For immediate release: July
21, 2005
Design Workshop interns offer Tahoe
a vision for the future
SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, CALIFORNIA — This year’s
Design Workshop internship charrette, or workshop, may have
a bigger impact than anticipated, given the local response.
The 10-day study gave local officials fresh ideas for reclaiming
the beauty of Tahoe’s surroundings, a vision so compelling
that members of the South Lake Tahoe City Council asked interns
to give their presentation again Tuesday to the full council.
Design Workshop holds a competition every year
to find the nation’s top landscape architecture, planning
and business students, gathering them together for a 10-day
charrette aimed at creating solutions to challenging issues
at no cost to local communities. The interns then work for 10
weeks in one of the firm’s seven U.S. offices.
This year’s intern charrette tackled issues
of community and connectivity, as well as traffic congestion
and environmental concerns in this resort town on the south
shore of Lake Tahoe. Interns began work on June 1 and made a
public presentation of their proposed solutions on June 10.
City council members who attended that session invited interns
to show their work again to council members and others in a
session Tuesday.
“I was so encouraged by the unconventional
thinking and the imaginativeness of what the interns had come
up with that I urged them to make another presentation,”
says Council Member John Upton. “We want to have some
of our people look real hard at this to see if it’s a
reasonable prospect. If we can make it pencil, then we just
need to start making deals.”
The council is expected to turn over the planning,
design and financial information to the city’s planning
commission to study.
The Tahoe basin has long been popular as a year-round
tourist destination, but facilities and infrastructure have
not kept pace with the demands of visitors or permanent residents.
The intern team of 14 students of landscape architecture and
two MBA interns focused on the U.S. Highway 50 corridor into
town, dealing with issues of transit-oriented development, workforce
housing, recreational access, visitor and community facilities,
scenic views, the environment and funding issues. The plan aimed
to foster a healthy balance between a vibrant economy and Tahoe’s
spectacular natural environment.
The interns divided the corridor into three sections.
The plan configures the typically congested “Y”
intersection with California State Highway 89 in the western
part of town into a gateway for the city, enriching it with
a transit center and dense, mixed-use complexes connected by
pedestrian bridges over the highways. For the Sierra Tract,
an auto-dominated residential area cut by several waterways,
the plan envisioned creating a pedestrian-friendly village core
and gracing the waterway edges with trails. The vision for El
Dorado Beach, which is currently occupied by a campground, transforms
this area into the cultural, civic and recreational heart of
town with amenities like an amphitheater and a pier with a water
taxi. The interns evaluated each part of the plan on the merits
of its design, market appeal, regulatory compliance, political
feasibility and financial viability, with help from members
of the community and principals of the firm.
Since 1985, Design Workshop’s internship
program has attracted gifted students of landscape architecture,
architecture, urban design, planning and business from all over
the world. Student charrettes have dealt with rail-yard conversions
in Calgary, Alberta, and Phoenix, Arizona, and light-rail planning
between Colorado ski areas and Denver.
