Crystal Bay Cal Neva Construction Update: What Comes Next
Drive along State Route 28 through Crystal Bay this month and you will hear it before you see it: excavators working the old Cal Neva site, dirt moving where a swimming pool once straddled the California-Nevada state line. It is the first sustained construction noise this stretch of shoreline has heard in more than a decade, and for residents who have watched the corridor sit boarded up since the resort closed in 2013, that alone feels like news.
Plans call for restored historic spaces alongside new wellness and recreation amenities.
The developer that bought Cal Neva from Larry Ellison in April 2023 was a Denver firm called McWhinney. If you attended a community meeting in the past three years, that's the name on the sign-in sheet. It isn't anymore. McWhinney has rebranded as Realberry, which is now identified as the company guiding the project's next phase.
The project plans and opening target have also changed over time.
Every early announcement about Cal Neva tied itself to one number: 2026, the resort's 100th anniversary. Company representatives said it at a Bowl Incline presentation in September 2023. They said it again in fall 2024 while finalizing the villa construction schedule. Then, at an August 2025 community meeting at the Incline Village Library, the target became "sometime in 2027, no date or month set yet." By April 2026, when Realberry and operating partner Proper Hospitality announced they had closed $298 million in financing, the language had sharpened into something more specific and further out: a late 2027 opening.
The financing announcement came after those schedule changes, adding a separate milestone to the project.
The financing itself is worth sitting with. Of the $298 million, $223 million comes through C-PACE, a financing structure tied to energy and water efficiency upgrades, arranged through Nuveen Green Capital. Trade coverage has called it the largest C-PACE transaction in Nevada's history and the first ever recorded in Washoe County. The remaining $75 million is a senior secured construction loan from Banc of California.
Beyond the financing, the redevelopment plan pairs restored historic spaces with new amenities.
The renamed property, Lake Tahoe Proper Resort and Casino, will have 197 rooms, suites, and villas designed by Kelly Wearstler, developed in partnership with Kor Real Estate Partners and operated by Proper Hospitality. The historic Circle Bar and the 225-seat theater are being restored. So far, so faithful to the original.
Then look at what's being added. Two lakefront pools, one of them reserved for adults only. Three outdoor padel courts and a stand-alone pickleball building. A prospectus circulated to prospective investors last year, obtained and reported by SFGATE, described a 40,000-square-foot wellness sanctuary with cold plunge pools, red light therapy chambers, and a dedicated Pilates studio, plus a tiered membership club called "Cal Neva 100" with an invitation-only top tier and waived dues for qualifying investors.
Realberry has said it isn't pursuing historic landmark status and plans to preserve specific rooms with emotional weight in the community, including the fireplace marking the state line.
Jim Kelley has co-owned Jim Kelley's Tahoe Nugget with his brother since 1993, in a building his father opened in 1961. The gaming figures provide context for the redevelopment plans. Gaming revenue on the North Shore, Kelley told Moonshine Ink, peaked in 2003 and now sits at roughly 30 percent of that level. Over the past three decades, the North Shore has also lost more than 400 hotel rooms, according to figures cited by the project's own development team.
The figures are part of a wider set of changes along the corridor.
Cal Neva isn't the only long-dormant property on this stretch. The Tahoe Biltmore, which closed for good in 2022, sits directly across the state line on the California side of Crystal Bay. Its owner, EKN Development, has scaled back its original Boulder Bay proposal by 47 percent and is pursuing a Waldorf Astoria-branded project with 76 hotel rooms, 36 hotel residences, 25 homes, and a 10,000-square-foot spa. As reported in November 2024, EKN had just come back from the brink of a loan default on the property and said it was preparing to move the project into active construction the following spring.
Two anchor properties, both dark for most of the past decade, are now moving through construction phases at roughly the same time. That hasn't happened here in longtime residents' memory. Charlie Soule, who has owned the Soule Domain at Crystal Bay's western entrance for 40 years, has described the corridor as having boarded-up buildings and empty, trash-strewn parking lots.
None of this changes what's already working. The Soule Domain is still serving. Smoke Door, the Japanese restaurant that opened in July 2023 with prix fixe menus running $88 to $198, has kept its tables full during the period of nearby property closures, according to staff there. Inside Crystal Bay Casino, the Steak & Lobster House is still turning out its 10-ounce Maine lobster tail and ribeye surf and turf, and the casino's event calendar has live music booked into the fall, including a Brothers Comatose show on September 18. Earlier this year, the third annual Incline Village Crystal Bay Restaurant Week ran May 16 through 25, raising funds for the Boys and Girls Club of North Lake Tahoe and drawing on restaurants across both communities.
That's the part of the neighborhood that never needed a $298 million financing package to keep functioning. These businesses and events remain part of Crystal Bay as the Cal Neva's current late 2027 opening target approaches.
The Cal Neva plans combine restored historic spaces with wellness and recreation amenities, and Realberry has proposed a bike path between Crystal Bay and Kings Beach. The current opening target is late 2027.
If you're weighing what any of this means for property values or timing along this stretch of the North Shore, Tilly Mezger has been tracking Crystal Bay and the surrounding North Lake Tahoe market for years and can walk you through what these projects are likely to mean for the neighborhood over the next few years. Schedule a free strategy session to talk through it.
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