Palm Springs Seeks Some More Prestige

There’s something missing in this land of golf: A golf course. At least the sort that shows up on Sunday television.

Sure, every California ranch house in town seems to look out on neighborhood greens. But the marquee courses trumpeting the area’s blue skies and winter sunshine during Tiger Woods’ close-ups aren’t in Palm Springs, erstwhile golf capital of the world. They’re in less-fabled cities to the east: Palm Desert, La Quinta and Indio.

Determined to keep up with the neighbors--and keep the tourists coming--the Palm Springs City Council has approved a course designed by golfing legend Arnold Palmer. The links would climb into the mountains that flank Palm Springs, offering golfers expansive views of the Coachella Valley from the back nine holes.

But environmentalists and some residents say that the price tag is simply too high: The course’s prized mountain location is home to a subspecies of endangered bighorn sheep and is right next to one of the city’s oldest and most cherished neighborhoods.

The Sierra Club has sued the city, citing concerns for the peninsular bighorn sheep, which received federal protection in March 1998, and residents who value their tranquil neighborhood.

The clubhouse of the Mountain Falls Preserve development would be an estate in Las Palmas, an area where bougainvillea hangs heavy over white walls, olive trees are shaped into topiary pompoms, and orange blossoms scent the air. This is where Elvis honeymooned; where Jack Benny, Debbie Reynolds, George Hamilton and Dean Martin once lived. Kirk Douglas only recently put his house up for sale.

Directly behind Las Palmas, the Santa Rosa Mountains seem to rise straight from the mountain floor. A smooth granite span on one outcropping is a local landmark called Dry Falls. The golf course would begin beneath Dry Falls and snake up the mountain, hidden from the neighborhood by a dam.

Some Las Palmas residents see the golf course and condo development as good news for Palm Springs, where hotel room taxes account for more than a quarter of the city budget.

“I don’t think golf is going to attract a lot of boisterous types,” said sculptor John Kennedy, a longtime resident. “They have to keep quiet and concentrate on hitting that little white ball.”

Others residents shuddered and then organized opposition to the plan that would put a restaurant, bar and 300-space garage next to their neighborhood and bring traffic to their wide, tree-lined streets.

“We feel betrayed by our city government,” said Bob Seale, chairman of the Las Palmas Neighborhood Alliance. “If the Sierra Club suit fails, we’ll file our own lawsuit. We won’t tolerate this.”

When the project came before the council in November, the debate ran so long that Mayor Will Kleindienst excused himself to go home to bed. After seven hours of testimony, letters, scientific data and petitions, he said he was too tired and too overloaded to make a responsible decision before sleeping. The council approved the project without him at 3 a.m.

Five months later, emotions are still raging.

“People are getting really wacky,” said Ray Lovato, secretary of the Palm Springs Hotel Assn. “The truth is it could impact the neighborhood, there are environmental issues, but the city really needs this.

“Every time one of those golf tournaments is on TV, the phones start ringing. People say, ‘Look, there’s sun, there’s short sleeves. What are we doing in Cleveland?’ And the people come out and they take their money down-valley where they keep building new golf courses.”

By the end of this year, there will be 103 golf courses in the Coachella Valley. Only nine are in Palm Springs--and three of those are private; none hosts major tournaments.

Although the city offers 7,000 hotel rooms--almost half the rooms in the valley--the majority are in small inns as opposed to mega-resorts with multiple restaurants, shops and golf courses.

Palm Springs is still a small town with the distinct air of a different time period, as if its flower hedges and hotel signs somehow froze circa 1963. Tourism officials credit a Sinatra-era, retro-craze for a recent upswing in visitors. The town’s main drag skews more to small souvenir shops, coffee bars and art galleries.

Newer towns with expanses of undeveloped desert such as Palm Desert, 20 miles to the east, have welcomed big resorts and big country clubs.

“When developers from, say, Minnesota call me, the first thing they say is, ‘How’s your weather and are your golf courses green?’ ” said Carlos Ortega, Palm Desert’s executive director of redevelopment. “Here’s the impact of golf on our city: If we have 30 courses and on a nice day 150 people play each course, that’s 4,500 people who are going to eventually look for a place to eat dinner.”

The irony, Ortega said, is that many of those people consider themselves to be playing, shopping and dining in Palm Springs. “Palm Springs is still the name people recognize, but as long as they spend their money here, restaurants and hotels don’t care so much what people call the place.”

But Palm Springs isn’t ready to settle for just image while other cities cash in on its glitzy name.

“Our name is marketed with golf throughout the world. It’s important for us to fulfill that expectation,” said Doug Evans, city planner for Palm Springs. “We need a premium golf course.”

In addition to Mountain Falls, the city has three other high-end golf courses on the boards, among them a planned course in the canyon below the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway that is also bighorn sheep habitat and the subject of a Sierra Club lawsuit.

Kevin Brennan, a wildlife biologist with the California Fish and Game Department, said Palm Springs should not be allowed to build any course that threatens bighorn sheep.

“I’m hard-pressed to understand sacrificing an endangered species so a city can have not just a golf course--that’s not good enough--but a top 1% golf course,” he said.

“They’re not saying, ‘We need schools. We need transportation.’ They’re saying, ‘We have to have a luxury golf course.’ I bet a lot of cities would like to have those kind of problems.”