greenlighted in 2024<\/a> and a second project near Zion National Park in Utah, the details of which will be announced later this year, the release said. The company also operates an outdoor boutique hotel in Escalante, Utah.<\/p>\n\u201cThis is definitely a loss for the community,\u201d said Stone James, the Twentynine Palms city manager. The resort would have brought in $500,000 to $800,000 in annual tax revenue, supported 40 full-time jobs and helped build the city\u2019s brand as a destination for outdoor recreation enthusiasts, he said.<\/p>\n
James said that, although the project isn\u2019t moving ahead due to economic conditions, it was \u201csad\u201d that some homeowners opposed \u201cthe economic opportunity and prosperity this conservation-focused tourism project would have provided the city.\u201d<\/p>\n
Plans called for 100 small cabins, two lodges, multiple pools, a stargazing area and an outdoor movie screen, plus a wastewater treatment plant slated to process more than 13,000 gallons a day.<\/p>\n
Some neighbors greeted news of the project\u2019s demise with relief, saying the location \u2014 a residential area with large swaths of undeveloped land \u2014 was inappropriate for a commercial venture.<\/p>\n
Indian Cove is home to a close-knit community, as well as a key wildlife corridor that allows animals to move between the national park and other wild areas, said artist Cindy Bernard, co-founder of community group Indian Cove Neighbors. \u201cTo have a resort in the middle of all that would have been destructive,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe city manager is parroting PR claims made by the developers \u2014 the numbers he is quoting are projections, not facts,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
Bernard lives next to the project site and has documented multiple desert tortoises on and around her property \u2014 including Squiggles, who was given the nickname for leaving wavy tracks in the sand. <\/p>\n
Yet a field survey commissioned by the developers found no tortoises, which are listed as endangered by the state of California. The survey did not follow typical U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service protocols to identify tortoises and instead used less rigorous procedures, said Evan Levy, attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity.<\/p>\n
The environmental nonprofit, together with Indian Cove Neighbors, sued Twentynine Palms in August over its approval of the project. The city had adopted what\u2019s known as a mitigated negative declaration, which is shorter and less detailed than a full environmental impact report.<\/p>\n
The lawsuit alleged that the declaration did not provide enough information to understand the project\u2018s impacts, and that the city overlooked evidence that those impacts may be significant. <\/p>\n
The project site, about a half-mile from the national park boundary, may support at least 10 plant and 17 animal species that are either listed as threatened or endangered or recognized as species of concern, including loggerhead shrikes, golden eagles and burrowing owls, the lawsuit stated.<\/p>\n
The parties have agreed to stay the legal challenge for 90 days so the developer can work with the city to decertify the mitigated negative declaration and rescind the project entitlements, including a general plan amendment, a zoning change and a development code amendment, Levy said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Las Vegas-based hospitality group has abandoned plans to build a luxury eco-resort less than a mile outside…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":294303,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[1052,1409,125155,11116,48,52,51,1846,47,50,49,125152,125156,16280,125154,3230,1506,5274,62519,125153,73125],"class_list":["post-294302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-attorney","tag-city","tag-indian-cove-area","tag-joshua-tree-national-park","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-lawsuit","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-luxury-resort","tag-negative-declaration","tag-neighbor","tag-ofland-hotels","tag-plan","tag-project","tag-release","tag-twentynine-palms","tag-vegas-company","tag-zion-national-park"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294302\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/294303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}