Coachella Strives to Become Climate-Resilient City

Coachella Awarded $10 million Community Resilience Center Grant

COACHELLA – This city is a step closer to becoming a more climate-resilient community with the help of a $10 million grant.

The California Strategic Growth Council has awarded the city of Coachella a Community Resilience Center (CRC) Implementation Grant Award to help further the city’s goal of making Coachella a more climate-resilient community.

What is climate resilience? Basically, it means adjusting how we live, work, and play to keep us safe from the impacts of climate change.

A climate resilient community is one that successfully copes with and manages the impacts of climate change while preventing those impacts from growing worse. Such a society would be low-carbon and equipped to deal with the realities of a warmer world, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists.

The money will be used to retrofit an existing facility previously known as Hidden Harvest on Peter Rabbit Lane into the new Coachella Community Resilience Center, which will function as an emergency shelter, food and business incubator hub, garden space, resource center, and workforce training and development center.

Partners that will assist with implementation of the CRC plan include GRID Alternatives Inland Empire, Hidden Harvest, The LEAP Institute, University of California, Berkeley, and the County of Riverside Emergency Management Department

“Having all of these essential services housed under one roof at our new Resilience Center is a huge step in the right direction,” Mayor Steven Hernandez said in a statement. “The $30 million we secured over the past few months, coupled with an additional $20 million we are pursuing are all earmarked for the continued   expansion of accessible resources for our residents that will continue helping enhance their quality of life.”

The Coachella CRC will work through community-driven partnerships and programming to integrate physical infrastructure components such as solar panels, pet sheltering, solar generators, zero emission rideshare transportation with social infrastructure elements such as small business incubation, workforce training and development programs, demonstration gardens and other nature-based solutions and food security. These elements are expected to increase climate resilience, expand economic opportunities, and reduce health, environmental, and social inequities.

The city aims to create the resources necessary for residents with a long history of disinvestment and hardships to thrive with access to the CRC campus that will function as an emergency shelter, food hub, business incubator, and educational center. The CRC will prioritize flexibility, sustainability, and accessibility in its design to accommodate all individuals’ needs, including the community’s priority populations.

Additional details and timelines regarding the Coachella Resilience Center will be shared through the City of Coachella’s Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn pages, as well as the City’s website, Coachella.org.