Editorial: The Dream Hotel has run out of excuses, and the city should act like it
Nineteen years, two missed milestones this year, and a developer now in default. The council's next move should be its last act of patience.
PALM SPRINGS: There is a point in every stalled development saga when patience stops being prudence and starts being negligence. The Dream Hotel passed that point some time ago. This month's missed deadline should be the last one the city tolerates without consequences.
Consider the record. The project was first proposed around 2007. The city sold 7.8 acres to the developer in 2015. This March, the council approved an amended agreement built around nine milestones. The developer then missed the April 30 deadline for a model room and the July 30 deadline for a guaranteed maximum price, and the city placed it in default. Nineteen years have produced no hotel, no jobs, no tax revenue: an empty lot near the Convention Center and a lengthening record of assurances followed by silence.
The council's instinct has been understandable. Terminating a development agreement is confrontational, legally fraught and politically risky. Every council hopes the next extension will be the one that finally works. But hope is not a project schedule, and the city's leverage shrinks with every deadline that passes unenforced.
Patience is a civic virtue. It is not a development strategy.
There is also a fairness question. The city enforces its rules against small property owners every day: code violations, permit deadlines, business license renewals. A well-connected developer should not get a more forgiving standard than a homeowner with an unpermitted patio cover. Equal treatment under the city's own agreements is not vindictiveness; it is credibility.
What accountability looks like
The city has placed the developer in default and the council has directed staff to report on enforcement options, which could include financial penalties. That is the right step, and it should come with a short fuse: a final deadline with penalties attached, or termination and a search for a developer who can actually build.
Termination would not produce a hotel overnight, and the board should be honest about that. A new developer means a new agreement, new financing and new permits, measured in years. But years with a plan beat years without one. The current arrangement offers the area the worst of both worlds: no hotel and no honest accounting of when one might come.
The council's coming staff report is the moment of truth. If the report documents a developer making genuine progress against real milestones, an extension with teeth is defensible. If it documents another year of assurances, the council should end the arrangement. The difference between patience and indulgence is evidence, and the evidence is now due.
Businesses near the site have waited years for the foot traffic a completed hotel would bring. They deserve a city government willing to admit when a deal is dead and move on to a developer who will actually build.
Patience is a civic virtue. It is not a development strategy, and the Dream Hotel has long since exhausted the city's very limited supply of the former. The council should act accordingly, and soon.
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