parking spaces needed for village renters & residents, thus require only one underground parking level & allow more, hopefully free, parking for day skiers. It would also allow for more open space between bldgs, preserve view lines, & break up the proposed wall of condos along the creek and at base of ski the runs, not to mention help mitigate traffic, noise, pollution, water, sewage, etc. That the zoning change at the base from forest rec to commercial be denied, thereby retaining the member’s locker room as an historic bldg(perhaps for another purpose), and retaining the existing 3 story parking lot & Children’s World(because the new location beyond Far East would be just too far away from the Funitel for kids). This would, of course, eliminate the proposed hi end boutique hotel where the locker room is now. Create a large central plaza with an ice rink as a gathering place for socializing, additional retail, concerts, etc. Create “clusters” of separate buildings rather than a solid wall of buildings Provide services for village & valley renters & residents (bigger Grocery store) Consider versions of recreational center or centers, other than their Grand Camp which is based on the short mining legacy…though the whole rec center idea is still open to debate?

THANK YOU FOR BEING HERE AND FOR YOUR INTEREST IN THE FUTURE OF

6 | P a g e THIS VALLEY

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