SoCal Coyotes moving ahead with plans for their own arena project
Wednesday morning, officials revealed the plans to build a sports arena in downtown Palm Springs have been scrapped.
Development company Oak View Group announced that it has its sights set on a location near Palm Desert instead.
The company plans to lease land from the H.N and Frances C. Berger Foundation. The 10,000-seat arena is now planned to be built on 43 acres of land off the Interstate 10 freeway and Cook street.
The arena will remain the home of the valley's new hockey team, the AHL affiliate for the NHL's Seattle Kraken, among other big events.
"Our plan calls for over 120 events of the year. Roughly 40 of those being concerts, 40 of those being hockey and another 40 being family shows um and conventions and meetings and stuff like that,"
Officials plan to have this new $240 million arena ready for the 2022-23 hockey season.
More on What Led to the Cancellation of the Palm Springs arena
The new location was originally set to be the home of the So Cal Coyotes, a development football program.
"The Shield at One Coyote Way" was set to be a multi-million dollar sports tourism development with a 12,000 seat stadium, retail, medical facilities, and a farmers market.
The project was announced in July 2018 and was planned to be ready by the end of 2021, however, construction on the project never started.
J David Miller, Coyote head coach & CEO/Founder of Coachella Sports and Entertainment Stadium Authority, the development team working on the Shield project, said in a news release the idea was abandoned when the mission and the math no longer aligned."
Team officials announced that there are plans to move the arena closer to Palm Springs. The team's official website states that the plan is to build a "state-of-the-art sports, faith and medical campus that will include a 10,000-seat arena and 14,000-seat indoor sports stadium," on 1.6 miles of freeway frontage at Date Palm and Interstate 10 in Cathedral City.
Cathedral City officials say the team did have conversations with the city about the project several months ago, but there haven't been any plans submitted to the city's planning department for review. This is the first step to get the project going.
Miller wrote to "stay tuned" for news on the project.
Stay with News Channel 3 for continuing updates on both these arenas.
