What's Next for the Old Spindleshanks Lot in Tahoe Vista?

Drive North Lake Boulevard through the middle of Tahoe Vista and there's a long stretch of open ground on the mountain side of the highway. It sits about 250 feet back from the lake and roughly a mile west of where Highway 28 meets Highway 267. The address is 6873 N. Lake Blvd. Placer County lists the parcel at 6.25 acres, zoned Mixed-Use (North Tahoe West).

For most of the past two decades, every serious plan for this lot was a timeshare resort. The application now in front of Placer County asks for something else: 27 privately owned single-family homes and a 2,542-square-foot restaurant. That changes what this piece of central Tahoe Vista would become. The limit on how much of the lot any project can cover still comes from a lawsuit settled in 2010.

A resort building from 1927 and a campground behind it

The building most people remember on this site went up in 1927 for the Sandy Beach Resort and campground, Lake Tahoe News reported. Spindleshanks restaurant was its last use.

A 2008 Placer County environmental document describes the site as mostly unpaved. Sandy Beach Campground had 27 campground and RV spaces. Facing the highway stood a two-story commercial building of about 7,300 square feet, with Spindleshanks downstairs and an office and a one-bedroom apartment upstairs. A few smaller buildings filled out the lot.

So the lot had a mix of uses: overnight campers in back and a restaurant out front, open to anyone driving by. The proposals that followed kept trying to turn that mix into lodging alone.

The timeshare plan that won approval and then stalled

The redevelopment story begins in 2006, and it moved slowly. Here is the sequence:

1. 2006. The first proposal called for 49 timeshares, with Wyndham expected to manage them, according to Lake Tahoe News.
2. February 2008. The Sierra Sun covered a meeting where residents raised concerns about density, cumulative impacts and mitigation fees. By then the proposal stood at 45 tourist accommodation units plus 10 affordable units on 6.25 acres.
3. July 23, 2008. The Tahoe Regional Planning Agency approved the Tahoe Vista Partners project. Placer County followed on October 20, 2008. The approved plan would have turned the campground and RV park into up to 39 market-rate timeshare units, six affordable units and a clubhouse.
4. October 2008. Friends of Tahoe Vista and the League to Save Lake Tahoe sued Placer County and TRPA, arguing the plan put too much density on the site.
5. March 24, 2010. Under the settlement, the TRPA board amended the permit. The land coverage recognized on the site dropped from 174,324 square feet to 125,000 square feet, and the affordable housing had to be built somewhere else. The cap of 39 market-rate units stayed.
6. Mid-2014. Placer County put the project on hold until the developer could take steps to protect a bat species living on the site.
7. October 7, 2015. The Spindleshanks building came down because it couldn't be brought up to code. The restaurant had already moved to the Old Brockway Golf Course in Kings Beach.

In early 2016 the timeshare permit was still alive on a TRPA extension. Tom Lotshaw, then a TRPA spokesman, explained the reason to Lake Tahoe News:

"The determination was based on information that the permittee was unable to follow the approved construction schedule due to a requirement by Placer County in mid-2014 that the project be held until appropriate measures could be implemented to mitigate the presence of a protected bat species at the site."

The same report said the permit would expire unless an updated construction schedule was approved by May 1. No timeshares were ever built. Ten years later the lot is still open ground.

The part of the 2010 fight that outlasted the timeshares

The most lasting result of the timeshare era is the coverage number. In Tahoe, coverage means roughly how much of a lot buildings and pavement can take up. The 2010 settlement asked for a revised site plan within 18 months, and it said the timeshare permits could expire. Even so, the 125,000 square feet of recognized coverage would stay with the site and apply to future projects.

That makes the settlement more than old history. The parties argued over 39 timeshares, but they also fixed how much of this lot can be built over, whatever goes there. The figure is about 50,000 square feet below the 174,324 square feet that TRPA's July 2008 approval had recognized, and any later plan starts from that lower ceiling.

The 2025 plan swaps timeshares for houses

In January 2025, the trade publication The Registry reported that the parcel, marketed as the Tahoe Vista Villas, was listed for sale at an asking price of $10.5 million and pitched for its redevelopment potential.

The current application uses the same name. Placer County tracks it as Tahoe Vista Villas 2025, file number PLN25-00065. It asks for a Minor Use Permit and Design Review to build a mixed-use project: a 2,542-square-foot restaurant and 27 privately owned single-family homes. Verdom Realty Management LLC is listed as the owner.

Set beside the 2008 approval, the differences are clear:

The unit count changes the character of the place. A timeshare resort turns over guests every week. Twenty-seven separately owned houses would make this lot a small residential pocket in the middle of Tahoe Vista. By coincidence, 27 is also how many campground spaces Sandy Beach once had.

A restaurant would return to the highway frontage

The 2008 plan included a clubhouse. The 2025 plan includes a restaurant, which is the role the frontage played for decades when Spindleshanks occupied the 1927 resort building.

The proposed restaurant would be about a third the size of the old two-story building, which held an office and an apartment along with the dining room. The application doesn't name an operator. It does mean that, if built, the lot would again have something along North Lake Boulevard that anyone could walk into, and not only private homes set back from the road.

Where the application stands, and how to follow it

Placer County's April 2026 list of active projects says the county received the extra information it had asked the applicant for and is reviewing it for completeness. That list shows no hearing date. At that point, the county was still checking whether the application was complete enough to move ahead to environmental review and a decision.

The county record includes the details you need to follow it:

• File number: PLN25-00065, Tahoe Vista Villas 2025
• Lead planner: Patrick Dobbs
• Notification list: email Placer County's Environmental Coordination Services at [email protected] and ask to be added for this project
• Supervisor district: District 5
• Community plan: Tahoe Basin Area Plan
• Advisory council: North Tahoe Municipal Advisory Council

The county posts its active-project lists through the Environmental Coordination Services page, and each list notes that project descriptions may change without notice. That warning fits this lot. Since 2006, plans for it have gone from 49 timeshares to 45, then to 39, and now to 27 houses and a restaurant. Before any of them gets built, the next version will most likely show up on an agenda from the North Tahoe Municipal Advisory Council.

I'm happy to talk through what the Tahoe Vista Villas proposal could mean for the homes and streets around it. If you're weighing a purchase or sale near 6873 N. Lake Blvd, Rebecca Smith can help you understand where it stands. Let's Connect.