Palm Springs soon will have its own “central park” — or more accurately, a “central preserve,” after Oswit Land Trust converts the Mesquite Golf Course into a desert nature preserve.
Jane Garrison, executive director and founder of Oswit Land Trust, announced the nonprofit’s acquisition of the golf course to a room full of more than 100 emotional supporters at Demuth Community Center on Tuesday. For years, Oswit Land Trust has eyed purchasing closed or struggling golf courses into Palm Springs and restoring the courses to natural desert habitat. Formerly called the Mesquite Desert Preserve, Oswit has called the project “the largest desert restoration project in California.”
The project was renamed on Tuesday to the Prescott Preserve, after longtime Palm Springs resident Brad Prescott, whose Prescott Foundation purchased the golf course and donated it to the Oswit Land Trust.
The sale price wasn’t disclosed on Tuesday, but the most recently assessed value of the course was $1,517,584 in 2022, although the property was listed for much more than that — $15 million when it was first listed for sale in 2018, according to Garrison.
Prescott’s purchase of the course allowed Oswit Land Trust to skip the lengthy process of applying for grants to purchase the property, which could have allowed a developer to beat the organization in purchasing the course, according to Garrison.
“We envision a place where everyone can walk with their leashed dogs, a place where regardless of your age, regardless of your fitness ability, you’re able to enjoy nature… This is like our, not our central park, it’s going to be our central preserve right in the middle of our community. We envision lush gardens, we envision butterfly gardens, educational signage, floating docks for migratory birds,” Garrison said.
Oswit Land Trust also plans on converting a maintenance building on the property into an education and nature center, and will establish a memorial forest where desert trees can be dedicated in the memory of a loved one. Garrison announced on Tuesday that the very first tree planted on the property will be dedicated to Prescott’s late husband.
Over the past couple years, Oswit Land Trust has touted the Mesquite Desert Preserve as its most ambitious project: purchasing both the Mesquite Golf Course and neighboring long-shuttered Bel Air Greens and restoring the two courses into desert habitat.
According to Garrison, Oswit Land Trust has secured a $4 million grant to purchase Bel Air Greens and is still pursuing the property. However, a proposal to build homes on the former course is working its way through the city’s planning process, with the next public meeting on the proposal scheduled for Wednesday.
Golf courses closing, converting to other uses
After a golf course building boom in the 1990s and early 2000s, the industry has spent the past 15 years contracting in response to overbuilding, according to the National Golf Foundation.
The growing number of shuttered golf courses is sparking discussions at both the local and state level over how best to use the large swaths of land often surrounded by residential development.
About 130 U.S. golf courses closed in 2021, down from a peak of 250 golf course closures in 2019, according to the National Golf Foundation. The U.S. has over 16,000 golf courses with an average footprint of 150 acres, a size that often piques the interest of potential developers.
Mesquite will be the third golf course in the desert to disappear in recent years, joining Santa Rosa Country Club in Palm Desert in 2015 and Rancho Mirage Country Club in the same year. In Palm Springs, two former golf properties, nine-hole Bel-Air Greens and 18-hole Palm Springs Country Club, have been abandoned for years with various projects to develop the lands failing to take root. Bel-Air Greens is adjacent to Mesquite Country Club to the east.
The National Golf Foundation estimates that 40% of shuttered courses have been earmarked for residential and commercial development.
And developers aren’t the only ones eyeing golf courses for housing development. As California grapples with a housing crisis that experts say is driven by a lack of supply and cities struggle to meet their state-mandated housing goals, state legislators and local officials are also eyeing golf courses as one solution to the housing crunch.
One recent proposal by Assemblymember Cristina Silva, D-Bell Gardens, would have incentivized cities to convert municipal golf courses to affordable housing, although that bill died during the committee process.
In Palm Springs, proposed plans for Bel-Air Greens would convert the golf course into a residential community with 71 homes. The long-shuttered Palm Springs Country Club will be converted into 386 homes by the end of this year or early next year, according to a new development agreement approved by the city last year.
Mesquite Country Club was first listed for sale in 2018, and was advertised as suitable for developing between 250 and 350 potential housing units.
Plans for the Prescott Preserve
The nature preserve will include both a botanical garden and a nature preserve, and Oswit Land Trust will not remove any trees in the restoration process. The nonprofit will be hiring an environmental planning company and holding community meetings to determine the specific improvements and site plan, which will include areas for public use and designated wildlife-only areas.
Oswit Land Trust plans to immediately begin applying for grants to plan and create the nature reserve, which will take an estimated one to five years. A designated loop trail will remain open for public use during the development process.
Mesquite Country Club, designed by architect Bert Stamps, opened in 1984. The course is noted for its tight fairways and short par-5s. In recent years, the course has closed during the summer months.
Oswit Land Trust began as Save Oswit Canyon, an effort to preserve the Oswit Canyon area west of South Palm Drive at the base of the San Jacinto Mountains, which was slated for residential development. In 2020, four years of effort around Oswit Canyon culminated in the $7.15 million sale of the 114-acre property, which is now preserved as open space.
In April, Oswit Land Trust negotiated the purchase of 3,500 acres of desert land known as Palm Hills or the Goat Trails, located behind the Rimrock Plaza shopping center, in one of the largest conservation purchases in Coachella Valley history. The $7-million sale was financed by the Coachella Valley Mountains Conservancy and the Coachella Valley Conservation Commission.
Desert Sun golf writer Larry Bohannan contributed to this report.