Farmer in the Dale Farmers Market

Francisco Sánchez Jr., the associate administrator for the Office of Disaster Recovery and Resilience at the Small Business Administration (SBA), announced that the SBA will close its San Diego and Spring Valley Disaster Loan Outreach Centers in San Diego County at 6 p.m. on Thursday, May 23.

Travel spending in California reached an unprecedented high in 2023, attracting visitors from across the globe to the Golden State. A new report released by Visit California revealed that the state’s tourism economy generated $150.4 billion in travel spending last year, outpacing the previous record of $144.9 billion spent in 2019 before the pandemic brought travel to a standstill. The surge in tourism created 64,900 new jobs in California in 2023, raising total industry employment to 1.15 million, which is 98% of pre-pandemic employment levels.

The California Strategic Growth Council has awarded the City of Coachella a Community Resilience Center (CRC) Implementation Grant Award of $10 million to help further the City’s goal of making Coachella a more climate-resilient community. Funding will be utilized to retrofit an existing facility previously known as Hidden Harvest on Peter Rabbit Lane into the new Coachella Community Resilience Center, which will function as an emergency shelter, food and business incubator hub, garden space, resource center, and workforce training and development center. Partners that will…