CVEP’s Efforts for a ‘Greater’ Palm Springs

For more than 26 years, CVEP has been a contributing driver in the economy of Greater Palm Springs. As businesses invest, grow, and engage in our community, all local industries, companies and residents can reap the benefits. CVEP and its partners all want to see a region with a diversified base of jobs and investment. Below are just some of the initiatives that CVEP spearheads or is involved in every day, to drive innovation and enterprise.

1. iHubs: Over the last ten years, CVEP has attracted or inspired 86 start-up companies to join our iHub programs. We currently have 26 businesses in the program. We offer business advice from counselors who have actually attracted and invested venture capital all the way through public stock offerings. We have a 43,000 square foot accelerator campus on the airport grounds where our companies can actually manufacture their products without mortgaging their homes to cover the commercial rents. We remove the barriers to entrepreneurship.

2. Business Assistance: CVEP conducts seminars and counseling for businesses across the Coachella Valley. We typically have at least a seminar per month, and work with as many as 15 businesses per month to help them move forward. CVEP also holds the annual Economic Summit, providing the business community with crucial economic data to plan for the future.

3. Bandwidth: CVEP is working with the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) and the Coachella Valley Association of Governments (CVAG) to enhance and extend the fiber in the ground. Fiber is necessary for both 5G and speeds of 1 Gbps+. We have successfully secured a piggyback position to get conduit for fiber included in CVAG’s signal synchronization project. Fiber will follow that. The time frame is 2022-2024 to build out the Valley.

4. University: CVEP, the Greater Palm Springs Convention & Visitors Bureau (GPSCVB), and the City of Palm Desert formed a non-profit 501(c)4 with the sole purpose of securing funding from the state to expand the California State University (CSU) campus. We aim to assert influence over the Governor’s decision process. The original white paper on the subject came from CVEP.

5. Business Attraction: CVEP’s focus on business attraction is currently high-value telecommuters. There are now many highly skilled coastal tech workers who have learned how to work from home. The pandemic has created an opportunity to improve our workforce by being a less expensive place of beauty to live and work.

6. Future Visioning: We keep our fingers on the pulse of the world to see what needs to be done here to take advantage of it.

Find out more about how CVEP works together with our many partners and organizations throughout the region here.