Coral Mountain Desert Club

Coral Mountain Desert Club is a 400-acre private club community in La Quinta, California, developed by Meriwether Companies against the Santa Rosa Mountains at the south end of the Coachella Valley. Meriwether announced the groundbreaking in April 2026, with an 18-hole championship course by David McLay Kidd, a clubhouse by Hart Howerton, racquet sports, fitness and recovery facilities, resort pools, and a trail network. First-phase amenities and the golf course are targeted for 2028. It is the first major private club to break ground in the Greater Palm Springs area in more than 20 years.

The residential program is the reason the club exists. A 2025 tract map approved 204 single-family lots, and the developer describes roughly 300 homesites across estate lots, custom home sites, and Club Cottages. Pricing has not been published, and membership is by invitation: buying a home does not automatically convey club access, which requires a separate application and fees.

The surf story here is unusual, and it explains a lot about how these projects get built. The original proposal, Coral Mountain Resort, put a Kelly Slater Wave Co basin on the La Quinta site alongside hotels and commercial space. La Quinta City Council rejected it in September 2022 after sustained opposition over water, traffic, and light. Meriwether came back with a redesigned, lower-intensity club without a wave, which the council approved in March 2024, and implementation approvals followed in 2025.

The wave returned in January 2026 by a different route. Rather than build one on site, Meriwether partnered with Thermal Beach Club, a separate private community less than ten minutes away, to give Coral Mountain members access to a 48-caisson Endless Surf basin there. That basin is billed as the largest pneumatic wave pool in the United States, with construction aimed at summer 2027 and an opening targeted for the fourth quarter of 2028. Buyers should note that the surf amenity therefore sits on land the club does not control, on a schedule Coral Mountain does not set.

What to watch: whether Thermal Beach Club actually starts construction in summer 2027, since that project has been approved since 2020 without breaking ground, and what the club publishes on homesite pricing and membership terms once its sales office opens.