There’s a new spirit in Cathedral City. 

Cathedral City’s Strategic Plan has created a sense of commitment to new and defined goals that include addressing parks needs, forming partnerships with citizens and other agencies, communicating with residents, and building business. The result is teamwork with developers and residents that reaps rewards for the entire community.

Downtown Moves Forward

Multimillion-dollar Phase I of the city’s 70-acre downtown center by Beverly Hills master developer Tri-Millennium Properties is bringing sophisticated international flavor to this city of 53,000 residents.

Cold Stone Creamery and Vino 100 were the first Phase I retail stores to open in the Civic Center along East Palm Canyon Drive near the Mary Pickford Theatre and award-winning interactive Fountain of Life.

Accustomed to overseeing their own couture ice cream creations and taste-testing their personal wine selections, customers will find even more individualized indulgences in the coming year.

Starbucks Coffee, Sprint Xpress and Sausalito jewelry boutique, with its affordable one-of-a-kind designs, are open, along with Hi-Lites Aveda Salon and Day Spa, where customers can opt for a hair cut or go for the beauty works.

Trilussa, by the same owners who operate the trendy Beverly Hills Italian restaurant, is opening just south of the Mary Pickford multiplex. Trilussa Cathedral City is the company’s first in the Coachella Valley and is expected to attract new diners to the area, boosting business for established dining spots while attracting even more hospitality venues to the East Palm Canyon Drive business neighborhood.

Star Dining Attractions

Cathedral City will be swooning under the stars with the new Buddy Greco’s, an intimate dinner club, featuring the legendary jazz pianist Buddy Greco and his quartet. Other star-bright entertainers will share center stage at the new supper club opening December 1. Continental cuisine will be offered, with two dinner seatings each evening, cocktails, as well as a late-night menu with jazz until the ‘wee small hours of the morning.’

Local residents who already enjoy dining out at their favorite Cathedral City restaurants will be joined by vacationers and business travelers staying at the 300-room Sheraton at Desert Cove Resort when it opens in 2007 on East Palm Canyon Drive across from the Civic Center.

The new hotel, specialty shops, and dining venues are sure to please the same customer demographic heading for the new Desert Cove Golf Resort soon to break ground in the scenic Santa Rosa foothills and canyons.

The world-class course is designed by Schmidt-Curley, the same renowned golf course architects with design credits worldwide, including Marriott’s Shadow Ridge Resort in Palm Desert and The Plantation in Indio.

Desert Cove Golf Resort will have nine holes at lower mountain elevations and the other nine in a low-lying marsh. The clubhouse and cart barn will be integrated as an annex to the new Sheraton.

Shopping — Niche to Nissan

Hometown purchasing power in Cathedral City draws just about the most eclectic shopping patterns in the valley. Children and teenagers make up a large percentage of the population, benefiting stores that cater to family business. Discerning boomers, migrating here from big cities, are a loyal base for businesses offering niche marketing, from dining to clothing and artwork.

Residents from adjacent communities also shop the city’s expanding Auto Center, Target, Trader Joe’s, and other stores not available in their hometowns but essential to their lifestyles.

Retailers wanting to go where people spend money are snapping up older retail properties to give them a second life.

The Wal-Mart property on north Date Palm Drive will reappear with several stores and shops offering a wide range of goods and services. Additional retail pads within the Wal-Mart site will be developed into restaurants.

Medical office condos will be built near the back of the Wal-Mart site, while the old Kmart building on the south end of Date Palm will open as a storage facility fronted by a new retail building.

A trusted brand name in old-line family service also came to Cathedral City this year. Forest Lawn Memorial Parks and Mortuaries, based in Glendale and operating six Southern California cemeteries, purchased the Palm Springs Mortuary Mausoleum and Crematory property a year ago.

After the former operator’s lease expired in July, Forest Lawn Cathedral City and its professionally trained staff took possession of the facility.

The company, celebrating its 100th anniversary — known worldwide for its museum-like parks, statuaries, mosaics, and stained glass — will begin establishing a new art collection in Cathedral City.

Show Biz, Open-Air Style

The Villa Resort, an older hotel property tucked away on a street behind Target, has been renovated at a cost of $2.5 million. One of its new attractions is an open-air dinner theater launched in July. Called Mainstage, it adds another entertainment attraction to the city’s growing lineup.

Not all of Cathedral City’s progress is as deliciously visible as the construction in the three-phase downtown plan or the new Mainstage.

Savings Through the Roof

The roof of the new 1,300-space Civic Center Parking Garage has become a giant solar energy magnet, making Cathedral City the first valley city to help power its civic center with the desert’s perennial sun. A $2.5 million investment, the installation consists of 1,600 photovoltaic solar panels arranged as a shady carport cover on the garage parking roof. A smart improvement to cut the city’s long-term operating expenses, the installation cost is being partially offset by a $1 million state grant. The project will pay for itself in less than 10 years and hedge against anticipated large energy cost increases.

Another investment not always visible is the city’s commitment to quality of life for all residents. The city’s magnificent library, open just a few years, is one amenity that tells residents, especially families with children, that they come first.

Park Partnerships for the Future

The city hired a noted consultant to develop a parks master plan using its 25 acres for developed parkland and an inventory of 150 undeveloped acres of future parks throughout the city.

Citizens are helping to create the plan and shared their recreational dreams during six focus groups held in May 2005.

Among the community desires expressed in the focus groups are a public swimming pool and a large multisports complex that will give residents a sense of belonging and pride

Partnerships for Parks will be established with local agencies and schools to share costs and expedite the plan.

Even though pioneer residents settled here early in the last century, Cathedral City, in 1981, was one of the last cities in the Coachella Valley to incorporate and at a time when property tax revenues were virtually frozen.

Twenty years of residential and retail growth have put this post-Prop. 13 municipality to the assessment test. As Perez Road developed into a premier custom design area and 25 automobile brands spread their awnings in front of their dealerships along Palm Canyon Drive, assessment districts were being formed in new residential areas as fast as model homes opened.

Sewers, sidewalks, lighting, curbs, and gutters came with the new territory, leaving old neighborhoods established under Riverside County codes more than 50 years ago lagging in pragmatic amenities.

Neighborhoods are starting to catch up thanks to the city’s inclusive team approach. Just as the city invested in residents’ participation in developing the park plan, professional city staff, engineers, and project consultants collaborate on infrastructure issues with homeowner committees representing their neighborhoods.

Investing in the Neighborhood

This year property owners in the older Cove area voted to assess themselves for sewers, curbs, driveways, and repaved streets. Thanks to diligent and timely work by the omeowner/professional team, bond specialists were able to offer homeowners a very favorable interest rate.

Families in the 35th Avenue neighborhood and in Dream Homes also voted for sewers and resurfaced streets and, in the case of 35th Avenue, for sidewalks to provide students safe pathways to schools.

Other neighborhoods have completed work on similar assessment districts in recent years.

It’s a juggling act, to be sure, for a rapidly growing city to rebuild its downtown and to ensure future income from the tourism industry while building a solid base of community services.

What’s made it work is the city’s willingness to put all of its cards face up on the table and enlist the business and residential communities as its planning partners.

The result is an ongoing makeover, strong on fundamentals yet open to the community’s inevitable changing needs.

A Brand Reaching Skyward

Motivational speakers often tell the ancient story about three men working in a quarry. A curious passerby asks, “What are you men doing?”

The first worker says, “I am breaking up big rocks into little ones.” The second man states flatly, “Making a living.”

The third man proudly shouts, “I, sir, am building a cathedral!”

In this brand-conscious tourism market,Cathedral City has rediscovered the natural branding legacy found right within its historic name.

The origins of this often-second-guessed nomenclature go back to 1852 when the Army Corps of Engineers’ Col. Henry Washington came to the Coachella Valley and first discovered a dramatic canyon beyond the cove.

When he saw sunshine streaming down granite cliffs Col. Washington envisioned a magnificent cathedral. He or possibly other surveyors named the area Cathedral Canyon.

Other explorers might have seen rocks or chalked this wondrous sight up to a day’s work, but these early surveyors recognized an awesome art form.

This cathedral of nature is still a symbolic cornerstone. Like the community role of traditional cathedrals of old, it represents civic pride, beauty, art, and a place to gather, learn, and create one’s own culture and tradition.

Starting in the Middle Ages, European towns competed to build the tallest, most impressive cathedrals and could not achieve the status of cityhood without having its own cathedral as its municipal focal point. The European influence continued across the Atlantic with new settlers to the United States.

Look to Europe and the eastern states for more branding inspiration. The world’s great cities from London and Paris to Rome and Valencia are called cathedral cities for their soaring landmarks: St. Paul’s, Westminster; Chartres, Rheim, Notre-Dame, St. Petersburg, Toledo, Valencia and St. Peter’s; St. Patrick’s in New York, and the National Cathedral in Washington. D.C.

Look to Cathedral City to reinforce its inspirational brand in many creative ways.

• Cathedral-inspired art starting on Date Palm Drive by Dec. 2005.

• Cathedral-inspired art in public places.

• A Cathedral-themed art collection.

• Guided tours of what will become The Cathedral Collection.

• Cathedral hikes and desert adventure tours.

• A Cathedral-themed community holiday celebration.

Early surveyors selected the brand. The community is adding excellence to complete the quest to stand tall among the world’s famous cathedral cities.

Story from the 2005/2006 Edition of FOCUS on the Coachella Valley, produced by Palm Springs Life Magazine for the Riverside County Economic Agency. Distributed in the Palm Springs Life October 2005 Magazine. More information available at http://www.rivcoeda.org/