Socialite and hotelier Tracy Turco leaves Palm Springs, closing museum and selling hotels

In just a few years in Palm Springs, Tracy Turco became prominent — and controversial — as a socialite and artist who bought multiple prominent homes and remodeled several hotels. Last year, she opened a downtown museum to celebrate the city's mid-century modern legacy.

Now, the Modernism Museum is closed and Turco has moved to the east coast, with some harsh words for the city on her way out.

She says the city made it impossible to operate businesses and targeted her over her husband's and her perceived political views. The city says nothing of the sort happened and that Turco simply failed to follow city rules, despite repeatedly being given a chance.

A tumultuous time in the desert

Turco, who is from New York, said she first became enthralled with Palm Springs and its mid-century modern scene after visiting the city on the honeymoon she took with her husband, Jerry, around five years ago.

The pair soon moved to the city, purchasing multiple prominent homes, including the famous pink mansion that once belonged to the actress Magda Gabor. Turco would eventually buy three hotels in the city, remodeling them into splashy icons of mid-century modern style.

Last year, besides opening the Modernism Museum, she partnered with Desert Hot Springs to rebrand and market that city.

But Turco now says that infatuation has come to an emphatic end. Besides closing the museum, she has sold the hotels, ended her partnership with Desert Hot Springs and left California altogether, splitting her time between Palm Beach, Florida, and The Hamptons in New York.

Turco said repeated fines from the city of Palm Springs, including $100 a day over the museum's paint color, helped drive her decision. So did what she called a torrent of criticism and harassment over her husband's support of former president Donald Trump.

“I don't think you can win running a business in Palm Springs,” she said. “You just don't win… That's what we've experienced.”

City says Turco broke rules, ignored offers of help

Christopher Hadwin, the city’s director of planning services, said the city has issued no fines over the museum, let alone $100 a day, but instead flagged two issues and extended multiple offers to work with Turco to resolve them.

Hadwin said Turco had not secured a required conditional use permit, normally a routine step, and had made unapproved modifications to the downtown building, which is protected historic site.

“To date, the owners have not adequately responded or engaged with us to resolve those issues despite many attempts to reach them and offers to assist in submitting the necessary applications,” he said.

Separately, Hadwin said, the city determined through an audit of booking taxes — a legally required step when a hotel is sold — that Turco's Cheetah Hotel hadn't remitted everything it owed. Turco said the shortfall was $19,000, a figure the city would not confirm. (It was not immediately clear whether that shortage was from a prior owner.)

When asked if the city had targeted Turco for political reasons, Hadwin said the city regularly enforces local regulations and has made several attempts to work with the Turcos to resolve the issues and that the couple had not responded but instead closed the museum.

Hadwin also said he “firmly disagreed with any notion that the city is discouraging economic development.”

“As we’ve offered many times, city staff are available to assist should Ms. Turco wish to engage in resolving these issues,” he said.

Further controversy

But those disputes with the city aren’t the extent of the problems Turco said she had in Palm Springs. She said she also started facing criticism on social media after she posted a picture of herself at a charity event at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.  She said that led to calls for people to boycott her businesses over her supposed support of Trump and her husband’s donations to the Republican Party.

But Turco said those efforts were misguided as she is not personally a Trump supporter but rather a political independent who did not vote for Trump. She said she and her husband have made donations to members of both parties and that she was at Mar-A-Lago for a fashion event she had been invited to. As a socialite, Turco said, she mingles with people of all political persuasions, not just Republicans.

Beyond what took place on social media and with the city, Turco said she also faced other challenges, including a squatter who was living in the museum building when she took it over and threatened her after she had him evicted, plus the museum's large windows bring broken on multiple occasions.

“It was just like one more thing, one more thing, one more thing,” she said. “I really didn’t want to leave Palm Springs because it is totally my style and vibe. But my husband was like, ‘Come on, this is (expletive). These people are not appreciative and they are not helpful. They are trying to destroy you instead of appreciate you.’ You have to go where you are appreciated.”

Moving on

While the museum has been closed for months with a “gone fishing” sign affixed to it explaining that it will “be on break until further notice,” Turco confirmed to The Desert Sun that the museum is closed for good and that she recently packed up the entire contents and shipped them to Palm Beach.

She said she does not know what will ultimately happen to the collection. However, she has had initial discussions with the University of Tampa, her alma mater, about creating an installation there. She has also had similar conversations about creating an installation at a New York hotel.

The downtown building that housed the museum, meanwhile, is listed for sale. Turco also confirmed she has sold properties where she said she was planning to develop new hotels in Desert Hot Springs and ended her promotional partnership with that city.

However, Turco has not washed her hands of the desert entirely. She said she and her husband recently took the Gabor mansion off the market after not getting the price they were asking and are planning to turn it into a vacation rental. She said she is still working on creating a 16-unit home development called “Art Parc” in Joshua Tree, but said it is taking a long time to get approvals.

Turco said she has moved on to a happier life back east, where the business climate has been much more supportive of her and her husband. However, she said she remains frustrated by how she was treated by Palm Springs, noting she invested $20 million in the city and was considering much more, including buying the famous Racquet Club that has sat deserted for years.

Ultimately, she says she has taken away one major lesson from her time in Palm Springs: “If you see a beautiful car, you should look under the hood before you buy it.”

Paul Albani-Burgio covers breaking news and the City of Palm Springs. Follow him on Twitter at @albaniburgiop and via email at paul.albani-burgio@desertsun.com.

This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Tracy Turco closes Modernism Museum, ending time in Palm Springs