Resort Proposed for Coachella Would Include a Simulation of the Moon’s Surface

The $4 billion project would be developed by a company in Canada, but more than a few people are skeptical the project will ever happen.

Want to go to the moon?

How about Coachella instead?

As strange as that may sound, that could be an option as early as 2022 if all goes as planned.

A Canadian architectural design firm, Moon World Resorts Inc., wants to develop Moon USA,  a $4 billion resort in Coachella. Its main attraction will be a 10-acre simulation of the lunar surface and a lunar colony.

Housed inside a 750-square-foot sphere, the simulator will allow people to spend approximately two hours discovering what it’s like to walk on the moon. A separate attraction will allow them to experience weightlessness.

All they will have to do is pay $300 and put on an astronaut’s suit, said Michael Henderson, Moon World Resorts’ chairman and chief executive officer.

“This is going to the most accurate simulation of the moon’s surface that you’re ever going to find,” Henderson said of the planned attraction, which will incorporate NASA technology to recreate the look and feel of the lunar landscape. “Who wouldn’t want to experience that?”

Moon USA will also feature a 4,000-room hotel, a 10,000-seat event center, a two-million-square-foot convention center, a science and technology campus and a health spa and beach club, according to a World Resorts press release.

Should all of that happen, Moon USA would give the Coachella Valley – which already draws an estimated 12 million visitors a year – a tourist destination/attraction on a scale of Disneyland or Universal Studios, if not larger.

The question is, will it ever happen? To put it mildly, some officials in the region are skeptical of the project, which Moon World Resorts first proposed in 2002 in Las Vegas.

“On the surface, my first reaction is that it’s a very interesting idea,” said Mike Stull, a business professor at Cal State San Bernardino and director of the Inland Empire Center for Entrepreneurship. “But ideas are a dime a dozen. Eventually, you have to go out and make them happen, and I would think this one would be difficult.”

Stull is not alone. Some Coachella Valley officials express serious doubts that Moon USA – given its size, cost and the level of technology involved in developing it – will ever be built.

“It was a lot cheaper to do the Apollo program,” said Joe Wallace, interim president and chief executive officer of the Coachella Valley Economic Partnership, a non-profit that specializes in business retention and attraction. “The last three people that went to the moon didn’t spend as much money as these guys want to spend.”

Wallace sees potential problems with Moon USA, starting with a $4 billion price tag that could ultimately reach much higher given the proposal’s size and scope.

“Do you know how many people can raise $4 billion?,” Wallace asked. “Not very many. You’re into a whole different class of investor when you’re trying to borrow $4 billon. He [Henderson] is also talking about $850 million a year in expenses while it’s being built, and [generating] $1.5 billion in revenue annually once it’s operating.

“If he thinks he’s going bring in $1.5 billon a year in revenue, I don’t think he’s put together a very good business plan.”

Moon Word Resorts also hasn’t secured land for the project, Wallace noted.

The company is looking at six sites in Coachella and it strongly favors one of them, but it won’t disclose any of those locations, Henderson said.

“We went to the desert because it has enough land that we can afford,” Henderson said. “It would be too difficult to try to do this in a big urban area.”

Regardless of where it’s built, Moon World Resorts will have to secure basic infrastructure for the site, starting with water and electricity, a difficult and costly task in the desert, Wallace said.

Wallace sees another potential hazard with Moon USA: there’s no guarantee that people will want drive to Coachella to see it, even if its feature attraction is an accurate recreation of what the Apollo astronauts experienced when they walked on the moon.

Coachella is the easternmost city in the Coachella Valley, about 72 miles east of Riverside and 130 miles east of Los Angeles, meaning it would be a difficult drive for a lot of people, especially during the summer.

However, if Moon USA is as successful as Henderson believes it will be – he’s predicting an average of 100,000 visitors a week – that too could be a problem for the region, which already gets its share of tourists.

“That would be like having to deal with the music and arts festival every day,” Wallace said.

Besides being in a remote location, Moon USA might not be a good fit for the Coachella Valley, said David White, director of business development for the Palm Springs Chamber of Commerce.

“It’s true that a lot of tourists come to the Coachella Valley, but they come here to play golf and relax, not to go to something like [Moon USA],” White said. “It would add something different to the market, but I’m not sure that it will work.”

Henderson, who expects to spend two years getting the project permitted and another four years building it, answers his critics by quoting the man who inspired him to get into the theme park/entertainment industry.

“Walt Disney used to say that it’s kind of fun to do the impossible,” Henderson said. “People said he was crazy when he built Disneyland, and when he built Disney World [near Orlando, Fla.] people said the only thing that would show up would be alligators. Today the Walt Disney Corp is the greatest entertainment company ever created.”

Henderson did not name any potential financial backers for MOON USA, but said he is talking to “responsible financial people” about possibly investing. He added that projects the scale of MOON USA are financed and developed often, in Las Vegas among other places.

“The people who say we can’t get this financed don’t know what they’re talking about because they’ve never built anything,” Henderson said of the project. “They’re trapped in their own fear. Had NASA listened to the naysayers, Apollo 11 would never have landed on the moon.”

Moon USA, which would create an estimated 8,000 permanent and 3,000 construction jobs, has received one endorsement from Coachella.

“We are thrilled MWR chose the city of Coachella as the location for this truly amazing and highly imaginative project,” said Mark Weber, the city’s economic development manager, in a statement posted on Moon World Resorts’ website. “We look forward to assisting the MWR team as they proceed through the various planning, approval and development stages.”

Weber and other Coachella officials, including Mayor Steven Hernandez, did not return phone calls and e-mails seeking comment for this report.

Dismissing Moon USA  might be a mistake, however impractical the project might appear at first glance, Stull said.

“I met a banker who turned down Famous Amos, the cookie company, because he didn’t think it would work,” Stull said. “That’s why, when I’m working with my students, I try to never kill their ideas. I tell them to go out and make it happen. But $4 billion does seem like a long shot.”