Hot Spot – The Coachella Valley
The Coachella Valley has always drawn big names, like Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods, Sergio Garcia, and Lee Trevino for the Battle at Bighorn (above). Big-name architects, too, like Pete Dye at PGA West (right).
STORY BY BRIAN ROBIN
No wonder they came like well-heeled migrants from points east and west, dropping names recognizable to even the hermits of their day. Names like Frank Sinatra, Danny Kaye, Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Greta Garbo, Clark Gable, Joan Crawford, Dinah Shore, and the Marx Brothers.
Sinatra’s “Rat Pack” running mates Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr. frequently joined him there. Elvis Presley honeymooned there and Kirk Douglas lived there for so long that the main road into Palm Springs International Airport was renamed Kirk Douglas Way in 2004.
Such was the pull of Palm Springs and the Coachella Valley as a golfing and social retreat for the 20th century’s A-plus list that three of those names—Frank Sinatra, Bob Hope, and Dinah Shore—eventually lent their names to three of the Coachella Valley’s mainstay golf events: the Frank Sinatra Celebrity Golf Tournament, the PGA Tour’s Bob Hope Chrysler Classic, and the LPGA Tour’s Kraft Nabisco Championship, a major championship that was once known as the Dinah Shore.
As is the case in such matters, the Hollywood elite soon found company with the political elite. Two presidents called the Coachella Valley at least a part-time home: Dwight D. Eisenhower and Gerald R. Ford.
One has the Valley’s premier medical facility named after him (Eisenhower Medical Center), the other has a street named after him and volumes of lore attached to him for his golfing shenanigans and philanthropic causes. Aside from being a frequent punch line for good buddy Bob Hope, Ford was the benefactor of one of the country’s premier substance- abuse centers: the Betty Ford Center.
Located approximately 110 miles from Los Angeles and generally considered the area between the San Jacinto and Santa Rosa mountains, the Coachella Valley didn’t start billing itself as the “Winter Golf Capital of the World” until the 1950s. Even before that, though, it had been a getaway for the Hollywood elite since the 1920s as stars and starlets alike viewed the area as reliable retreat from the bustle of Babylon, as the film community was called.
Today, there are 126 golf courses sprinkled around the Coachella Valley, which makes it hard to fathom that until the early 1950s, there was only one course—a nine-hole layout owned by Los Angeles oilman Thomas O’Donnell in downtown Palm Springs.
Once the golf boom began, it was centered around some of the most renowned golf communities in the country. The Indian Wells Country Club community was partly financed by Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, who spent winters at their Indian Wells home on DesiLu Court. That allowed them plenty of time to spearhead the exclusive Thunderbird Heights community in Rancho Mirage that would come to claim Gerald and Betty Ford as residents.
And so it went. Along with Indian Wells and Thunderbird, the 1950s featured the building of such famed courses and communities as Tamarisk, Eldorado, Bermuda Dunes, and La Quinta.
Larry Bohannan, the longtime golf writer at the Desert Sun, observes that developers wasted little time in realizing that those courses attracted tourists and well-heeled permanent residents.
Thus the rise of the golf community, so many of which now dot the desert landscape that “golf” and “Coachella Valley”—in particular the municipalities of Palm Springs, Palm Desert, Rancho Mirage, Indian Wells, and La Quinta—have become joined at the hip. Even through the present day, the elite golf communities in the desert are continuing to thrive.
The link became virtually synonymous in the 1980s, with the second generation of golf communities. Unlike their predecessors, these courses weren’t flat, palm-tree-lined layouts. For starters, some of the communities were hotel-based. Second, bulldozers created man-made lakes, dramatic bunkers, and other features, and course designers used much of the surrounding landscape to overwhelm the golfer and marvel the prospective home owner. Third, many of the homes were of the massive, jaw-dropping variety.
Two of the more prominent communities that broke ground in that decade were PGA West and Bighorn. Known as “The Western Home of Golf in America,” PGA West in La Quinta features more than 2,500 homes and condos surrounding six golf courses designed by the likes of Jack Nicklaus (two of them), Arnold Palmer, Tom Weiskopf, Greg Norman, and Pete Dye.
Those courses have played host to a number of high-profile events including the Skins Game, the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic, and PGA Tour Qualifying School. But one of the things that Gene Darr, one of the primary sales brokers for California Lifestyle Reality, the company that handles most of the sales at PGA West, takes pride in is the community’s affordability compared to some of the other Coachella Valley properties. “It’s more affordable here to the upper-middle class family,” he says.
Condos at PGA West start at around $350,000 for 1,000 square feet. Single-family homes start at around $700,000 and go up to $3 million, which gets you a home in the 5,000- square-foot neighborhood. That doesn’t include the Peninsula, which Darr describes as “a gated community within a gated community.” There, the lots run two-thirds of an acre and the homes start at around $2 million.
“The best thing about PGA West is that we have a total selection of product,” Darr says. “Sometimes, our best customers are the people who live here. Families are increasing in size and need a bigger home, so they move up. We see a lot of movement in the community because people like the club and everything that goes with it.”
The same could be said for Bighorn, one of the Valley’s most celebrated communities. Set 1,100 feet above the valley floor in Palm Desert, Bighorn’s two golf courses, the Arthur Hills-designed Mountain and the Tom Faziodesigned Canyons, have hosted events ranging from the Battle at Bighorn to the Skins Game to the elite, 20-player Samsung World Championship on the LPGA Tour.
But even as incredible as the two courses that flank Highway 74 are, the beauty of Bighorn lies in its magnificent homes, the ownership of which is required for membership. Homes start at around $6.8 million.
For that, you get a home somewhere north of 5,000 square feet that has been described as “Louis the XVI meets the Jetsons.”
What does that mean? Among other things, wet bars, media rooms, floor-to-ceiling glass sliders that open to a patio that reveals not only one of the courses, but the Valley below or the mountains above. One home even features an indoor grotto that provides a backdrop to a sunken dining room and wine cellar.
Once residents, a roll-call that includes golfer Se Ri Pak, producer Jerry Bruckheimer, and Bighorn developer R.D. Hubbard, peel themselves away from that luxury, a spa and salon, palatial clubhouse, and seven restaurants—including the five-star Canyons—await.
In the same vicinity, but rising 1,000 feet above Highway 74, Stone Eagle is perched on the side of an east-facing mountain. The entrance is so unobtrusive that you have to actively look for it to avoid whizzing by on the highway.
The golf course was designed by Tom Doak of Pacific Dunes fame and opened in 2006. While Doak is known for his minimalist designs, Stone Eagle nonetheless fits in with the second and third generations of Coachella Valley course design typified by PGA West, Bighorn, The Hideway, The Quarry, The Reserve, Vintage Club, Madison Club, Andalusia at Coral Mountain, and others of that prestigious ilk. Following the natural terrain at hilly Stone Eagle means there are no even lies and it takes tips from the likes of pro emeritus Al Geiberger to navigate the up-and-down, yet playable, layout.
The 700-acre, award-winning community features only 44 homesites, which are far removed from the cars whizzing by on Highway 74 below. Those homesites range from $495,000 to $1.1 million, with homes ranging from 2,600 to 3,800 square feet starting at $2 million and going up to $3.3 million. There is also a special national membership program for the golf club, with the likes of Bill Gates and former Exxon/Mobil CEO Lee Raymond signing on.
Such is the wizardry in Doak’s design and developer Lowe Destination Development’s schematics that golfers don’t see the clubhouse or the homes that make up “The Retreat” because they rest 400 feet below the course.
Speaking of retreats, Toscana Country Club is not a comedown in anything but elevation. The Indian Wells community features two Jack Nicklaus courses, each with a maximum membership of only 275. A limited number of memberships are open to non-residents.
Those non-residents miss out on a community that in a short time has become one of the most exclusive in the Coachella Valley. The Italian, Spanish, and Early Californian designed homes come in three floor-plan collections and 16 models ranging from 2,790 to more than 5,400 square feet, with several of the designs featuring guest houses. Homes range from $1.2 million to $2.5 million, with estate homesites beginning at $1.2 million and custom homes with fairway locations and views of the Santa Rosas starting at $4.7 million.
Like its ultra-exclusive Indian Wells neighbor The Vintage Club, Toscana offers its members more than golf. There’s a sports club with state-of-the-art exercise gear, a complete spa, and the Charlie Pasarell Tennis Center, a six-court complex that boasts a stadium court. And like Bighorn, Toscana sports a top-of-the-line restaurant with a private wine cellar, Il Forno Trattoria.
With their exclusivity, these are the kind of communities that Garbo would have found quite to her reclusive liking, and with their quality, the kind that golf enthusiasts Crosby and Sinatra would have sung the praises of.
