Downtown Teardown

A huge, block-long, downtown Palm Springs shopping mall built by the DeBartolo family in 1986 is currently being torn down.



There was a close election in November of 2011 authorizing a sales tax increase for the project, with much of the money going to local real estate developer John Wessman.



Unfortunately, Wessman is building a new shopping mall on the site, with plans that include a six-story hotel that will be grotesquely out of place in the low-lying downtown.



Tourists don't go to Palm Springs for a hip, happening, city feel which is how this is being sold. Most of them are trying to escape the freeways and shopping malls that already blot the California landscape. The photo above, by the way, is across the street from the proposed new shopping mall.