The City Council of Cathedral City and the Parks & Community Events Commission celebrated the groundbreaking of the new Dream Homes Park on Wednesday, April 3, 2024, located at San Diego Drive and Chia Place. The event featured remarks by Mayor Mark Carnevale, Gustavo Gomez with Coachella Valley Association of Governments, Felipe Ortiz, Field Representative for Assemblymember Greg Wallis, and John Corella, the City’s Director of Public Works & Engineering.
Dream Homes Park, opening to the public in 2025, will sit on 7.5 acres in the Dream Homes neighborhood east of North Gene Autry Trail and north of the Home Depot shopping center on Ramon Road. The neighborhood has been critically underserved and endured many years without a park. Dream Homes is one of the oldest neighborhoods in both Cathedral City and the entire Coachella Valley.
California State Parks awarded Cathedral City nearly $8.5 million of Statewide Park Program grant money for the Dream Homes Park Project in 2021. Assemblymember Eduardo Garcia, who represented Cathedral City at the time before the redistricting, was influential in helping the City secure the grant money for the project.
“We join the community in celebrating the construction of Dream Homes Park,” said Garcia. “This project inspired our work to pass the Prop 68 California Park Bond, and we were proud to deliver $8.5 million in state funding to create this new park. We highly commend current and past Cathedral City leadership for their commitment to improving resident health and wellness with parks and recreation opportunities like this.”
Amenities for Dream Homes Park will include:
- A Central Plaza and Drop Off Zone
- Children’s Play Areas and Equipment
- Shaded Picnic and Barbeque Areas
- A Shaded Outdoor Fitness Area
- Multi-Use Field
- Soccer Fields
- Basketball Courts
- Large and Small Dog Park
- CV Link Connection
- Parking Lots
- Lighting
- Drought-Tolerant Landscaping and Trees
The new Dream Homes Park will also provide more connectivity to the CV Link, a multi-modal corridor now open adjacent to the Dream Homes neighborhood that is planned to extend from Palm Springs to the City of Coachella and the Salton Sea.
Improving the quality of Cathedral City’s outside spaces remains a top priority for the City Council. One of the key components that makes parks and outdoor facilities so special is that they’re free for the public to use and provide memorable gathering places for families and people of all ages and backgrounds.
A total of 9 community parks are located within Cathedral City’s boundaries and there’s another on the horizon. City parks and outdoor open space improve our physical and psychological health, strengthen communities, and make our neighborhoods more attractive places to live, work and play.
