January 2015 – Gallaudet Properties

January 30, 2015

Featured Community: Rancho La Quinta Country Club

This is the first in a series of descriptive blogs on individual Desert Golf Course Communities in our area. Each week we will be featuring a different community.

This weeks featured community is Rancho La Quinta Country Club.

Rancho La Quinta Country Club is a luxury golf and tennis community of 980 homes established by T.D. Desert Development in 1994 on over 700 acres in La Quinta, California. There are approximately 60 homes currently on the market, ranging from $500,000 to $2,000,000.

The Country Club is comprised of two world class golf courses designed by Robert Trent Jones, Jr and Jerry Pate. The courses have previously hosted the PGA Tour’s ever popular “Skins Game” and have recently changed over from “Bentgrass” to “Bermuda” grass to better serve golfers in the desert climate. The 23,000 square foot clubhouse has a main dining room, private dining room, full service clubroom/bar, men’s and women’s locker rooms, Pro Shop and “The Turn” for a quick bite for golfers.

The property also has a premier Racquet Club and Pool complex with 9 lighted courts including 2 clay courts as well as stadium seating on center court. The Racquet Club features a Tennis Shop, men’s and women’s locker rooms, a fitness center with state-of-the-art exercise equipment offering Kinetix Health & Performance Center services including certified personal trainers, fitness classes, nutrition counseling, physical therapy, massage therapy and spa treatments. In addition, The Racquet Club features “The Cantina” for breakfast, lunch and dinner service. Patio dining is also available courtside or poolside. The main pool at The Racket Club is a Junior Olympic size. Additionally there are several community pools and spas located throughout the community. The Racquet Club coordinates very popular leagues for Bocce Ball and Pickleball.

Rancho La Quinta Country Club is one of many golf clubs mentioned in our Golf Resource Guide. This guide outlines golf club prices, locations and home price ranges.

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January 26, 2015

What will it be today? Golf, pickleball or both?

Over the last few years I’ve been hearing more and more about pickleball. It’s definitely a sport that is gaining a lot of players here in La Quinta, Palm Desert, Palm Springs and the greater Coachella Valley, and that seems to reflect a growing interest all around the country. According to Tennis Club Business Magazine, pickleball is growing faster than any other sport in the country.

An abundance of courts
It’s a sport that’s played with paddles and combines elements of tennis, squash and table tennis. The court is smaller than a tennis court (the size of a double badminton court) and often pickleball is played on adapted tennis courts. There are a lot of dedicated players in our area and one pickleball court directory listed 11 places to play in Palm Desert alone! In La Quinta, there are pickleball courts at PGA West.

To give you an idea of how quickly this sport is catching on, one survey of some local tennis courts found that over about a one-month period, 234 pickleball players used the courts compared to 54 tennis players.

The sport gives players a great workout and is a lot of fun while at the same time it’s a bit easier on the body. It started out as a backyard game for kids, then became popular with older players and now there are national competitive divisions for virtually every age group.

Ideal for socializing
Its increased popularity up and down the Palm Springs area is testimony to the active lifestyle here: If you participate in a sport, you’ll find plenty of people to play with when you have a home in La Quinta or any of the surrounding communities. Of course, sports like this are always great ways to meet people and make new friends.

Historically, that social quality has been one of golf’s greatest attributes. Not only is the sport a wonderful way to get some exercise and enjoy the outdoors, golf provides a time when friends and family can enjoy one another’s company and perhaps engage in some good-humored competition. (I also need to mention that by most accounts, pickleball was invented by a couple of golfers who wanted to create something that their kids could enjoy.)

Our Free Golf Course Guide
I’ve told you where some pickleball courts are, but if you want to see the relative location of golf courses here, you need to download our Golf Resource Guide. You’ll get the “lay of the land” as it relates to all the great courses plus the towns and neighborhoods where you would enjoy living. These include communities like The Mountain Estates, The Enclave, La Quinta Resort Spa Villas, Los Estados, Puerta Azul, Santa Rosa Cove and many more.

Browsing our guide, you’ll see that golf courses including Mountain View Country Club, PGA West, The Hideaway, The Tradition, The Citrus Club, The Palms Golf Club, Silver Rock Golf Resort and many other fabled courses are always nearby. Our guide lays them all out for you so you can get the ideal overview.

When it’s time to go beyond an “overview” and get into the specifics of what best suits your needs, we’re here to answer your questions and help you focus your search. We would be privileged to serve you.

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January 9, 2015

The Winner Is: Award Season in Palm Springs!

Check out at this lineup of celebrities: Reese Witherspoon, Benedict Cumberbatch, Michael Keaton, Steve Carell, Julianne Moore, Brad Pitt and Robert Downey, Jr.

It looks like every supermarket tabloid editor’s dream for front page hot gossip news stories, doesn’t it?

Actually, these notables were among the glitterati who recently attended the Palm Springs International Film Festival gala awards festivities at the Palm Spring Convention Center. My husband and I were fortunate to be among the attendees as well, so we got a good dose of star exposure that evening.

Attendance is up
As with many events staged in Palm Springs, La Quinta and the general Coachella Valley area, the film festival awards evening has grown significantly since it started back in 2002. Festival Chairman Harold Matzner told us that night that only 200 people attended the first awards gala. This year, there were 2,400 of us in the audience.

You may have seen some of the winning films throughout the evening. Among the titles honored were “Gone Girl,” “Selma,” “Whiplash,” “The Judge,” “Boyhood,” “Still Alice,” “The Theory of Everything,” “Birdman,” “The Imitation Game” and “Wild.”

If you’re a film buff at all, take a close look at that list. You may want to try to see any you have missed. The Palm Springs International Film Festival is the first movie awards event of the year and many times what happens here gives us a clue as to which actors, directors and producers will be walking away with Oscars in their hands later in the season.

January is a busy time
Events on the desert often foreshadow things that occur throughout the year. I don’t know if the film festival organizers selected January in the Coachella Valley because our weather is so nice, but I do know that the professional golfers roll into town this time of year because of the climate.

This year the Humana Challenge in partnership with the Clinton Foundation comes to PGA West and La Quinta Country Club from January 19-25. This was formerly the Bob Hope Classic. I know that our local golfers are anxious to see how the pros look at the beginning of the season.

Will Tiger Woods get back to form? As I write this it’s not known exactly who will play, but one favorite – Phil Mickelson – has said that he’ll be in La Quinta for sure. Last year the Humana field of players ended up claiming 20 PGA Tour titles, including the golfer who won the FedExCup title – Billy Horschel!

As I close today’s article, I want to reflect on how wonderful it is to live in a place where you can attend an event with the celebrities I mentioned in my opening and then play a round of golf on a course that will soon host pros like Phil Mickelson battling it out for their share of a $5.7 million purse.

Live where the pros play
Not only that, you can live in the communities that surround the PGA West and La Quinta CC. And, if you’re familiar with La Quinta, Indian Wells and Coachella Valley real estate, you know that the offerings range far wider than those two. For example, the La Quinta Resort has three great courses and several communities.

The best way to give yourself an introduction to the courses and the communities is to download our free guide to Palm Springs Area Golf Clubs. You’ll see all the courses, towns and communities, as well as restaurants and other notable commercial areas. The guide also include some relative pricing information, for both homes and memberships.

Of course, it’s just a start. When you want to learn more, give us a call and we can answer all your questions.

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