Ofland Hotels has given up on its plan, for which it was given an entitlement last July by the Twentynine Palms City, to construct what it had described as a luxury eco-resort near the entrance to Joshua Tree National Park.
Ofland, which is headed by Charles Tate and Luke Searcy and at that time was based in Houston Texas, on July 22, 2025 obtained the city council’s approval to build 100 guest cabins and 25 units of employee housing along with two lodges, a swimming pool and spas, recreational areas, playgrounds, restaurants and a bar on 42 acres at the center of a 152-acre site within the Indian Cove District on the north side of Twentynine, just off Highway 62.
The council’s action was taken in the context of city staff’s support of the proposal as well as a non-binding recommendation by the 29 Palms Planning Commission the previous month that the city council give the project go-ahead. At both the planning commission and city council hearings for the undertaking, there were significantly more residents voicing opposition to Ofland’s plan, which required a zone change from residential to tourist commercial, a general plan amendment and a conditional use permit to be allowed to proceed, than there were residents speaking in favor of it.
The project would have entailed a hundred cabins, two lodges, swimming pools, a stargazing area and an outdoor movie screen, and an on-site wastewater treatment plant capable of processing more than 13,000 gallons of effluent a day.
Notefully, the city council in making its decision utilized a far less exacting environmental certification process than it could have when it gave approval to the Ofland resort.
Under the California Environmental Quality Act, an examination of the environmental impacts of a project must be made. Some discretion is left to the governmental decision-making body that oversees land use issues and possesses approval and/or denial authority with regard to a development project as to what type of analysis of the environmental issues is to be carried out and what mitigations of the impacts are to be required.
In evaluating Ofland’s project application, Twentynine Palms’ planning staff elected to use a mitigated negative declaration, also referred to as an initial study, as the means of providing the project with its environmental certification.
A simple negative declaration is the least exacting type of development impact assessments and a mitigated negative declaration is the second-least stringent assessment. On the other end of the scale, an environmental impact report is the most involved and exhaustive type of environmental analysis and certification there is, followed by an environmental impact study.
An environmental impact report consists of an in-depth study of the project site, the project proposal, the potential and actual impacts the project will have on the site and surrounding area in terms of all conceivable issues, including land use, water use, air quality, potential contamination, noise, traffic, and biological and cultural resources. An environmental impact report specifies in detail what measures can, will and must be carried out to offset those impacts. An environmental impact study is somewhat less exacting and an environmental impact assessment less stringent still. A mitigated negative declaration is a statement by the ultimate land use authority – as in this case the city council – that any identified impacts from the project will be mitigated or offset by the conditions of approval for the project. A negative declaration, the least exacting type of certification there is, merely states that the initial study done by the agency planning staff sufficiently identified any environmental issues and that there are no environmental problems of consequence involved in the proposed project.
In the case of Ofland, planning staff, the planning commission and the city council required nothing beyond the initial study to approve the project, which many in Twentynine Palms objected to.
Two groups, the Center for Biological Diversity and Indian Cove Neighbors, believing the city cut corners in allowing Ofland to develop the property without undertaking an environmental impact report and making a finding that the conditions of approval ensured that any untoward impacts would be addressed, filed suit on August 20, 2025 in San Bernardino County Superior Court.
The plaintiffs asked the court to enjoin Ofland from proceeding with the project until the lawsuit was resolved.
The Center for Biological Diversity asserted damage to both the habitat and migratory paths of six special-status wildlife species and five special-status plant species would occur during and after the construction phase of the project.
The suit did not petition for the abandonment of the project altogether, but sought a court determination that a full environmental impact report for the project be completed for the project to be allowed to proceed.
City staff and Ofland’contended there would be no serious or irreparable impacts on the species indigenous to the area if the company complied with the conditions of approval.
The Center for Biological Diversity’s legal team characterized those impacts as “significant.” The property propoed for development lies within a wildlife corridor that runs into Joshua Tree National Park, according to the plaintiffs, and the project would have impacted air quality and the general environs in Indian Cove.
Ofland Hotels’ corporate officials, who are now based in Las Vegas rather than Texas, abruptly walked away from the project last week. In doing so, they did not concede that, as the plaintiffs in the lawsuit contended, the Twentynine Palms planning staff and the city council had not adequately assessed and mitigated the potential and actual environmental harm that would come about as a result of the project. Rather, the company said, its hand was forced by financial considerations and changes in the hospitatily marketplace. A complication was that the company had not moved ahead immediately with the project upon getting approval, but had been delayed by the filing of the suit. Since the company had the land tied up subject to an option to purchase it but did not actually own the acreage, the property fell out of escrow when the deadline for sale passed and the owner was unwilling to extend the option.
The City of Twentynine Palms was informed of the company’s decision by a letter from Ofland’s attorney last week.
Ofland made the decision public in a press release on April 30 in which Searcy, Ofland Hotels’ head of development, stated “softening market demand” was at the basis of the deision to thrown in the towel in Twentynine Palms. “As a company, we must adapt to shifts in the industry. Ultimately, current market conditions did not justify the level of investment required to responsibly move the project forward.”
No longer committed to the project near Indian Cove, the company will transfer its development intensity toward a resort planned near the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee the company obtained approval for in 2024 and another resort near Zion National Park in Utah.
A selling point of the project for city officials last year was that Ofland, which operates an “outdoor hotel” in Escalante, Utah, was to generate what it projected would be $500,000 to $800,000 in annual tax and fee revenue, add 40 full-time jobs to the local community and create a recreational venue that would put Twentynine Palms on the map as a place welcoming outdoorsmen and tourists.
City Manager Stone James had enthusiastically endorsed the project, but last month, he announced his departure from the city as of later this month. It is unclear whether losing him as a champion of the undertaking had dimmed the company’s enthusiasm, given that the incoming city manager, whoever that is, will be faced with having the city continue on in the face of the lawsuit.
James was critical of the city residents whose opposition had contributed to Ofland’s decision to abandon the proposal, which said had been an “excellent opportunity for economic growth based upon conservation-focused tourism.”