What will happen to the land on which the Spa Resort hotel in Palm Springs, California now sits appear to be still be in flux. Or at least the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians is keeping their plans to themselves. The hotel, a showplace for many decades, is set to close on July 8.
According to a spokesman for the tribe, the 2007 plan that called for a 10-story hotel have been shelved. Tom Davis, chief planning and development officer for the band, noted that the plans come from before the Great Recession, and economic realities are now completely different.
“So much has changed so that those plans are not even relevant today,” he told the Desert Sun.
The 229-room hotel was a showplace and playground for Hollywood elites and literati in the 1960s. The historic mineral spring over which it was built was a Mecca for those wanting to visit its healing waters for many decades before that. The tribe says it hopes to demolish the hotel while preserving the spring and tribal artifacts. According to Davis, nothing will be done for at least six months, while experts in historic and cultural preservation catalogue the site, which is a sacred bathhouse site for the tribe.
“They’re preparing an inventory and examining artifacts. And everything with either artistic or cultural importance will be curated,” Davis told the Sun.
The Spa Resort opened in 1963 by National Properties, Inc. It was the first non-Indian development allowed on Indian land in the nation’s history. The tribe purchased the site in 1992.
During its heyday in the 1960s the spa resort attracted Hollywood celebrities such as Frank Sinatra, Steve McQueen, Natalie Wood and Elvis Presley to get the warm sauna-like treatment and massage. Some of them would rent rooms for months at a time. Truman Capote made the spa famous to a national audience when he praised it on The “Tonight Show” to Johnny Carson.
