COD to move forward with some of old Palm Springs campus plans

The College of the Desert Board of Trustees voted to move forward with amended plans for the Palm Springs campus.

The catch: the plans approved don’t entirely exist.

Approved plans will ultimately be a blend of incomplete designs drawn prior to 2021 with new additions that need to be made.

Plans from 2021 are about 60% done, consultants said.

Although the exact blend of plans that will come to fruition is not yet entirely clear, the campus will not include a much-debated hotel (at least in phase one). It will likely include about 30,000 square feet for culinary arts instruction — about three times more than had been proposed in most recent plans.

Phase I of construction will likely take through 2026 or 2027 to complete and cost around $300 million to $316 million depending on the blend of designs accepted.

That phase of construction might still leave vacant roughly half of the 27-acre campus at the site of the old Palm Springs mall, including the entire stretch off East Tahquitz Canyon Way.

It is unclear if there will be a Phase II, or what that would entail.

Trustees committed Thursday to budgeting slightly more than $400 million for "Phase I" of the project: $346 million from the 2016 bond Measure CC, $40 million from the 2004 bond Measure B, $5.7 million from a real estate transaction of COD land in northern Palm Springs, plus another $14 million from "redevelopment agency funds to offset for two years of delays resulting in higher costs."

Consultants said that the "burn rate" for the project is about $500,000 per month just for the design team.

Consultants added that entirely completing old plans with a learning hotel would cost over $500 million.

The 2016 bond — which also raised funds for an Indio campus expansion and early childhood education center, among numerous other projects — raised $577.8 million. Tens of millions have been spent to date along with nearly all of the $346.5 million raised from the 2004 bond.

The Palm Springs project’s budget had been $350 million. That number was recently reduced to $290 million before being raised again Thursday.

Trustee Joel Kinnamon — who retired as superintendent/president in 2021 — lobbied the board Thursday to accept a version of the old plans drawn under his administration even though completing them could lead to another three to four months of delays to construction, according to project consultants.

Accepting incomplete plans could also require additional faculty input, according to Garcia.

Finishing Phase I of the 2021 plans might cost approximately $20 million more to complete than plans presented to the board Thursday, and it is unclear what their operational costs will be to maintain.

Trustees Kinnamon, Fred Jandt and Board Chair Bonnie Stefan voted in favor of moving forward with amended plans.

Kinnamon said two advantages of accepting the old plan would be to show constituents that COD will stand by its commitments and be transparent about project updates.

Part of the accepted amendment to plans is that project managers will hold monthly public meetings beholden to the Brown Act, California's local government transparency law, to deliver updates henceforth.

Trustees Bea Gonzalez and Ruben Perez voted against the amended plans, wishing instead to move forward with plans ready today.

“Revisiting old plans or pulling pieces will only cause more delays,” Perez said.

Hospitality industry wants more

Before the vote, the board heard lengthy presentations from project architects and consultants about current and old design iterations for the Palm Springs project.

About a dozen leaders of the valley’s hospitality industry, including restaurateurs and hotel general managers, delivered public comments urging the board to proceed with plans from 2021 that included more space dedicated to hospitality management, including a full-service hotel with villas and roughly 70 rooms.

Aftab Dada, President of the Palm Springs Hospitality Association, called in to say he was expressing the “unanimous voice of the 195 paid members of the organization urging the COD Trustees to proceed with the original plans of the west valley campus.”

The calls from hospitality leaders for a learning hotel came in spite of the fact that Visit Greater Palm Springs, the valley’s leading hospitality agency, issued an independent study last fall on the COD Palm Springs campus that suggested COD should not build a hotel and instead focus on industry partnerships.

Additionally, an independent feasibility study on the campus paid for by the college said COD would struggle to finance the ongoing operational costs of the proposed campus even without a hotel and even with other downsized facilities.

On Thursday, Trustee Bea Gonzalez called on hospitality industry leaders to open up internships to COD students and said she would vote against amended plans that COD might not be able to afford to operate.

“Nothing against that (old) schematic design — that's beautiful,” she said.  “But being here and understanding our budget, hearing from the last feasibility study that was done and the findings there, I find it very, very difficult for anyone to hold us to that standard.”

Consultants referred to plans shown Thursday as “scaled down” and “conventional” compared to plans drawn before Kinnamon left office and partially revived Thursday by the board majority.

In a public comment, Palm Springs Councilmember Christy Holstege referred to the plan shown to the board as “a failure of imagination and leadership.”

Gonzalez later responded: “[...] About us having a failure of imagination: Well, I wish I could imagine millions and millions of dollars that would come to fruition because that would be really cool. Because then we could build a whole bunch of campuses in areas where I know our student demand is the greatest.”

Kinnamon alleges wrongdoing by county official

Between the presentations and the vote, Kinnamon also delivered a comment alleging that a "prominent county official" interfered with plans for how COD should spend the bond money ultimately being used for the Palm Springs campus and other capital projects across the valley. County Supervisor V. Manuel Perez is the father of trustee Ruben Perez.

Kinnamon claimed Ruben Perez and former trustee Aurora Wilson asked staff to downsize the Palm Springs campus. Top consultants on staff denied they were directly instructed by any board member to downsize any project.

Kinnamon said he was visited by investigators from the Riverside County District Attorney’s office in July 2021 regarding COD real estate transactions.

His claims were unsubstantiated, and his comment was cut short by Board Chair Bonnie Stefan who said the board attorney told her Kinnamon was "off topic” and “out of order.”

Board subcommittee to investigate Perez's conduct as trustee

Per board policy, Stefan announced she was obligated to create a subcommittee to review “multiple written complaints about Trustee Perez alleging that he violated provisions of the district Board Policy 2715,” which is COD’s code of ethics for trustees.

She and Jandt, the board’s vice chair, will comprise the committee. They will review charges against Perez with COD counsel and allow Perez an opportunity to respond to the charges before making a report on its investigation and recommendation for next steps during a public meeting. At that time, the board will vote on what action it will take in response to the charges.

An action could range from no further action to a warning, reprimand or censor of Perez.

In January, Kinnamon asked the board to censure Perez for comments he alleged “disparaged” former trustees and former and current administrators and faculty as well as “political rhetoric (that) disparages my name and reputation, basically calling me a racist, again, from this dais."

Perez said he “completely disagreed with the censorship” and defended his right to “speak truth to power” in a January interview with a local news outlet.

No board members made additional comments on the matter Thursday.

Perez was elected to a second term on the board in November.

Kinnamon helped to launch and finance his opponent’s campaign in an acrimonious and expensive race.

Jonathan Horwitz covers education for The Desert Sun. Reach him at jonathan.horwitz@desertsun.com.

This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: COD to move forward with Palm Springs campus mixing old and new plans