California Twenty-One Palm Trees – The property of the Desert Turtle Burrows Dot Cindy Bernard is in the Bay of India, a sprawling residential area outside Joshua Tree National Park.
Some people are well-known to have names. There is a big boy, a man who likes to roam. and a brooch, a female who left a wavy track on the beach.
But when consultants hired by developers who tried to build a luxurious eco-residence next to Bernard’s 40 acres conducted a field investigation, they said they found no members of the species — endangered by California. The city of Twentynine Palms where the land is located concluded that the project does not require a comprehensive environmental impact reporting under California law.
“The noise and light issues that could undermine our ability to see the night sky or enjoy quiet will also affect the wildlife here,” Bernard noted on a recent afternoon when pointing out a crescent-shaped hole in the ground. “We are not against this project. We are here against it.”
A lawsuit filed by Indian Cove Neighbors, a biodiversity and community group co-founded by Bernard, is the proposal of the Twenty-Nine Palm Hotel. The groups alleged that Twenty Nine Palm failed to adequately assess and mitigate potential environmental hazards, including transportation, water quality, air quality and wildlife impacts.
They noted that the 152-acre project site – a variegated scrub about half a mile from the national park’s borders – could support at least 10 plant and 17 animal species, listed as threatened or endangered or recognized as species of concern, including loggerhead shrikes, including shrikes, golden eagles, golden eagles, buried owls, and such desert tortures as big boys and large boys.
The project also plans to move between the center of the wildlife corridor, which enables bobcats, the and dozens of species to move between large areas of national parks and underdeveloped land, but the city’s approved documents contain only the potential impact on wildlife movement, which only contains the potential impact on wildlife movement. The lawsuit requires the court to direct the twenty-one hand to cancel approval of the project.
“You are putting a luxurious luxury resort in the middle of a residential area, so it has an impact on people’s lives and the species they experience,” said Meredith Stevenson, a lawyer at the Center for Biodiversity. “However, the city completely ignored many of the impacts and then found that they were not important because they were not even disclosed or evaluated.”
Twenty-Nine Palms City Manager Stone James, who is also a resident of the Gulf of India, declined to comment on the lawsuit. But he enthusiastically defended the project, saying it would provide much-needed work and income to areas where many people struggle to eat. (According to the 2023 U.S. Community Survey of the U.S. Census Bureau, the poverty rate in the area is 15.6% and the statewide 12%.)
James said state environmental laws designed to help communities assess the impact of projects are now sometimes developed by weapons crushing. He called for complaints, saying the city should need an environmental impact report “trick”, saying the project simply does not meet the requirements of the state-established.
“We have a project that is consistent with the core identity of the community, our core identity of the community is a protection-based project that allows people to come in[to] Our community enjoys the beauty of twenty-nine palm trees in a respectful way, enjoys the beauty of the national parks, visits artists and people who do business in our downtown, will we say no? “He said. We don’t want other people to have something here.'”
Bernard rejected the claim, noting that many members of the Gulf of India neighbors are on fixed income. “There are no wealthy elites in the Molongo Basin,” she said, referring to the high desert area, which includes twenty-one palm trees and other towns near the national park.
The project requires 100 cabins, two cabins, multiple swimming pools, a stargazing area and an outdoor movie screen, and a wastewater treatment plant that will handle more than 13,000 gallons per day. This will be the largest development underway for the Las Vegas-based Ofland Hotel, which opened an outdoor boutique hotel in Escalante, Utah in 2021 and green lights at its second hotel near the Great Smoky Mountains, Tennessee.
According to Luke Searcy, the company’s “natural beauty” and “unique culture” are attracted to Twentynine Palms. He said in an email that the hotel building will be a single-story that protects the view and is located at least 500 feet in the adjacent property to mitigate noise. He noted that the hotel also plans to obtain a dark international accommodation approval certificate that exceeds urban light pollution standards.
Searcy said the company estimates groundbreaking will take place in early 2027. It plans to build a 42-acre property in the site center with the remaining 110 acres as open space. Nevertheless, the Center for Biodiversity notes that open spaces will contain roads and wastewater treatment plants, which may contaminate wildlife and increase the risk of being hit by vehicles.
The city approved the project last month, adopting the so-called negative statement of mitigation. Stevenson said that when preliminary studies determine environmental impacts, the California Environmental Law could use shorter, less detailed documents for projects, but changes to plans could reduce these effects to acceptable levels.
But if a lot of evidence supports a fair argument that the project can have a significant impact, a complete environmental impact report must be prepared, she said.
Stevenson believes that in the case of OFAND project, the negative statement of mitigation did not provide enough information to understand the impact of the project, and the city overlooked evidence that such an impact could be large.
Stevenson said, for example, the negative statement of mitigation states that the project will add nearly 900 vehicle trips per day, but does not take into account traffic from employees or suppliers serving on-site restaurants.
She said even Caltrans suggested doing so. She said that while the California Department of Fish and Wildlife has found many flaws in its plans to mitigate the impact on plants and wildlife, the city said it will adopt only some of the recommended changes.
The lawsuit also claims that by approving the project – in the process, rezoning the land from the residence into “tourism business” and “open space protection”, the city violated state housing laws. The move technically reduces the potential of new housing units on the land by 61. The California Housing Act prohibits cities from taking any action to reduce the legal restrictions on new housing within their borders. In other words, according to the lawsuit, Twenty Palm should have found a way to add 61 potential units elsewhere within the city limits, Stevenson said.
Neighbors also said the move to re-designate land allows developers, not residents, to push the zoning process.
Local bakery owner Travis Poston said his Bay of India home provides a much-needed respite for the pressure to run a small business. He fears that approval of commercial projects in residential areas will set a precedent, which could mark the beginning of a greater driving force for development.
“If you do this, what’s the next step?” he said. “At this point, the entire area is on the chopping block.”
