Something has changed at the corner of Tahquitz Canyon Way and Farrell Drive. The Event Center at College of the Desert’s Palm Springs Campus now wears a three-dimensional architectural cladding that catches the desert light and throws a shifting pattern of highlight and shadow across its curved face. Drivers slow down for it. Neighbors are stopping to look. After years of hearing about a campus designed for this city, the community can now see one taking shape at one of the busiest intersections in Palm Springs.
IT IS WORTH THE TRIP. A slow pass down Tahquitz gives you the Event Center rising where the Palm Springs Mall once stood and the steel and concrete of a 27-ACRE CAMPUS filling in week by week. The view changes month to month, and the next year will bring the biggest changes yet.
The Event Center is a flexible gathering place built for College programs, community events and industry-connected learning, and it sits next to the Culinary Institute by design, linking hospitality, culinary education, event operations and workforce training. Its outer material is one of the first finished exterior elements, and it puts the campus design story out on the street where everyone can read it.
That design draws on Palm Springs’ modernist legacy and reinterprets it for a public college. Clean lines, expressive structures, sculptural forms and generous shade. Sweeping roofs will cover outdoor circulation and gathering. Structural “trees” inspired by palms and windmills will mark the major entries. Patterned screens, desert-responsive landscaping, an all-electric central plant and rooftop solar will tie the campus to its climate. The project is targeting LEED Gold Certification.
Behind the exterior, the work has moved from major structural construction into building enclosure, interiors and specialized systems. Equipment is being set at the Campus Support Building. Framing, drywall and taping are underway at the Accelerator Building. In-slab mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems are going in at the Culinary Institute and the Event Center, where the metal and concrete decks are complete. Grading, curb and gutter work continues across the site.
Several buildings are targeted to receive permanent electrical power this fall, and the Event Center is scheduled to be substantially enclosed and weather-tight later in 2026. Testing and commissioning follow as systems come online. The 175,000-square-foot campus carries a $405.7 million total budget, including $320 million for construction funded primarily through Measure CC. As of the June 25 capital projects report, expenditures totaled $195,165,152.
When it opens, the campus will hold an Academic Accelerator and Learning Lab, an Artificial Intelligence Hub and AR/XR Gaming, film, television, radio and recording studios, the Culinary Institute and demonstration theater, allied-health laboratories, hospitality classrooms with mock hotel rooms, architecture studios, an outdoor event lawn and student services, all supported by 10 Gbps broadband expandable to 100 Gbps.
This campus belongs to the whole Coachella Valley, and you do not have to enroll to have a stake in it. Students, working adults, employers and lifelong learners will use it, and the rest of us will drive past it, gather in it and point it out to visitors. Watch it come together. Construction photographs and drone footage are posted at codpscampus.org/photo-gallery, where you can also sign up for project news and milestone updates.
The Palm Springs Campus is targeted to open in fall 2027. For additional information visit codpscampus.org
