A $130 million hotel / restaurant / condo project was unveiled by a developer this week for the large plot of empty land on Highway 111 between the Indian Wells Golf Resort and the Indian Wells Tennis Gardens. Now, I realize, these types of big projects are announced all the time in the Coachella Valley and rare is it that they actually pan out (here, here, here, here, for example) and the developer wouldn’t tell the Desert Sun if the project has any funding besides the $5.5 million the city is willing to kick in for infrastructure around the site, but hey, let’s take a look at what they want to build anyway.
The project would see a fives-story 139-room hotel (with a pool on the roof), 31 vacation villas, and 56 condominium units built on 10 acres. There would also be a restaurant, which the newspaper says would likely be Katsuya, a Japanese concept created by celebrity Chef Katsuya Uechi. The restaurant agreement has not been finalized.
Developers have announced a partnership with Delano, who operates a Delano hotel in Miami Beach and Mondrian hotels in Miami Beach and Los Angeles. The developer says the project would be similar to those locations and they plan to break ground in 2020.
We’ll see.
