Life in a small town means many things: you have probably known your neighbor for many years; you remember when there weren’t so many traffic lights in Yucca Valley; and you may be one of the first people to notice when a new business pops up; or a building is getting renovated, as is the case with the old Happy Cooker space in Morongo Valley, the old Diamond Automotive building in Yucca Valley, and the old tractor store (most recently Action Automotive) in Joshua Tree . You may be wondering who has plans for those buildings and what they will become. Reporter Cassidy Taylor met with John Sofio, President and Founder of Built Inc., to discuss his plans for the Morongo Basin.
“For the local people too, you know, they need a really good place to relax.”
John Sofio isn’t just planning for tourists; his goals are also to provide spaces for locals. In Morongo Valley, the Happy Cooker space will become a coffee shop and potentially grow into a bar. As for the locations in Yucca Valley and Joshua Tree, you can expect to see new dining and retail experiences.
“A lot of outdoor dining, or at least a space for, you know, shoppers to come and relax and sit down and do some retail a little bit of light food.”
Sofio also plans to cater to the desert environment…
“So, I wonder why they do this, why the developers do this, why they clear cut and clear scrape the land and then leave one little Yucca or something on the site. And it’s horrific—I don’t understand why people would do that, the sites that we’re buying or that we bought are all like desert gardens, so I want to maintain that as much as possible.”
The projects are still in the early stages of development but for now, there is one less mystery in the Morongo Basin.
