Rancho Mirage, CA

There is a certain kind of magic that settles over the Coachella Valley—a quiet, sun-lit kind of magic that Walt Disney himself once sought when he slipped away from Los Angeles and found refuge in the desert. Beginning in the late 1930s, Walt and his wife Lillian would come to Palm Springs, eventually becoming members of Smoke Tree Ranch. By the late 1940s he had built a home there, a modest desert retreat where he could breathe, ride horses, dream freely, and return to the simple rhythms that allowed his imagination to reset. That place shaped him. It grounded him. And it became one of the rare locations in his life where Walt could simply be Walt, without the weight of a studio on his shoulders.

So when Disney announced Cotino—a new community in Rancho Mirage—many people saw a luxury subdivision. But I saw something else: the continuation of Walt’s personal story in the very landscape that restored him. Even the name “Cotino,” drawn from Cotinus (the smoke-tree), is a deliberate nod back to the Smoke Tree Ranch that gave him joy. It is Disney circling back to the place Walt once called his “laughing place,” and offering others a way to live inside a story shaped not by fantasy, but by a sense of ease, beauty, and intentional living.

Cotino is more than homes around a large lake; it is an engineered oasis designed to make you feel as if you have stepped into a world where the ordinary rules fall away. The 24-acre lagoon in the center looks impossibly blue, as if the Mediterranean had somehow wandered into the desert and decided to stay. It takes extraordinary infrastructure to make that illusion feel effortless—crystal-clear water systems, thoughtful circulation, edge-to-edge shoreline design, shaded landscapes, and hospitality operations working quietly in the background to maintain the calm blue serenity that defines the place. But good design always hides the work, and here the work exists only so you can forget it.

When you move through Cotino, you sense immediately that the environment was built to be lived in, not just looked at. The clubhouse feels like a private resort infused with a gentle Disney sensibility—never loud, never cartoonish, always intentional. You can take a golf cart down to the water, drift along the paths, or settle into that soft desert evening light that has lured artists and dreamers here for generations. It is the kind of space where people who’ve worked hard, succeeded, and earned a slower pace can rediscover themselves and enjoy the fruits of their lives without apology.

Disney knows exactly what it’s offering: consistency, hospitality, and a curated sense of escape. You walk into the community and you know, instantly, what kind of experience you will receive—because Disney has been delivering reliability and wonder for nearly a century. The difference here is that the wonder is quiet. It takes the form of clean lines, well-kept paths, a sparkling lagoon, and a lifestyle where you can slip away from the world without ever getting on a plane. For some people, that is gilded nonsense. But for others—especially those of us who crave a place where our creativity, our peace, and our sense of self can breathe—it feels like home.

This community isn’t for everyone. But then again, neither is the Coachella Valley. People come here when they want space. When they want beauty. When they want to remember who they are without the noise of the world pressing in. Many come here to reinvent themselves. Many come to rest. Many come to peel back the layers of life until only the essential remains. Walt did. And Cotino, in its own way, honors that impulse.

For those fortunate enough to live there, it offers something rare: the ability to step into that feeling every single day. To wander down to the clubhouse. To take in the light on the water. To slip into a version of life where the world feels a little softer and a little less demanding. For the rest of us, we will continue to visit the Disney parks, collecting those beautiful flashes of imagination one trip at a time. And that may be enough, because we are still busy creating our own visions, building our own futures, and shaping our communities with the same spirit of imagination that Walt carried with him into this valley.

Cotino is more than a development—it is a reminder. A reminder that our visions do not have to stay locked in our minds. They can become real. Walt learned that truth here in the desert. And through the Imagineers who built on his legacy, that truth still lives, inviting each of us to keep imagining, keep creating, and keep shaping the world around us into something worthy of the dreams we carry.

About the author.  

Marty Treinen is an Artrepreneur, arts educator, writer, and co-authored with D. Wesley Spencer,  Universal Creative Intelligence: How the Arts and Sciences Propel Human Experience. His career bridges the arts across the full spectrum of creative practice, cultural experience, and education—all grounded in the belief that the creative process is essential to human evolution. Treinen’s work underscores how creativity shapes not only how we tell stories but also how we live them.