My first taste of The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company’s latest foray into the Greater Palm Springs market, The Ritz-Carlton, Rancho Mirage, was at a sales office, probably in early 2007 some time, located in a rather inauspicious strip mall off Route 111.
Besides the rather mundane setting—the commercial spaces can be like that in the Coachella Valley outside of Palm Springs—the property model was full of promise, and one could walk out the front door of the sales office and see the building site high up on a hill.
Enter the economic collapse, and to borrow a phrase from the long-forgotten Monty Python sketch appropriately named Ralph Melish (Nothing Happened)—cue the ominous music—“But it was not to be…”
The poor prospective luxury hotel was stopped dead in its tracks, its financier, The Lehman Brothers, had collapsed—forcing the sale of its property on Maui, also—and the resort was left languishing not unlike a real mirage, partially rebuilt on top of a prime location overlooking some of the “ritziest” zipcodes in the affluent Coachella Valley.
Fast forward to May 2014, and with a new owner at the helm, The Ritz-Carlton, Rancho Mirage reopened. It has since unveiled major new features, such as The Edge Steakhouse, which offers stunning views of the undeveloped desert mountains off the back of the property.
According to Anne Marie Whelan, director of sales and marketing at the property, the wait, although surely uncomfortable, paid off with a better product in the end.
“It was due to come back in 2007 and 2008 and it didn’t reopen,” she says, in reference to the property undergoing a massive rebuild and rebrand to become a Ritz, from its previous incarnation as the Lodge at Rancho Mirage. “In June of 2013 the new owners looked at the hotel and decided it needed to be reimagined with a new look and feel. We had a gap of nearly five years when it came back in May. We took our time to get everything perfect.”
By the time it had reopened, the new features included two extra pools, an astroturf event lawn, 16 condo suites and what has probably become the resort’s signature feature, gas firepits outside its ground-floor rooms.
Now, the property—it was the seventh Ritz hotel when it first opened in 1988, and now it’s the 86th!—offers 244 guest rooms, 16 suites, 23 rooms with firepits, three swimming pools, three restaurants and more than 30,000 square feet of indoor/outdoor meeting space.
A huge highlight is its State Fare Bar + Kitchen, which specializes in farm-to-table California produce, ranch and fish cuisine, and was one of the best meals I ever experienced. Other attributes of this Ritz include the outstanding Ritz-Carlton Spa, Rancho Mirage, which is housed in its own two-story luxury wellness building that boasts an outdoor waterfall and a mesa for cliff-top yoga sessions. Golfers can take advantage of various golf partnerships the resort has with top area courses.
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The Ritz-Carlton, Rancho Mirage
760.321.8282
