Drive along Highway 28 into Crystal Bay this month and the old Cal Neva still looks the way it has for over a decade: chain-link along the parking apron, boarded windows on the lodge side, the tower standing quiet above the state line marker that used to run straight through the middle of the property. If you didn't already know the building's history, nothing about its current state would tell you that 2026 was supposed to be its victory lap. This is the year the resort turned 100. It's also the year its own developer publicly admitted the anniversary opening wasn't happening, then turned around a few months later and announced the project was starting over under a different company, a different name, and a very different amount of money behind it.
Most of what's been written about Cal Neva lately treats it as one long, continuous restoration story. It isn't. Something changed here in early 2026 that's easy to miss if you're only catching headlines in passing, and it matters for anyone who's watched this property sit dark since 2013 wondering if this time is different.
A hundred years, four owners, one promise that didn't survive contact with reality
The bones of the story go back to 1926, when the resort first opened straddling the California-Nevada border on the northeast shore. Frank Sinatra held an ownership stake from 1960 to 1968, and the era that followed, with Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Marilyn Monroe, and even John F. Kennedy passing through, is the version of Cal Neva most people picture when they hear the name. The casino stopped operating in 2010 and the resort closed entirely in 2013 in the middle of a renovation that never finished.
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1926 | Cal Neva opens at 2 Stateline Road |
| 1960 to 1968 | Frank Sinatra holds an ownership stake |
| 2013 | Property closes mid-renovation, stays shuttered |
| 2018 | Larry Ellison buys it at bankruptcy auction for $35.8 million |
| 2023 | McWhinney buys it for roughly $52 million, targets a December 2026 reopening |
| August 2025 | McWhinney says the 2026 target is "too ambitious," pushes to 2027 |
| April 2026 | McWhinney rebrands as Realberry, closes $298 million in financing with Proper Hospitality, renames the project Lake Tahoe Proper Resort and Casino |
Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, who owns a family compound nearby in Incline Village, picked up the property at that 2018 bankruptcy auction and later added the Hyatt Regency Lake Tahoe to his North Shore holdings as well. He sold Cal Neva to McWhinney, a Colorado-based real estate firm, in April 2023 for close to $52 million. McWhinney's stated goal from the start was specific: reopen by December 2026, timed to both the resort's 100th anniversary and Frank Sinatra's birthday.
The quiet part locals actually noticed
That target held publicly for about two years. Then, at an August 2025 community update at the Incline Village Library that drew close to 60 residents, McWhinney's senior vice president Jason Newcomer told the room the December 2026 date was off the table. The new plan pointed to sometime in 2027, no month specified yet.
That's a normal thing for a construction project built inside the Tahoe basin's permitting stack to say out loud. Bigger changes were coming that nobody in that room was told about yet.
The company that owns it isn't the company that bought it
In April 2026, the same executive team announced a $298 million financing package to complete the restoration. That's not a modest bridge loan. It included $223 million in C-PACE financing from Nuveen Green Capital, which developers say is the largest C-PACE transaction in Nevada's history and the first one ever recorded in Washoe County, plus a $75 million senior secured construction loan from Banc of California.
The bigger shift was in the name on the paperwork. McWhinney, the firm that bought Cal Neva in 2023, had rebranded itself as Realberry, still under the same CEO, Chad McWhinney. Realberry brought in Proper Hospitality, the group behind properties in Santa Monica and Austin, as its operating partner, and hired designer Kelly Wearstler to lead the interiors. The project itself got a new name entirely: Lake Tahoe Proper Resort and Casino.
"Hopefully, people say it still feels like Cal Neva," McWhinney said. "If visitors are discovering this place for the first time and feeling genuinely moved by it and locals feel proud of what's here, then we did our job."
That's the detail worth sitting with. Anyone who's been tracking "the Cal Neva reopening" as a single ongoing project has actually been watching two different companies, under two different names, chase two different opening dates, three years apart. It's the same building and largely the same intent, but the entity behind it changed its own identity mid-project, which is not something a press release volunteers up front.
What's actually being kept, and what isn't
The plan calls for 197 rooms split between the hotel tower, suites, and private villas. The Circle Bar is being restored, along with the 225-seat theater, engineered originally so performers could see every face in the room. Portions of the tunnel system, built during Prohibition and later used by Monroe to move around the property unseen, are staying in place and being upgraded to meet current code.
Some of the site's history isn't coming back. The pool that once sat directly on the state line is being replaced by two separate lakefront pools, one for adults and one for families, with tiered cabana seating anchored by a restaurant and bar. New additions include a wellness center, three padel courts, and a standalone pickleball building, none of which existed anywhere on the property during its Rat Pack decades. Realberry has said the goal isn't strict historic preservation so much as restoring the identity people associate with the place while building the parts of a modern resort that a 1926 casino simply never had.
The target now is a late 2027 opening, which means the property's actual 101st or 102nd year, not its 100th, is more likely to be the one when the doors reopen.
Why this attempt reads differently on paper
Cal Neva has been "about to reopen" more than once since 2013. What separates this round is the shape of the capital behind it. A single developer's construction loan is one kind of signal. A $298 million package that includes the largest C-PACE financing in state history, a hospitality brand with an existing track record in two other markets, and a named interior designer with her own client base is a different kind of signal entirely. It doesn't guarantee a 2027 opening any more than the December 2026 target guaranteed anything. It does mean the project now has more institutions with financial exposure tied to seeing it through, which historically has been the piece missing from every prior attempt at this address.
For residents on the Nevada side of the lake, the practical marker to watch isn't a press release. It's visible construction activity along that Highway 28 corridor through Crystal Bay, since site work, stormwater upgrades, and structural repair have been underway there since the summer following McWhinney's 2023 purchase. Whether the pace of that work picks up in a way that matches a real 2027 timeline is the thing that will actually tell longtime locals if this attempt holds up better than the last three.
If you're watching this stretch of the North Shore for reasons that go beyond curiosity about the old casino, whether you're weighing a move to the Nevada side, thinking about how a project like this changes the feel of Crystal Bay over the next few years, or just want a straight answer about what's happening at a property near a home you already own, Wendy Poore, Realtor has been working both shores of the lake since 1998 and can walk you through what it means for the area you're actually paying attention to. Schedule a consultation when you're ready to talk specifics.
