IE Business Daily Business news for the Inland Empire.
The project, which has strong community support, will be located near the Palm Springs Art Museum. If approved, it has the potential to attract a lot of people to the city’s main business district.
Plans for a proposed park in downtown Palm Springs will get their most detailed hearing yet this week during a public meeting that will feature the project’s design team.
Rios Clementi Hale Studios, a Los Angeles landscape and environmental design firm, held two public meetings last year in which it discussed broad parameters of the $5.4 million proposal.
Now, Rios Clementi officials will return to the Coachella Valley for a session before the the city’s ad hoc Downtown Park subcommittee. The session is scheduled to begin at 3 p.m. Tuesday at city hall, 3200 Tahquitz Canyon Way.
During that meeting, a more detailed version of the park will be presented to Palm Springs officials and members of the public, said Marcus L. Fuller, the city’s assistant city manager.
“This is where we’ll get a better idea of what this project will be and what it’s going to look like,” Fuller said. “The first two meetings were about broad concepts, but this is where we’re going to start getting some details.”
Palm Springs’ downtown park, the cornerstone of the city’s downtown redevelopment efforts, will be located directly opposite the Palm Springs Art Museum, where The Desert Inn once stood.
When it’s finished, possibly in 2020, the park will be a community gathering spot, with paths, play areas, a grove of palm trees for shade and a plaza.
Plans call for the plaza to be home to the 26-foot Forever Marilyn [Monroe] statue that was displayed in downtown Palm Springs from 2012 to 2014 before it was sent to Chicago for temporary display.
The park will include space for the Aluminaire House, the first all-metal house built in the United States, that was donated to Palm Springs four years ago. A 150-room Virgin Hotel, which is expected to open in 2022, will also be located there.
Above all, the downtown park will be a place where families can spend time and the community can gather for concerts and other special events. The park will reflect much of its surrounding community, said Nate Cormier, principal landscape architect with Rios Clementi.
Palm Springs’ downtown park should be similar to Grand Park in Los Angeles, which was also designed by Rios Clementi, Cormier said.
Located in the civic center, the 12-acre project includes sidewalks, kiosks, a fountain plaza, park furniture that can be moved and trees that provide much shade. Grand Park is also part of larger downtown revitalization effort, the Grand Avenue Project, the first phase of which opened in 2012.
“We want to get some local elements into [Palm Springs] so it has a strong local feel,” said Cormier, one of the project’s designers. “It will also be a pedestrian friendly area, much more than it is now.”
Part of that goal has already been achieved with the rerouting of Belardo Road, which now runs along the east side of the downtown redevelopment project, said Steven Henke, president of the Palm Springs Chamber of Commerce.
“That has made it easier to get downtown, and you can already tell a difference,” said Henke, who moved to Palm Springs from Minneapolis seven years ago. “People are starting to rediscover downtown, which is an exciting thing to see.
“We’ve always gotten the tourists to visit there, but we didn’t always get the locals. They tended to stay home, but now you can see them coming back.”
The success of the 153-room Kimpton Rowan Palm Springs Hotel – which opened in December at 100 W. Tahquitz Canyon Way on the site of the former Desert Fashion Plaza – has also showed that downtown Palm Springs is regaining popularity, Henke said.
“The hotel is doing well, and the businesses around it are also doing well,” Henke said. “The Starbucks at Tahquitz Canyon Way and Palm Canyon Drive always has a long line outside no matter what time off the day I drive by it.
“The hotel opening up was really the first phase of revitalizing Palm Springs.”
Members of the Palm Springs business community are solidly behind the project, mostly because they see the potential it has to attract people downtown, Henke said.
“I haven’t heard anyone oppose it,” he said. “It’s a big project, but it’s not too big.”
Any city would benefit from a downtown park that serves as a community gathering place, said Joy Meredith, president of Main Street Palm Springs, a community group that promotes commerce in the city.
“I think we all want to see the downtown park happen because we know it would be a good thing for Palm Springs,” said Meredith, who owns two downtown businesses. “It will be a place where people can relax and be entertained. If it brings enough people downtown it will help our businesses.”
