Careers

As a firm, we are committed to helping you achieve your vision. We provide valuable guidance at every phase of the project including advising about regulatory requirements, applying exceptions and other creative solutions, avoiding costly redesign. We can provide essential guidance during the pre project planning process, coordinate between consultants during the design process, conduct a pre-submittal compliance review, prepare concise and complete permit submittal packages, minimizing back and forth with agencies after submittal, and track the project through the review and permit issuance process. so you can get your project moving as soon as possible. We have experience with residential, commercial, shorezone, and recreational projects.

We are passionate about the Lake Tahoe Region. We understand that regulations are important for preserving the environmental integrity of this place, but also allow people to enjoy it through recreation, improvement of property, and commercial development and redevelopment. We support both conservation efforts and sustainable development as allowed in area plans and under TRPA code.

why work for us

We are a firm that values the place where we live, and are constantly enjoying recreation and the lifestyle in this beautiful place. We view our work as a way to give back to the place we love by promoting enjoyment and improvement of property, essential redevelopment, economic vitality, access to recreation, water quality initiatives, and environmental protection.

Principle Planner Amy Cornelius, recently spent several years working as a county planner reviewing and approving both county and TRPA permit applications, completing site assessments and coverage verification, preparing staff reports for planning entitlements, and taking those entitlements to hearing. Often projects were out of compliance with regulations and permit applications were inaccurate or incomplete. This resulted in a hold on the review process while applications were corrected and extensive corrections were completed. Redesign efforts are costly and time consuming, and can bring a project to a halt completely. Amy gained additional insight into the commercial, recreational, and multi-use project approval process. She noticed that often these projects drag on for long periods of time, or stalled completely, and gained a great deal of knowledge about the roadblocks that contribute to this as well as ways to mitigate it. Amy sees a great opportunity to guide the development of larger projects into a format which will make it through the approval process more expeditiously. Cornelius Planning & Consulting was founded to serve the community by helping with conformance starting with project conception, instead of making corrections and adjustments after the design process was completed. We also aim to serve the agencies with complete and accurate applications, reducing extra work for staff. Through her work in Tahoe, Amy has also gained deep knowledge of regulatory documents, including valuable insight into exceptions, allowances, and other creative solutions which can be applied to your project. We are passionate about helping you achieve your goals and vision by using these tools.

CORNELIUS PLANNING

Internships

quote about working for us

After moving on to study Sustainable Engineering at the University of Auckland under the mentorship of leaders in the field, she spent 6 years working as a civil engineer in mountain regions. Interestingly, along with complex engineering design and analysis, her engineering work always had a heavy emphasis on planning. Amy spearheaded several multi-year watershed master plans, and authored both a watershed master planning manual and a low impact design guideline manual. Once moving to North Lake Tahoe, her engineering work progressively took on a strong planning component, with her primary focus becoming planning five years ago. Along with engineering projects such as completion of civil site plans, grading plans, BMP calculation and design, and obtaining a Stormwater Quality Professional certification, she has worked on many large planning projects including coverage verification, variances, use permits, subdivisions, and commercial redevelopments. She also coordinated between the numerous consultants and agencies that are part of these projects. Most recently, Amy spent several years working as a county planner, providing information to the public, reviewing and approving both county and TRPA permit applications, preparing staff reports for planning entitlements, and taking those entitlements to hearing. As described in detail in the “About” section above, this experience revealed the value of guidance on the front end of project development, as well as a need for expertise in permit preparation and submittal, leading to the foundation of Cornelius Planning & Consulting.