The desert community of Borrego Springs, hit harder than most places by the Great Recession, is bouncing back despite water-supply problems and the town’s location within a significant floodplain — challenges that have all but stalled new construction for much of the past decade.

In the last few years, hotels in particular have reinvested in the quiet community.

La Casa del Zorro — which for decades was the most luxurious resort in town, before shutting down for three years — reopened in 2014 and last winter saw its first profitable quarter in history, officials said.

The Rams Hills Golf Course, which closed in 2011 and essentially turned to dust, has reopened with lush fairways and greens and was recently named the best new golf course in the United States by World’s Best Golf Destinations.


Millions of dollars have recently been spent on renovations at the Palm Canyon Resort, which fell into foreclosure a few years ago, and the de Anza Country Club has also recently remodeled its clubhouse and other buildings.

Meanwhile, locals are abuzz about two county construction projects coming within the next three years at a combined cost of about $11 million: a brand new, 14,000-square foot library and a 16-acre park that will both be built downtown, not far from the iconic Christmas Circle and the town’s only shopping mall.

La Casa del Zorro front entrance ( / Courtesy of La Casa del Zorro)

The upturn is thrilling for many residents and for civic and business leaders.


“We came into (the recession) hard and it took us longer to get out of it,” said Linda Haddock, the Chamber of Commerce executive director. “You just look at everything and you see the investment of people who know there is a future here, and that’s huge.”

Borrego Springs, which sits in the middle of the 1,100-square mile Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, has about 3,200 full-time residents, according to the most recent census. Locals say the real number is about 1,500 in the summer when temperatures often reach 110 or higher. In the winter — between November and March — the population swells to anywhere from 7,500 to 15,000 depending on the day.

This year “the season” officially begins Oct. 23 with the weekend-long Borrego Days Desert Festival and Parade, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary.

Consistent growth, however, has been stymied by water woes. Borrego Springs gets all of its water from an underground aquifer that has been drying up for decades. The community banded together several years ago to come up with a long-term solution to the water shortage that involves slowly fallowing farms, which consume 70 percent of the water drawn from the aquifer. Without agriculture cutbacks, water would become too expensive for residential users and resorts.


In addition, the community sits in a floodplain and several years ago the county significantly tightened building restrictions in the area.

Residents of Borrego Springs are a varied bunch that include well-off retirees; eccentrics who love the desert and the isolation that comes with it; disadvantaged Latino farm workers; and service employees who staff the valley’s farms, nurseries, hotels and restaurants.

Jack McGrory, a former San Diego city manager who now heads a real estate investment company based in La Jolla, is one of the new owners of La Casa del Zorro, which for decades was owned by the Copley family, former owners of The San Diego Union-Tribune and dozens of others newspapers.

The Copleys ran the resort not as a moneymaking venture but as a showcase property where they would host annual newspaper conventions. Still, it was the jewel of local hotel properties until they sold it in 2007 to Greg Pearlman, who also bought the nearby Rams Hills golf course and housing development. Pearlman spent millions renovating the resort, but when the recession hit the property was shuttered within a couple years and quickly deteriorated. By the time McGrory bought it in 2013, the lush landscaping had died, the windows were broken, the metal pool railings had rusted and paint was peeling everywhere.


The changes since then have been staggering.

“Things are going pretty well,” McGrory said this week. “Our first quarter this year was profitable and I think it was the first time in the history of the hotel it has ever made money.”

Haddock, the director of the chamber, came to Borrego at the start of the recession and has seen the dramatic changes that have taken place since.

She estimates that between half a million to 1.5 million people pass through the town every year, most who have come to enjoy the state park or are on their way to the Ocotillo Wells State Vehicular Recreation Area or the Salton Sea.


Day-trippers from Southern California have increased dramatically in the past few years, she added, drawn to Borrego by more than 125 metal sculptures that are scattered around town on private land owned by the estate of multimillionaire Dennis Avery who died in 2012.

“It’s our biggest draw next to the park,” she said. “Most people who come into the Chamber want to know where the statues are, and it’s a year-round draw.”

The future park and library will help further the town’s resurgence, officials said. County Supervisor Bill Horn has awarded hundreds of thousands of dollars from his discretionary fund to various projects in Borrego Springs because he knows the desert town faces special challenges.

“I know they’re (often) hurting out there so we try to spend as much as we can to kind of keep them alive,” Horn said.