Palm Springs Panel OKs Entertainment District

A gaming tribe’s master plan, which seeks to transform a square mile of downtown Palm Springs into an entertainment district, received unanimous approval from the city Planning Commission on Wednesday, despite concerns of hundreds of angry residents.

The 4-0 vote followed a 3 1/2-hour meeting marked by emotional arguments against the zoning changes sought by the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians.

Planning Commissioner Jon Schoenberger said the plan, which is expected to go to the Palm Springs City Council early next month for final approval, would “add depth” to a resort city with a “one-street downtown.”

The plan has ignited a battle of conflicting visions for the future of Palm Springs.

Essentially, it is designed to provide a roadmap for developing a vast residential, commercial and entertainment area linked to the city’s downtown sector and to its international airport, about six miles to the north.

The plan would pave the way for billions of dollars’ worth of high-rise hotels, a theme park, condominiums, restaurants and a casino on the square-mile site. Although each of those projects would require separate approval, the plan calls for a fast-track approval process.

The Agua Caliente tribe opened a $95-million casino in downtown Palm Springs in November and also has one in Rancho Mirage.

The tribe recently launched an initiative that would increase payments to the state in return for the lifting of restrictions that limit each tribe to two casinos and 2,000 slot machines.

Tribal authorities have insisted that, although the plan suggests one or more casinos on the targeted site, they have no immediate plans for one. They acknowledge, though, that they might expand their current one if voters approve their initiative in November.

But most of the residents who addressed the Planning Commission on Wednesday expressed concerns that the plan would, as one of them said, “rewrite this city’s story as a low-slung, low-keyed getaway with a midcentury village atmosphere.”

They also accused city leaders and tribal authorities of keeping the plan out of public view for years and charged that the developments it forecasts would burden the city with the expenses of law enforcement and fire protection.

City planners denied that they had kept the plan quiet, saying it had been originally prepared in 1996 and a draft had been presented to the City Council in 2002.

Nonetheless, Alex Yaron, a spokesman for a group called Citizens for Local Government Accountability, which is opposed to the plan, told the panel, “Now, you say that this has been in the works for years, that it’s not news. Then how do you explain that it is news to all these people who should have been notified about these plans because they live directly in the path of this steamroller?”

Gordon Parr, who lives 1 1/2 blocks south of the targeted area, said he first learned about the proposal in a lengthy, favorable editorial that ran in the Desert Sun on Wednesday.

“This plan scares me something awful,” said Parr, 71. “To give an open-ended approval of something so enormous is just terrible.”

Before the meeting began, some critics laughed when five of the seven commissioners, including chairman Schoenberger, acknowledged that they had conflicts of interest because they owned property or businesses or both in the affected area.

With the agreement of the city attorney, three of them were permitted to leave the panel.

Newly elected City Councilwoman Ginny Foat was among those who expressed dissatisfaction with the proceeding.

“There needs to be more work done to familiarize citizens with the proposal,” she said. “There’s a lot of well-grounded fear out there.”

But Schoenberger repeatedly said that the plan “was only intended to get people excited” about the 640-acre site, about half of which remains an undeveloped hodgepodge of split-zoned parcels, some allotted to tribal members.

Among the last to speak was tribal attorney Art Bunce, who pointed out that the tribe, as a sovereign nation, did not need the city’s approval to develop on reservation land, which the site is. But he said the tribe wanted to work in partnership with the city.

Bunce also said he was having trouble “understanding what people are so mad about.”

“Just because a range of things is possible doesn’t mean that any single project is before Palm Springs now,” he said. “If and when one is, it will go through a full review process -- the same one that applies to every project.”

But Randy Williams, an activist with the hotel and restaurant workers union, which has been trying to organize the Agua Caliente casino workers for years, said, “What the commission approved gives a green light to all the projects included in the plan.”

“That means when developers come into town with proposals for theme parks and buildings 100 feet high,” he said, “they now have Planning Commission blessings to construct a very different city.”