IE Business Daily Business news for the Inland Empire.
Demolition began Wednesday on the Spa Hotel in Palm Springs.
The hotel is being removed so that its owner, the Agua Caliente Band Cahuilla Indians, can help revive the city’s downtown, said tribal Chairman Jeff L. Grubbe.
“We are in the planning stages of creating a vision for this key location in downtown Palm Springs,” Grubbe said in a statement posted on the tribe’s website.
The next step is to remove all of the structures at the corner of Tahquitz Canyon Way and Indian Canyon Way while preserving the hot mineral spring there, Grubbe added.
The hotel and its fitness center closed in July, two months after tribal officials announced they planned to clear the site for “Vision Agua Caliente,” the tribe’s effort to revive the city’s downtown.
Tribal officials are still working on those plans. Because the former hotel site is tribal land, it’s not subject to federal or state regulations, including
the National Environmental Policy Act or the California Environmental Quality Act.
Demolition is expected to be completed by next summer. The tribe hopes to recycle 85 percent of the building materials from the former hotel, according to the statement.
