Officials give preview of the $250 million Coachella Valley Arena

The Coachella Valley will soon be home to a new $250 million arena that will be home to an American Hockey League that will be affiliated with the new NHL expansion Seattle Kraken.

Originally set to be built in downtown Palm Springs, the arena will now be built near Palm Desert just off of Interstate 10 near Cook Street.

John Bolton will be the General Manager of the arena for Oak View Group.

"From what I've experienced and what I've heard people talk about, it was almost like a sigh of relief to have this in this new location," Bolton says.

Coronavirus delayed the project and led to the location change.

The arena will seat about 10,000 people depending on the event and will be very much the same as the original design for the Palm Springs location.

"Overall, the major changes were rotating it 90 degrees kind of clockwise and doing a mirror of the building," says architect Robert Norvell from the design firm Populous.

The building was rotated largely because it will now be built in an area prone to strong winds.

"Our main entry now is on the eastern side of the building so it's protecting you from those winds and also helps with shading our public outdoor areas," Norvell adds.

Populous designer Scott McCracken says the building will have a desert feel to it.

"There's what everyone thinks of as the mid-century modern mecca, which plays a big part in our interiors and interior finishes, but we wanted to pay homage to the kind of just the natural landscape of Palm Springs in the desert," McCracken says.

Bolton says they're planning to have about 120 events a year at the facility.

Along with forty hockey games, there would be forty concerts, and forty other mostly family style events.

That will mean jobs for the valley including several hundred for construction and then full-time and part-time jobs for the venue and the hockey team.

An economic impact report will be released soon with projections on the potential impact the venue will have on the valley's economy.

Groundbreaking for the arena is now planned for May of this year with completion toward the end of 2022 in time for the '22-'23 hockey season.