Downtown Palm Springs park saves spot for Marilyn

Both Marilyn and the Aluminaire House could get prominent placement in what is being described as "one of the most important public spaces to be developed in the city of Palm Springs."

The 26-foot-tall "Forever Marilyn" statue and the 1930s exhibition house designed by Albert Frey are being programmed into the city's new outdoor event space, a 50,000-square-foot public park to become part of the city's new downtown development.

"Forever Marilyn," by Seward Johnson, was on loan to Palm Springs for 22 months. The statue left in March 2014. Ever since, city officials have said they would work to get the statue back in Palm Springs for a permanent display.

The planned opening for the new downtown park is fall 2017, following the opening of a new Kimpton-brand hotel in fall 2016. The first of several new retail stores in the 14-acre redevelopment is set to come on line in the first quarter of 2016 with the opening of West Elm on Palm Canyon Drive.

The City Council will review the conceptual design for the event space and park at Wednesday's meeting.

"Now, we're going into the phase where we need some additional input from, obviously, the entire council," David Ready, Palm Springs City Manager, told the Organized Neighborhoods of Palm Springs, otherwise known as ONE-PS, on Thursday.

"We want your input, the downtown merchants, etc. One of the things we're going to be asking is that, in addition to the council subcommittee, we're going to ask for a special subcommittee of the architectural review, and of the planning commission to look closely at this as we move through the process and it gets into the full development process," Ready explained.

The project is being programmed for multiple uses to accommodate any number of downtown events ranging from festivals to outdoor concerts. About 3,000 people could be comfortably accommodated in the two circular lawn areas, proposed on the site. The Aluminaire House would be placed on the southwest corner of the park near the Palm Springs Art Museum, and the "Forever Marilyn" statue is proposed to be located at the southeast corner of the park where Main Street intersects with Belardo Road, according to the preliminary conceptual design.

Also included in the plan is a main performance stage, located on the west end of the park, that would also include a sculpture garden and "palm tree grotto" on Museum Drive.

A second smaller stage would be placed at the north end of the event space. New public restrooms, a concession space, police substation are also programmed into the site.

The city paid Wessman Development, the firm leading the redevelopment of the former Desert Fashion Plaza mall, $5.3 million for the event center site, with the condition that Wessman Development also construct an additional 300 underground parking spaces. Developing the new outdoor space could cost up to about $5 million, depending on the level of staging equipment and other features the city may opt for, according to a city staff report.

In the coming weeks, Wessman Development will bring forward the complete landscape plan for the entire redevelopment site, said Michael Braun, senior vice president for Wessman Development.

The landscape design for the downtown development will be coordinated with the design for the event space as it develops, Braun added.

"The new downtown will be very exciting, and the event (space) as designed will act as an additional anchor for downtown," he said.

Skip Descant is The Desert Sun's tourism reporter. He can be reached at Skip.Descant@DesertSun.com and on Twitter @TDSskip.