A backfired deal between Palm Springs and the College of the Desert over the city's donation of land has turned rocky enough to end up in court.
With the lapse of 11 years and no activity on the West Valley campus envisioned for the College of the Desert (COD), Palm Springs has tired of the waiting game.
Mayor Lisa Middleton said Palm Springs is suing COD due to the college's failure to construct a West Valley campus on the donated land.
"The legacy of a broad support for COD, Coachella Valley wide, and decades in the making, has been lost. It has been lost in a matter of a few months," Middleton said in a KESQ report.
In the Sept. 12 article, Mayor Middleton said Palm Springs donated land to COD in 2011 so the college could construct a proposed 650,000-square-foot West Valley campus. The lawsuit is in response to the city's struggle to obtain planning and development records it has been seeking since December 2022, Middleton said.
Palm Desert Patch said that COD officials appeared before the city council in April in order to update the community about the West Valley campus. During this session, the public learned that not only was COD not planning to build on the donated land, but the college wanted to sell the Tramview Road site. COD's alternative plans have focused on a site at the old Palm Springs Mall on Tahquitz Canyon Way, which it purchased for $22 million to develop the West Valley campus.
Although the Tramview Road site was donated to the COD, it cost the city $2.1 million in a deal with the federal government that led to the 2007 purchase, according to Patch. When the land was donated to COD in 2010, it entered into a deal with the city to construct the campus at that location and enroll at least 10,000 full-time students.
While the city alleges it has been kept in the dark about the college's new plans for some time, COD said it consulted Palm Springs a while ago, according to Patch.
The college disputed the city's claims in a newsletter published on Sept. 12.
"COD absolutely worked, planned and followed a sale process for the property with the city fully informed and in agreement," COD Attorney Andreas Chialtas said. "Again, to suggest otherwise is not even remotely accurate."
According to the newsletter, COD and Palm Springs met in January of 2016 to discuss the Tramview property and came to the conclusion that the property was "not suitable" for the project. The newsletter goes on to say, "the city did not object to COD's plan to sell the property or claim COD was somehow obligated to build a campus on the property."
Additionally, the city agreed it did not have the right to reclaim the property nor was it entitled to any payment if COD chose not to utilize the property, according to the newsletter.