But we would definitely move ahead for sure.” He wants more than the fair market value that it was appraised for, and he feels he’ll wait until something changes. “So we may have a golf course there for a long time. “There’s a very good chance that we will have a golf course (included in the preserve parcel), because the owner of the Mesquite Country Club is not budging,” Garrison said. Garrison said it’s quite possible that only two of the three course owners will sell their properties to the land trust, and the result could be a hybrid golf course-desert preserve reality. That would be a tremendous loss for the community.” While I would hope that our current (Palm Springs) City Council would not vote in favor of having a change in the general-plan designation to allow for developments on these golf courses, who’s to say that the next City Council wouldn’t support it? And when you take into consideration the fact that the city is losing a minimum of $1 million per year on their golf courses, it’s only a matter of time before a City Council decides to cut their losses and sell the land for development. So, the question really is: What do you prefer, a desert preserve or a development? All of this land can be developed. This is about land that could be developed, and currently is for sale for development. “But the reality is that this (debate) is not about a desert preserve versus golf. From the very beginning, I’ve always said that if this is not what the community wants, then I have no desire to push this forward. “We quickly had almost 2,000 people go to our website and our Facebook page in support. “When we launched this vision, the support for it was overwhelming,” Garrison said. In any case, Garrison plans to create opportunities for interested residents, including golf enthusiasts, to offer input or criticism of her land-use vision at a series of public-outreach sessions to come. In 2018, according to the National Golf Foundation, there were almost 200 golf-course and facility closures in the U.S., although those losses were offset somewhat by the opening of 12 new courses and the re-opening of 79 newly renovated courses. ![]() The “About Us” page on the Mesquite Desert Preserve website declares that “golf is a dying sport.” While that statement may be overly dramatic, many golf courses around the country have closed in recent years. Hopefully, the city will let us go forward to acquire them, and we can do a desert restoration and have that land be open to the public-and not just golfers.” Then we’ll know what the fair market value is. Currently, we’re doing an appraisal on the city golf courses, which should be done in the next month or so. “It’s interesting: We originally thought (that the property acquisitions) would be Bel Air Greens first, Mesquite second and the Tahquitz courses third, but now it’s reversed. ![]() “The two city golf courses are at the Tahquitz (Creek Golf Resort), and then there are (the individual courses at) Bel Air Greens and the Mesquite Golf and Country Club. ![]() “Four different golf courses make up the Mesquite Desert Preserve, which is what we want to create,” Garrison said. 2, Garrison and her volunteers celebrated the closing of the Oswit Canyon land purchase, which guarantees that the property will remain a natural preserve in perpetuity.īut well before the ink dried on those closing documents, Garrison and her team were evolving into a new nonprofit entity named the Oswit Land Trust-with plans to expand the organization’s efforts beyond Oswit Canyon: OLT is in negotiations to purchase three golf-course properties within Palm Springs, and then re-purpose the land to create the Mesquite Desert Preserve. What transpired was the establishment of the Save Oswit Canyon, Inc., organization with Garrison at its helm-and after years of determined efforts and fundraising success, on Nov. But now it’s like I went to college for land development over the last four years.” I didn’t know how to find funding for conservation purchases. “I sat down with them and asked, ‘How can we have you not develop there?’ They said, ‘Find us $7 million.’ At that time, I thought there was no way we could accomplish that. “One of the first phone calls I made was to the owners (of the property),” Garrison recalled during a recent interview. Such development could potentially impact several endangered species that lived on the property and would certainly infringe on the public enjoyment of popular local hiking trails. Almost five years ago, environmental activist and Palm Springs resident Jane Garrison learned that Oswit Canyon was under imminent threat-because developers were looking to build a housing community there.
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