"I say to my friend, 'I'm going to the beach in the desert,' and they're like, 'There isn't a beach in the desert.'" Dolores Hamann moved into Disney's Cotino community in Rancho Mirage earlier this year, and she still gets that reaction from friends back home. She's not wrong to enjoy the confusion. Cotino Bay is a real, 24-acre turquoise lagoon built with Crystal Lagoons technology, sitting on ground that used to be open desert along Monterey Avenue.
What her friends don't know yet, and what most of Rancho Mirage doesn't know yet either, is that this fall the lagoon and the town built around it stop being a private amenity for the roughly 30 households who had closed on a home there as of February 2026. A public town center called Cotino Bay Beach, Dining and Shops is scheduled to open on the north side of the lagoon, and for the first time, anyone in Rancho Mirage will be able to buy a ticket and walk onto that beach without owning a piece of the 618-acre development around it.
That's the part of this story that keeps getting buried under the Disney headlines. Most coverage so far has centered on home prices, running from roughly $1.3 million to more than $4 million according to public records, and on whether a brand-managed master-planned community will hold its value on resale. Those are fair questions if you're shopping for a home there. But if you already live in Rancho Mirage and have zero interest in buying into Cotino, the more immediate news is what opens to the public this fall, and what it actually costs to walk in the door.
What Actually Opens This Fall
Four businesses have signed leases for the first phase of the town center, which sits off Monterey Avenue between Gerald Ford Drive and Frank Sinatra Drive, roughly 45,000 square feet of dining, retail, and entertainment space according to the project's own announcement.
| Tenant | Footprint | What Opens |
|---|---|---|
| Elevare | 8,000 sq. ft. | Waterfront restaurant, open for lunch and dinner daily plus weekend brunch, with a terrace facing the lagoon and the San Jacinto Mountains |
| Artigiano | 3,000 sq. ft. | First U.S. café for the 26-year-old Vancouver coffee brand |
| On the Mark Fine Foods & Provisions | 3,700 sq. ft. | Second location of the Palm Springs specialty market, more than double the size of the original |
| Khaga Yoga | 2,000 sq. ft. | Two studios plus a retail boutique, with classes for adults, kids, and families |
None of these are placeholder tenants waiting for something bigger to come along. Elevare was designed by Ignisio Studios and is being built out by Oak View Group, the same operator that handles food and beverage programming for large-scale entertainment venues, which tells you Disney is treating this restaurant as a destination in its own right rather than a resort amenity that happens to be open to the public.
Why a Vancouver Coffee Brand Picked Rancho Mirage First
Artigiano has been roasting and serving coffee in Vancouver for more than 26 years. When the company decided to cross the border for the first time, it didn't choose Los Angeles, San Diego, or even Palm Springs proper. It chose a town center still under construction in Rancho Mirage.
That's worth sitting with for a second. A brand with a quarter century of reputation to protect made its first U.S. bet on a location that, as of this writing, has no track record of foot traffic, no established restaurant row, and no guarantee that the day-pass model for the lagoon will draw the numbers Disney is projecting. Artigiano's opening will use the same 100% Arabica blends and European-style café menu the brand built its name on in Vancouver, brought in whole rather than adapted down for a resort crowd. For a Rancho Mirage resident, that's a signal worth noticing: whatever data Disney and its retail partners are looking at, it's telling them this corner of the valley can support something with genuine outside pedigree, not just another hotel coffee counter.
On the Mark Isn't Just Adding a Second Register
The most locally rooted name on that tenant list is On the Mark Fine Foods & Provisions, a specialty market that built its reputation in Palm Springs. According to reporting from the Coachella Valley Independent last fall, the Rancho Mirage location will be more than twice the size of the original Palm Springs store, with more room to sit down and eat rather than just grab and go. The owners also told the outlet they plan to add fresh produce and meat to the shop, categories the flagship store doesn't carry in the same way.
That's a meaningfully different bet than opening a satellite counter. A local business doubling its footprint and expanding its product line for a second location is a statement about where its owners think the growth is happening in the valley, and it's happening in Rancho Mirage, not in an expansion of the original Palm Springs store.
The Membership Costs $20,000 to Join. The Beach Doesn't.
Here's the tension that makes this story more than a list of new storefronts. Cotino already has a private amenity built around this same lagoon. The Artisan Club, which opened to residents this past fall, requires a $20,000 initiation fee plus annual dues, and that membership is currently available only to people who own a home in Cotino. It comes with its own restaurant and the Parr House, a two-story clubhouse modeled on the family home from Pixar's Incredibles 2.
The town center opening this fall runs on a different model entirely. Access to Cotino Bay Beach through the public side will work on ticketed day passes, priced separately from anything tied to homeownership. Disney hasn't released exact pricing yet, but the mechanism itself is confirmed across the company's own materials and independent reporting: pay for a day, not for a deed. For residents elsewhere in Rancho Mirage, that's the actual headline. The most talked-about amenity in the city's newest development doesn't require the $1.3 million buy-in to use, just a ticket.
What the People Already Living There Will Tell You
None of this comes without a real caveat, and the people who moved in early are the ones best positioned to give it. Joe Belshin and his wife Amy bought into Cotino in late 2025 after considering other second-home markets, including Mammoth Lakes and Sun Valley, before settling on Rancho Mirage. Belshin told USA Today what drew him in wasn't the Disney name so much as the planning behind it.
"We wanted a community, and it seems like they know what they're doing in developing that."
He was also blunt about the state of the site as of this spring: "Cotino, when they say it's under construction, they're not kidding, it is under construction." That's a fair warning for anyone driving out to see the town center for themselves this fall. Dolores Hamann, who moved in with her husband Dennis after selling a home in Rancho Las Palmas Country Club, described the earliest weeks as isolating. "I felt like I was camping out in the wilderness," she said of arriving before most of the surrounding construction had wrapped.
Neither of those quotes should scare off curiosity about the fall opening. They're a useful reset on expectations. The town center is a genuine amenity, but it's opening inside a project that will keep building for years.
The Scale Behind the Storefronts
It helps to see the four fall tenants against the size of what they're part of. Cotino covers 618 acres and is approved for just over 1,900 homes and condos at full buildout. The first phase is only about 300 of those homes, and public records reviewed by the Desert Sun put the number sold, as of February 2026, at around 30. Ground broke on the project in April 2022, and residents didn't start moving in until 2025.
Put another way, the town center opening this fall is arriving well ahead of the neighborhood it's meant to eventually serve. Disney has said future plans include a hotel and additional retail space beyond this first 45,000-square-foot phase, but none of that has a confirmed timeline yet. What's confirmed is Elevare, Artigiano, On the Mark, and Khaga Yoga, all set to open this fall, all open to the public, and all sitting on a stretch of Monterey Avenue that most of Rancho Mirage has driven past for years without much to stop for.
That's the actual shift happening in town this fall. Not a new subdivision quietly filling in behind a gate, but a new public gathering spot on a road every Rancho Mirage resident already knows, with a beach at the end of it that doesn't check your address at the door.
Whether you're watching Cotino take shape out of curiosity or wondering what a project of this scale means for property values and everyday life nearby, it helps to have someone who has watched Rancho Mirage change for more than two decades in your corner. Lori Ebeling has been tracking how developments like this ripple through the surrounding market, and she's always glad to talk through what it means for your own corner of the valley. Reach out to schedule a 15-minute consultation whenever you're ready.
