Local & Community
Palm Springs residents raise traffic and neighborhood concerns over new COD campus
Some Palm Springs residents are raising concerns about the College of the Desert campus currently under construction, pointing to potential traffic, parking and neighborhood impacts.
The new campus is being built near Feral Drive and Baristo Road on the site of the former Palm Springs mall.
Palm Springs resident Mark Tursi said he is concerned about how the development will affect the character of the surrounding community.
“Palm Springs, as I know it for over 40 years, has always been the concept of tranquility,” Tursi said.
Tursi said the scale of the project could create additional traffic in an area he believes is not designed to handle a large increase in vehicles.
“These are not boulevards. These are simply streets,” he said.
The campus carries a reported price tag of about $405.7 million and is expected to cover an area roughly equivalent to 20 football fields.
Tursi also said nearby residents should have had more opportunities to see how the project would look and understand its potential impact on their neighborhoods.
“I do not believe for a moment that especially the people in the immediate area were ever given any sense of graphics or design that would spell out what they were going to have virtually in their backyards,” Tursi said.
College of the Desert did not provide an interview but provided a statement outlining its community engagement during the project's design phase.
The college said it held monthly public meetings in 2023 during the schematic design phase. Those meetings included representatives from Palm Springs, Desert Hot Springs and Cathedral City, as well as community members, including the Palm Springs Architectural Alliance.
According to the college, the project also included limits on building height and increased the setback distance from Feral Drive.
The new campus is scheduled to open in fall 2027 and will replace the former Palm Springs mall site.
By: Maria Noble Valdez
September 24, 2026
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