Your Villa - Desert Cities - June-July - 2022

The Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians invites you to celebrate its history, culture, traditions and modern-day life with the anticipated opening of the Agua Caliente Cultural Plaza. The Cultural Plaza will open in the coming year on a 5.8-acre complex in downtown Palm Springs and features a new cultural museum and education garden; a luxurious, world-class spa featuring the Tribe’s ancient and sacred Agua Caliente Hot Mineral Spring; and a Gathering Plaza and Oasis Trail that links these cultural heritage destinations. The Tribe began planning and designing the Cultural Plaza in 2015 and celebrated the groundbreaking in May 2018. The entire complex includes meaningful architectural concepts that represent the Tribe’s heritage as well as the beautiful desert landscape that the Agua Caliente people have called home since time immemorial. The Museum building’s shape resembles a basket start with its circular shape and long, curved extended space. “This design feature represents basketmaking as a celebrated and ancient ritual and important cultural element to the Agua Caliente people,” says Scott P. Celella, principal and COO of JCJ Architecture, whose firm designed the Agua Caliente Cultural Plaza. The Museum includes a 36-seat theater that will share the Tribe’s Creation Story on a large 360 screen. From there, visitors will have the opportunity to explore several exhibit spaces throughout the building, each sharing a special aspect of the Tribe’s history and culture. The Cultural Plaza also features The Spa at Séc-he, a beautiful and unique spa facility that will once again allow visitors to enjoy the Tribe’s ancient, healing mineral waters by soaking in individual tubs filled with mineral water. The water has been bubbling up here for thousands of years, and soaking in these waters is an activity that the Agua Caliente people have shared with visitors for more than 125 years. “It came down to the Tribe wanting to share the experience of bathing in the hot mineral water within a carefully designed spa experience that could be shared not only with the Tribal Members but with the public at large,” Celella says. The Spa at Séc-he includes the 22 private mineral baths, Salt Cave, conducting grounding rooms, treatment rooms, a fitness room and health cafe, saunas, steam rooms, cryotherapy, zero-sensory flotation pods, hot tubs, and mineral pools. “Through this process we have created an open, dynamic, and environmentally responsible environment within a world-class spa,” Celella adds. “At the same time, the Tribe is revitalizing a tradition that has been practiced for thousands of years.” The Cultural Plaza features an outdoor Gathering Plaza and an interpretive Oasis Trail that runs through the middle of the campus and includes flowing water, sacred Washingtonia filifera palm trees and unique replica rock formations just like the ones found within the Agua Caliente ancestral homelands in the nearby Indian Canyons and Tahquitz Canyon. The Agua Caliente Cultural Plaza will provide visitors with a new opportunity to be inspired and explore culture, tradition and relaxation. Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians creates special place to celebrate and share culture Agua Caliente Cultural Plaza to open in downtown Palm Springs in coming year 8 | YourVilla Magazine