Cotino Isn't Opening This Fall. Here's What Rancho Mirage Has Instead.
August 20, 2026
August 20, 2026
If someone told you the Disney community's waterfront town center on the north side of Rancho Mirage opens this fall, you were working from an old date. Cotino Bay Beach, Dining and Shops was announced back in October 2025 as a fall 2026 opening. Disney's own project page now lists it differently: projected opening, spring 2027. The company confirmed the shift in an August 6 announcement that also added six new tenants to the lineup, which means the delay and the expansion happened in the same breath. Worth knowing before you start planning a Saturday around a lagoon that isn't open yet.
That's not bad news for anyone who already lives here. It just means the fall calendar in Rancho Mirage belongs to the corridor you already know, not the one still under construction. Here's the accurate version of both.
The town center sits off Monterey Avenue between Gerald Ford and Frank Sinatra Drives, and the original four tenants are still the anchor of the plan: Elevare, a waterfront restaurant from Oak View Group with a terrace facing the San Jacinto Mountains; Artigiano, a 26-year-old Canadian coffee brand opening its first U.S. café in an 3,000-square-foot space; On the Mark Fine Foods & Provisions, doubling the footprint of its existing Palm Springs market for a second location; and Khaga Yoga, a two-studio wellness space with classes for kids and families.
The August update didn't touch that list. It added to it. Six new businesses signed on for the same first phase, and the mix leans local rather than national:
Ten confirmed tenants now, none of them open yet. That's the part the fall headlines skipped. A hotel and additional retail space are still described as future phases, with no date attached. If you're the kind of resident who likes to know before the crowds do, the honest answer is: not yet, and later than you were told.
While Cotino works through its second round of leasing, the older side of town has been busy in ways that don't need a projected opening date because they already happened.
The most significant is Double Date, the new dinner concept at the Omni Rancho Las Palmas Resort & Spa on Bob Hope Drive. Executive chef Jose Lopez, who has been with the Omni family for close to three decades, launched it in March 2026 with a California-Italian menu that leans into the valley's agricultural history. The resort's director of food and beverage, Thomas Shewmake, told Palm Springs Life the concept was "inspired by the Coachella Valley's reputation as the 'date capital of the world,'" a nod to the date farms that shaped this region long before golf courses did. Double Date runs nightly for dinner from 5 to 10 p.m., and it programs live music five nights a week, Wednesday through Sunday. Most resort restaurants treat weeknights as quiet service. This one doesn't.
The River hasn't stood still either. Cheers Coffee opened inside the mall earlier this year, giving the walking loop its first independently run coffee option alongside the chain restaurants. The Saturday amphitheater series is still running, still the closest thing this stretch of Highway 111 has to a front porch. And the Desert Arts Festival returns to The River November 27 through 29, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day, with free admission and free parking. It lands on the Friday, Saturday, and Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend, which solves a real problem if you're hosting family and need somewhere to send them for a couple of hours before dinner.
None of this requires waiting on a lagoon. The version of Rancho Mirage that's available to you this season is the one built around a restaurant with a chef who's been cooking here for thirty years, a coffee shop that opened a few months ago, and an arts festival with a confirmed date on the calendar. Cotino will get its turn. Spring 2027 is not far off in the scheme of things, and a lineup with SottoSopra and Asada Cantina in it is worth the wait. But if your plans for the next few months depend on a town center that hasn't opened, you're planning around a rumor instead of a restaurant.
The more useful habit, especially in a city that's actively building a second gathering hub two miles from the first one, is checking the source directly before you build a weekend around it. Developers announce timelines early and revise them often, and the revision doesn't always travel as far as the original headline did.
If you're weighing what a stretch of Rancho Mirage like this actually offers day to day, or thinking about how a corridor in transition affects the neighborhoods around it, I'm always glad to talk through what I'm seeing on the ground. Reach out to Catherine Joubert any time. Let's Connect.
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