The 39 North plan puts its hotel's driveway and loading dock behind the highway, on Salmon Avenue, the short street between Raccoon and Fox. The block has 18 on-street parking spaces and a Placer County public lot today. Under the plan, retail deliveries would arrive at a loading dock there during designated hours, sized for box trucks, and goods would be moved by hand cart. Townhomes would stand on part of the county lot, and plowed snow from a 445-foot hotel would wait in staging areas until a removal service hauled it away.
That block is where the project's September review stalled. The developer has cut the plan down since 2024. But the questions Placer County's design committee left open are mostly winter questions: where the snow goes, where the shade falls in December, and how ice forms at entrances. Kings Beach is heading into exactly the season the committee asked the plan to account for.
Where the review stands this week
On September 22, 2026, the Tahoe Basin Design Review Committee held a special meeting on 39 North at the North Tahoe Event Center. County staff had set the item up for action. Staff also said at the outset that some information was still missing, including landscaping, lighting, trash enclosures, fencing and permanent amenity features. The Sierra Sun reported that after four hours, the committee unanimously continued the item. It cited inconsistencies in the documents and a lack of design detail. The official minutes record the recommendation as a continuance "to a date and time uncertain."
The committee met again on October 27. The agenda for that meeting did not list 39 North, and it set the meeting after that for November 24 at 4 p.m. Ahead of the October meeting, the Sierra Sun reported that the county would give 72 hours' notice if the item appeared on that agenda. Even when it returns, this committee only reviews design and sends recommendations to the county's planning department. Final approval is a separate step, with county and TRPA decisions still to come.
The project covers two sites that don't touch. Placer County owns the land, and the applicant is Phil Mader of Kingsbarn Capital & Development.
- Mountainside, between Raccoon and Fox Streets: a 132-room hotel with 27,262 square feet of ground-floor commercial space, a second-floor pool deck and a rooftop bar. Next to it are 38 market-rate townhomes that would operate as condo-hotel units.
- Lakeside, at Chipmunk Street: a 56-foot building with 51 deed-restricted apartments. Eligibility is tied to earning within 120% of area median income or to local employment.
Fewer rooms, the same length
Measured in hotel rooms, the plan has been cut by about a quarter since Kings Beach first saw it.
| Version | Hotel rooms | Deed-restricted apartments |
|---|---|---|
| May 2024, per the Sierra Sun | 179 | 62 |
| June 2025, per the Sierra Sun | 132 | 63 |
| Submittal before the September revision, per the county packet | Not restated | 64, with 71 bedrooms |
| September 2026 county packet | 132 | 51, with 64 bedrooms |
The apartment count went down because the unit mix changed. The committee had said in February that there were too few two-bedroom units. The revision has 13 studios, 25 one-bedrooms and 13 two-bedrooms.
The hotel did not get shorter. It is still a single four-story, 56-foot building, 445 feet long where the standard allows 200, so the project needs a variance. The Sierra Sun reported that Mader told the committee a lot of work had gone into scaling the project down and that, apart from the variance, it meets all requirements. He said the length is a structural necessity because of the underground garage and the triangular shape of the lot. Committee member Brent Welling suggested the garage could stay as one long structure while the building above it is designed to look like several buildings.
Committee members disagreed among themselves about size. In the same Sierra Sun account, Jennifer Stoll said, "This is not balanced growth, this is wha-bam." Robert Olson, speaking about the apartment building, said, "I want more units." Todd Gordon Mather said he was trying to weigh public comments calling the project too big against other community needs, such as housing. The minutes record that the committee found the hotel's scale, massing and length out of step with community character and with the development contemplated in the Tahoe Basin Area Plan's environmental review.
The snow math
The longest disagreement was about snow, and it is the one Kings Beach is about to see play out on its own streets.
The Sierra Sun reported that the property must provide snow storage equal to 60% of its plowed surface. On the hotel and townhome site, the plan provides 30% as storage. For the other 30%, it proposes temporary staging areas that a removal service would empty by hauling the snow off-site. The committee agreed the numbers add up but questioned whether the plan would work in practice. The minutes go further. They say permanent and temporary storage would occupy the same area, and they call the townhome snow plan infeasible.
The apartment site at Chipmunk Street came out differently. The committee considered its snow storage and management plans feasible, with permanent storage areas on the plans and temporary storage in designated parking spaces.
The rest of the committee's winter requests follow from the same concern:
- A winter shade study. The developer's shade report was run for the summer solstice. The committee asked for it to be run for winter daylight, because the worry about shade is mainly about ice.
- Icing at the townhome entrances. Members asked about snowmelt and icing at the doors, and about how the roof eaves are designed.
- Roof runoff and icing at the apartment building. These were raised even though the committee accepted that site's snow plan.
- A revised townhome snow plan that shows how permanent and temporary storage would both work.
In public comment, snow storage came up alongside stormwater runoff to the lake and tree removal.
Salmon Avenue gets the daily traffic
The snow plan affects Salmon Avenue most because so much of the project's day-to-day traffic is planned there. Hotel access is off Salmon. The loading dock is on Salmon and takes box trucks but not semis, with a trash and recycling area next to it. The Sierra Sun reported that the developer made no changes to access, loading or circulation on Salmon after the committee raised them in February.
Here is how parking on the block would change:
- On-street: 29 formal public spaces on Salmon Avenue, including two accessible spaces, up from 18 today. Part of that parking area would be dedicated to the county as right-of-way.
- The county lot: some townhomes would be built on the existing Placer County public lot. Its 22 public spaces would move into the hotel garage and be permanently dedicated to public parking.
- The garage: 181 spaces on two partly underground levels, 159 of them valet.
- Townhomes: a two-car tuck-under garage for each unit.
The committee also noted that it had not seen renderings of the hotel as Salmon Avenue residents would see it. It asked for more views of that street, especially from the east, and suggested breaking up the hotel's Salmon Avenue face. Congestion on Salmon was one of the themes the Sierra Sun reported from public comment.
The public pieces aren't drawn yet
The parts of the hotel site meant for the public are listed in the plan but not designed. The September packet lists a pedestrian path through the hotel site from Salmon Avenue to North Lake Boulevard. It also lists a community park or public open space, plus bike parking, bike tuning stations, water-filling stations and transit and trail signage. The park and the bike and transit amenities carry the county's note that they "are not fully designed and are not included in the design review package." The committee listed limited pedestrian connections and insufficient public benefits, "including dedicated, usable park space," among its concerns. Members also questioned the second-floor deck design for leaving the community out.
The apartment site has more specific public amenities: a public playground and a public dog park, separate from a barbecue area for tenants. The committee repeated its request for ground-floor retail on North Lake Boulevard at both the townhomes and the apartment building. The Sierra Sun reported that the apartment revisions did not address that request, and that the building was kept as a single structure because of coverage, parking and circulation requirements. The committee also suggested the apartment building take on some of Kings Beach's "quirky" character.
How to follow it from here
The county's 39 Degrees North project page is the official record, and the county planner on the project is Heather Beckman. Check the figures against the most recent meeting packet. In September, the community group Strong North Tahoe noted that the county's main project page still listed 64 apartments, while the revised plans showed 51. The committee's next scheduled meeting is November 24 at 4 p.m., and its posted agenda will show whether 39 North and its revised snow plan are back for review.
If you own a home near the Kings Beach town center and want to know how a project still in review could affect your property, The Moore Team follows these hearings closely and can talk through it with you. Schedule a free consultation.
