"It's the start of the revitalization of the West Shore," Homewood Mountain Resort general manager Andy Buckley told a Reno news crew in late March, standing where the old Madden Chair had just come down. He wasn't talking about a groundbreaking ceremony in some distant future. He was talking about right now, this season, the one you're living through if you're on West Lake Boulevard this August.
The assumption most people make about a ski resort mid-construction is simple: stay away until it's done. Trails closed, access roads closed, come back next winter. That assumption is half right. The mountain itself is closed to the public while crews work. But if you live on the West Shore, this has quietly become one of the more socially active summers Homewood has had in years, not despite the construction, but running alongside it.
What's Actually Closed, and What Isn't
Homewood's own site is direct about it: all trails, access roads, and on-mountain areas are closed to the public for the duration of the build. That's been true since the resort shut down early on March 18 due to deteriorating snow conditions, at which point crews started dismantling the Madden Chair, a lift that had been running since 1966. A hundred of its chairs are being sold off, with proceeds benefiting Sierra Community House.
What the mountain-closure headline misses is that Homewood didn't wall itself off from the neighborhood while it builds. On June 13, the resort hosted a "Homewood Community Social & Gondola Celebration" at the North Lodge Patio, with food from the San Miguel Food Truck and music from Jesse & Jenni of Dead Winter Carpenters. It was an open invitation to come look at the construction site and hear directly from the team building it, not a press event walled off from residents.
Here's the rough shape of the year so far, if you're trying to track it from your driveway:
| Date | What Happened |
|---|---|
| March 18, 2026 | Homewood closes early for the season; Madden Chair removal begins |
| May 1, 2026 | Gondola installation and new snowmaking infrastructure work begin |
| Mid-June 2026 | Crews pour concrete for the first gondola tower |
| June 13, 2026 | Community Social & Gondola Celebration at North Lodge Patio |
| June 24, 2026 | Resort unveils new logo, marking the formal end of the privatization fight |
| October 15, 2026 (target) | Ground work and dirt development complete |
| Winter 2026-27 | Gondola targeted to open |
The gondola itself will be an eight-passenger ropeway replacing the Madden Chair's old route, running from the lakefront base up to a future Mid Mountain Lodge near where Madden used to terminate. It's designed to lift beginner terrain about a thousand feet higher up the mountain, chasing better snow and lake views for new skiers instead of leaving them stuck at the bottom.
Why the New Bear Logo Actually Matters
On June 24, Homewood retired its old two-peaks logo for a new one: two bears perched together on a single ski. Easy to write off as a marketing refresh. It isn't, and the backstory explains why residents were paying attention.
In 2022, Homewood's owners, JMA Ventures and Discovery Land Company, floated turning the resort semi-private and member-only, arguing it was the only way to fund the infrastructure upgrades laid out in the mountain's 2011 Master Plan. The backlash was immediate. A grassroots group called Keep Homewood Public formed in 2023 specifically to fight that shift. Tension peaked heading into the 2024-25 season when Homewood abruptly closed entirely, blaming delays in Tahoe Regional Planning Agency approval of the Master Plan amendments, which led its financial backer to pull funding.
The mountain reopened for 2025-26 as a fully public resort, this time with what the resort describes as an enforceable community access plan guaranteeing public use of the slopes going forward. The new logo landed a year later as a symbolic close to that fight, not the start of it. If you've been in Homewood long enough to remember the private-club rumors, the gondola towers going up under a public ownership structure is the actual headline. The bears are just the cover art.
Homewood and Palisades Tahoe are both owned in part by Art Chapman, founder of JMA Ventures, whose other Tahoe-area holdings include the West Shore Café and Inn directly across the street from the resort. Chapman is also a founding member of the Tahoe Fund, and Homewood offers a "Green Bucks" donation add-on at checkout that funds bike trails, public parks, and restoration projects around the basin.
Where To Actually Eat This Summer
The mountain being closed to foot traffic doesn't mean the shore is quiet. The two lakefront tables that anchor West Shore evenings are both running full seasons this year, and one of them is only a year into a new era that most residents are still getting used to.
Chambers Landing came back under new ownership last year, when South Lake Tahoe operator Luca Genasci took over the historic property. Genasci already runs both AleWorX locations, The Bistro at the Corner, Lakeview Social, Backyard Bar & Grill, and Cocktail Corner, and also holds The Lake House Restaurant in South Lake Tahoe. Chambers Landing itself dates to the Gold Rush era, originally known as Hunter's Retreat, a hunting and fishing outpost with close to twenty log cabins. The boathouse built there in 1875 was the first ever built on Lake Tahoe, and it still stands. Now in its second full summer under Genasci's team, it's running seven days a week, 10:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday and until 10 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays, with a menu built around dishes like the Chambers Burger, a third-pound angus patty with kalua pork, avocado puree, and mango salsa.
A few minutes up the road, West Shore Café and Inn, owned by JMA Ventures since 2010, is still doing what it's done for over a decade: lakefront tables, a boat valet for anyone arriving by water, and a free TART Connect shuttle stop right outside the door for anyone who'd rather not deal with parking. The adjoining West Shore Beach Club adds lawn cabanas a few steps from the water for anyone treating dinner as a whole-evening plan rather than a quick stop.
For residents, that's the practical read on this summer. The mountain above you is a construction site you can't walk onto, but the two lakefront properties that anchor West Shore evenings are both open for business, one of them still finding its footing under ownership that took over just last year.
The Version of This Story Worth Remembering
The easy version of this year's Homewood story is "closed for construction, check back next winter." The version that's actually true if you live here is that the resort spent this summer proving it intends to stay public, threw a community party in the middle of pouring concrete, and did it all while the shore's two lakefront dining rooms kept the lights on below. None of that required the gondola to be finished. It just required someone paying attention to notice.
If you're the kind of person who tracks this much detail about your own neighborhood, you're probably also the person your neighbors call when they're thinking about buying or selling on the West Shore. Ricki Manahan has spent years watching Homewood change one season at a time. Contact Ricki when you're ready to talk about what any of this means for your own piece of it.
