Applebee’s, a chain restaurant that you might visit if literally every other place around you has a 3 hour wait, would like to come to downtown Palm Springs. But, there has been something holding it back. A building to move into? No. Too many locations in the valley already? Nope. The city favoring locally run businesses over big corporations? Of course not.
The Desert Sun is out with an article about a bunch of different developments in Palm Springs and what the current status of each is. It’s definitely worth a read (here). One nugget in particular really stood out is why people downtown are not currently “eating good in the neighborhood”:
“It’s so hard to get the larger national tenants into Palm Springs’ downtown,” (realtor Steve) Lyle remarked. “Most of the site selectors and committee members of national chains say, ‘there’s not enough parking.’
“An example is Applebees. They’ve looked and looked, and they just say, no. It doesn’t meet our 100-minimum parking space requirement,” said Lyle, adding that narrow line of thinking is a mistake.
Yeah, that’s right. Applebee’s just feels like so many damn people are going to rushing to downtown to eat their “food” and premixed drinks that, well, there is just not enough parking for them.
Plus, I think we all know what this town really needs is another Applebee’s.
So, next time you are walking a few blocks to get to Village Fest due to the lack of nearby parking, just know that those extra steps are keeping an Applebee’s out of downtown. That should probably make you feel a bit better about those extra steps.
(H/T Barrett)
