For immediate release: May 25, 2005

Tahoe roundtable will kick off Design Workshop’s
2005 intern charrette

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, CALIFORNIA — Movers and shakers from around the south Tahoe Basin will come together on Wednesday, June 1, to discuss issues of community, environment and connectivity along California State Highway 50, as the kickoff to Design Workshop’s 2005 student internship charrette. Sixteen of the nation’s top landscape architecture, business and planning students will work together in the 10-day workshop, which is being hosted by the firm’s Tahoe office, and will present their final planning and design solutions to the public on Friday, June 10.

“We are proud of the support we’ve been able to give to-date to South Lake Tahoe, by helping create such things as the Tahoe Valley community plan,” said Richard Shaw, the Design Workshop shareholder who will lead the charrette. “With this internship, we focus these outstanding students on helping create an exciting vision for the future of the Highway 50 corridor.”

Leaders of the community and stakeholders along the corridor will help kick off the charrette by participating in a two-hour roundtable discussion to present the issues to the student interns. Among the invitees are city representatives, local planning and development agencies, marketing and real estate personnel and representatives from gaming and tourism organizations.

The aim of the charrette is to push students to create compelling planning and design solutions in a real-world situation with multiple stakeholders and challenging regulatory restrictions. The workshop will focus on helping craft sustainable redevelopment strategies along the primary roadway through South Lake Tahoe, addressing links to transportation, access to recreation, the scenic quality of the road, open space and protection of the pristine waters of the lake. The interns will conclude the charrette with a public presentation to members of the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA), owners of land in the study corridor and interested community members from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m., Friday, June 10, at the USDA Forest Service Building at 35 College Drive in South Lake Tahoe. There will be seating for about 60 participants.

The 10-day planning charrette for the highway corridor is the start of the firm’s 2005 summer internship, which will run for 10 weeks and take each of the interns to one of the firm’s seven U.S. offices. Since 1985, Design Workshop’s internship program has attracted gifted scholars of landscape architecture, architecture, urban design and planning from all over the world. In the past, Design Workshop’s student charrettes have dealt with rail-yard conversions in Calgary, Alberta, and Phoenix, Arizona, and light-rail planning between Colorado ski areas and Denver.