Golfers in just a few months can tee off at Palm Springs' first new golf course in nine years.
The Palm Springs Classic is on schedule to open its 18-hole, championship-caliber course before the end of the season, said Marvin Roos, a planner for Mainiero, Smith & Associates who has assisted on the project.
"It should be by the end of this year or the beginning of next year that the course will be playable," Roos said.
Groundbreaking on the project was in February.
In addition to the golf course, the Classic will include up to 1,450 homes on 355 acres south of Vista Chino and east of Gene Autry Trail east of Palm Springs International Airport.
The tentative tract map for the homes will go before the Palm Springs Planning Commission later this month, Roos said.
The Classic is just part of a recent golf course boom in the valley of 114 golf courses. Late last year and earlier this year two new golf courses opened in La Quinta: 18 holes at Mountain View Country Club and nine holes across the street at Hideaway Golf Club.
The Classic is one of seven courses currently under construction in the Coachella Valley, including: SilverRock Resort in La Quinta, which will put two, 18-hole courses at Avenue 52 and Jefferson Street and a redesign of the Canyon South Golf Course in Palm Springs by the Agua Caliente Redevelopment Authority. LPGA Hall of Famer Amy Alcott is consulting on the design.
Once completed, The Classic will be the largest housing development in Palm Springs history, in addition to being the city's first championship-level golf course.
The project has survived years of setbacks and delays. It changed hands at least three times since 1989, faced financing problems in 1995 and in January settled a lawsuit with the Sierra Club and the Center for Biological Diversity over threats to the Coachella Valley milk vetch plant.
Developers Lennar Communities Inland Co. and Empire Co. agreed to donate 400 acres of land or make payments totaling about $1.1 million for the benefit of an endangered desert plant.
"The fruition of this project," Roos said, "comes after 16 years of exploration and pushing the rock halfway up and having it roll back down the hill three or four times."
Source: The Desert Sun (Palm Springs, Calif.)