Palm Springs City Council discuss downtown park designs

Palm Springs City Council met Wednesday evening to discuss plans for the new downtown city park.

After years of drawbacks, construction of the park has hit another roadblock.

One resident says he’s ready to see the city break ground.

“Get started and get the park done,” Michael Johnson said.

For about two years, the city of Palm Springs has been searching for ways to fund a one-acre park in front of the Palm Springs Art Museum.

“You start out with these grandiose ideas of what you’d like to have then the reality of budgets hits,” Palm Springs Mayor Robert Moon said.

The plans that would add the Marilyn Forever statue, the Aluminaire house by architect Albert Frey and a few other designs that would cost about $11 million and 12 million. Councilors say they plan to keep those two main pieces in the design but can spend only about $6 million, mostly from Measure J funds.

“I think its probably enough money to get the park open. We can always add things to it as we learn what we really want to use it for,” Palm Springs Council man J.R. Roberts said.

Subcommittee and council members went back and forth on design decisions throughout the meeting. Ultimately, council decided to revise the plans by having a designer scale it down to bring them within budget until more funding can be acquired.

“At about June, all those new streets will be opening. The Kimpton hotel will be opening and some more of the downtown buildings on Palm Canyon [will be] opening. So we really need to get moving on this,” Moon said.

After a new design draft has been completed, it will be brought back to council for discussion sometime this spring.