Video: Artisan market “The Place” opens in downtown Indio
Downtown Indio has a new artisan marketplace of its own “The Place”
- A new live music venue, which will also serve bagels and artisanal sodas, is headed to downtown Indio.
- The Desert Rat will replace Little Street Music Hall, which closed after a lease dispute with the city.
- The new business is part of a boom in downtown Indio that includes shops, restaurants, apartments and a new library and city hall.
A new live music venue is slated to bring tunes — and bagels — to the space that until recently housed Indio’s Little Street Music Hall and Encore Coffee.
On Sept. 17, the Indio City Council approved a five-year agreement to lease the nearly 5,400-square-foot space on the southeast corner of Miles and Oasis Avenue to a company called FFC Touring LLC.
The company is owned by Ron Mesh, who has worked as an audio engineer and tour manager for Guns N’ Roses and other big name bands. Mesh owns recording and mixing studios in both Indio and Palm Springs.
A city staff report says the space will house a “combined Brooklyn-style soda fountain, bagel shop and intimate live music venue” called The Desert Rat. The World Famous Repairland instrument repair shop is also moving in and will share the space, according to the report.
“During the day, the venue will serve fresh kettle-boiled bagels, rotating cream cheese blends, and artisanal sodas, creating a vibrant community space open seven days a week from morning to night,” wrote Miguel Ramirez-Cornejo, the city’s director of economic development. “Evenings will feature a diverse schedule of live music, from local bands to nationally recognized acts, along with film nights, open mics, themed events, and family-friendly activities.”
What happened to Little Street Music Hall?
The new lease agreement comes about two months after the closure of Little Street Music Hall and Encore Coffee, which had been serving up coffee and shows since opening in July 2023.
The owners of that business posted a video to social media in July in which they said that discussions about extending their lease but those discussions broke down after they could not see eye to eye with the city about certain unspecified issues.
A spokesperson for the city of Indio, Jessica Mediano, told The Desert Sun at the time that the city was focused on ensuring city-owned buildings were being used throughout the day. Mediano said the city had attempted to collaborate with the business’ owners to ensure a successful outcome.
The space was purchased by the city in 2008 as part of a yearslong effort to spur a downtown renaissance by buying up vacant and sometimes blighted buildings which would then be rented to businesses that would bring new investment and vitality to the area.
Little Street was among the first such businesses to open but has been followed by a steady stream of others, including restaurants Indio Taphouse and Gabino’s Creperie and the Rosemary HiFi vinyl listening bar.
The opening of new businesses in both city- and privately-owned spaces has continued recently, with an artisan market called The Place and the Coachella Valley’s first location of the Culture Cannabis Club both opening in recent weeks.
Under the terms of the lease, FFC Touring will begin paying rent for the space in April 2027 at a rate of about $2,700 a month, about $1,000 more than was paid by the owners of Little Street Music Hall and Encore Coffee. However, the lease also states that the city will provide up to $180,000 to be used for design, construction and making improvements to the building. The lease also stipulates that the business must operate seven days a week for at least six hours a day.
Another live music venue for Coachella Valley
The Desert Rat will help add to what has been a growing collection of music-related businesses in the downtown area of the city best known for hosting the annual Coachella and Stagecoach music festivals. Other downtown music-related ventures include the Music House store, the Rock and Records record store and Rosemary HiFi.
The bar’s opening will also add another venue for smaller shows and gigs for up-and-coming acts in a valley whose live musical offerings have been dominated as of late by shows at local casinos and Acrisure Arena; jazz and other niche events at venues like Palm Springs’ Purple Room; and, of course, the heavy-hitter events that are Coachella, Stagecoach and Splash House.
But it wasn’t so long ago that the valley was home to a more robust local music scene that gave rise to nationally known acts such as Queens of the Stone Age and Eagles of Death Metal, plus a bevy of local acts that could draw a crowd at smaller venues. Now, the opening of the reimagined Red Barn in Palm Desert, Mojave Gold in Yucca Valley and, eventually, The Desert Rat in Indio suggest the desert could be getting the critical mass of smaller, more accessible venues needed to cultivate that kind of scene again.
But the relatively short lives of both Little Street Music Hall and the Alibi in Palm Springs, which opened in 2019 and closed three years later after a rocky run that saw the business struggle to emerge from the pandemic, suggest ample challenges remain.
Restaurants, apartments and more coming to downtown Indio
The Desert Rat is the latest planned addition to downtown Indio. Here is what else opened recently or is in the works:
- The first Coachella Valley outpost of the Painted Dough gourmet donut chain is in the works across Oasis Street from where The Desert Rat will be located. Its owners told The Desert Sun in July that they hoped to begin serving donuts from the space this fall.
- A coffee shop and roastery called Saguaro Coffee is in the works at 45151 Oasis Street.
- Indio-based candlemaker Mijo Candles is opening its first retail candle store at 45073 Oasis Street next month.
- A new library and city hall are being constructed. The city recently posted on social media that the library is nearly complete and an opening date will be announced in coming days while the city hall is slated to be completed next year.
- A number of apartment buildings are in the works as developers seek to make a more walkable downtown, in hopes new residents will patronize the new businesses already open or on their way.
Paul Albani-Burgio covers growth, development and business in the Coachella Valley. Email him at [email protected].
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.desertsun.com ’
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