“Gateway community” is a term one hears a lot around the Morongo Basin these days, especially in Twentynine Palms where the city council meets tonight instead of its usual Tuesday. Reporter David Haldane explains…
If not one kind of gateway, perhaps another. That may be the upshot of tonight’s meeting of the Twentynine Palms City Council which recently turned down a request to promote tourism through a group called Gateway Communities. Tonight, however, it will consider partnering with the federal Bureau of Land Management as a gateway community of another kind: into the Mojave Trails National Monument.
That’s the 941,000-acre Mojave Desert preserve created last year which, among other things, includes a long stretch of historic Route 66. Becoming a BLM gateway, a staff report asserts, will “promote the adjacent public lands… and provide quality service to the public.”
Ah, but the other kind of tourism is far from dead. A final item on the agenda establishes an advisory board for the newly created Tourism Business Improvement District expected to take effect soon.
Tonight’s meeting gets underway 6 p.m. at City Hall on Adobe Road.
