Chapter 03 of 15 · about 10 min read · updated October 2026

03The grounds

For most of its life, Coachella was a tenant. Every spring Goldenvoice rented a private polo club in Indio, built a festival on the grass, took it down, and gave the grass back to the horses. Before October 2021, its arrangement with Empire Polo Club covered only the festival calendar.¹⁴ Then the tenant took the keys. Goldenvoice now runs the place all year, on a lease that runs through 2050.⁵⁶

This chapter is about the land: who owns it, how much of it there is, what the city of Indio allows on it, and how one patch of desert turns into a country festival in a single week.

Whose polo club

Empire Polo Club was founded in 1987 by Alexander "Al" Haagen III, a player who had taken up the sport four years earlier and who would be patron of the Empire team for 30 years.¹⁰ The money behind it came from shopping centers: Haagen was vice chairman of his family's developer, Alexander Haagen Properties, and as a college-age construction supervisor had helped build its first center, in Rosemead, in 1963.¹¹ One source credits plain "Alexander Haagen" with the founding, which could mean the father.⁹ The Polo Museum names the son, and so does Paul Tollett, who calls him "Al Haagen."¹⁴

Goldenvoice first came to the club in 1993, when Tollett and Rick Van Santen staged a Pearl Jam show on the polo grounds.⁹ It was Goldenvoice's first show at Empire, booked while the band was at the height of its fight with Ticketmaster.³ Coachella followed in 1999, and Stagecoach in 2007.¹⁴ By 2021, Tollett could say Goldenvoice had "a unique relationship with Empire Polo Club for over twenty-five years."¹⁴

The club's own address is 81-800 Avenue 51, Indio.⁵⁷ Everything else in this chapter happens around it.

Buying the neighbors

In March 2012, Goldenvoice announced it had bought about 280 acres around the festival site.⁵⁸ The package included Eldorado Polo Club, Triangle Bar Farms, Fish Creek and the property of Ambassador Glen Holden.⁵⁹ The price was not disclosed.⁵⁸

Tollett's reason was practical. The land would "help us put in some infrastructure so we don't have to keep coming back and doing the same things each year."⁵⁸

The biggest piece, the 200-acre Eldorado Polo Club, belonged to Eldorado Lake Farms, a group of 19 player-owners.⁶⁰ The festival had already been using it for parking and camping.⁵⁹⁶⁰ The deal came with a leaseback: polo would keep the fields each winter, roughly November 1 to early April.⁶⁰ That arrangement is the hinge of the next chapter.

When did the money actually change hands? The 2012 reports said escrow would close in about 60 days.⁶⁰ Wikipedia dates the purchase to 2013 and puts it at $30 million.¹⁸ A local blog post from July 2013 is headlined as Goldenvoice closing escrow on 200 acres for "$30+ million," but it could not be opened for this piece. The likeliest story is an announcement in 2012 and a close in 2013. Riverside County's deed records would settle it.

How big is it, exactly

Nobody agrees, and the disagreement is mostly about what counts.

The field counts disagree too. The Polo Museum calls Empire an "11-field facility."¹⁰ Palm Springs Life says "a dozen grass polo fields."⁹ The US Polo Association (USPA) said 14 grass fields and two indoor arenas in 2016, a count that may include Empire's separate Calhoun Ranch fields.⁶⁴

The honest summary: the polo club is the middle, the festival spills well past it, and the total depends on whether you count the parking lots. Nobody has published a map that matches stages to numbered polo fields.

The city's terms

Indio does not own the land, but it decides what happens on it, and most of the site's shape comes from a handful of votes.

The tax standoff. In July 2012 the city considered an admissions tax of 5-10% on events over 2,500 people. That would have added about $36 a ticket. Tollett said 2013 could be the last year in Indio, and that the festivals would skip 2014 and find a new home for 2015.⁶⁵

The 2013 deal. A year later the council voted 4-0 to keep the festivals in Indio through at least 2030. Goldenvoice's per-ticket payment to the city rose from $2.33 to $5.01, starting in 2014. The deal allowed up to five festivals a year on the site.⁶⁶ That clause is why Desert Trip and Power Trip could happen in October (see the next chapter).

The 2016 cap. Goldenvoice asked to grow. The council approved Coachella going from 99,000 to 125,000 people a day and Stagecoach from 75,000 to 85,000, phased in.⁵⁴⁶⁷ The mayor promised the increase would be "gradual over time."⁶⁷ The cap is still 125,000 a day.⁶⁸

Who actually shows up. The state's alcohol regulator, which sends 30-35 agents to each weekend, counted daily peaks of nearly 110,000 at Coachella and about 82,000 at Stagecoach in 2025.⁶⁹ So the site runs below its legal ceiling, at least by that count.

The 2050 extension. In August 2021 the council voted 3-1 to extend the development agreement from 2030 to 2050. Councilmember Oscar Ortiz voted no, citing the length and the lack of community outreach. The attendance cap and the number of festivals did not change.⁷⁰

What the city gets now. In 2024 Indio collected $2.658 "per ticket/per day," just over $2 million in total.⁵⁵ How that squares with the $5.01 figure from 2013 is not obvious from the public record. The money chapter digs into it.

The curfew. The curfew is part of the contract with Indio, reported as 1 a.m. on Friday and Saturday and midnight on Sunday.⁷¹ Go five minutes over and the festival owes $20,000, then $1,000 for every minute after that, paid into the city's general fund.⁷²

The year-round lease

On October 27, 2021, Goldenvoice announced it would take "year-round operational control" of Empire Polo Club under a long-term lease with the Haagen family. The deal also put Goldenvoice in charge of the Empire Grand Oasis in Thermal, and opened both properties to "special events, sporting events, and private functions."¹⁴ Press reports put the lease at through 2050, matching the city deal.⁵⁶ Wikipedia calls it a 28-year lease, which lands in the same place.⁶²

The agreement also allowed two additional large-scale festivals on the site every year.⁶¹

What it ended was polo. Some of the club's staff were laid off on three days' notice, and polo stopped being played at Empire.⁷³ That story, and where the horses went, is the next chapter.

The beer gardens, and the end of them

For its first 23 years, Coachella kept its drinkers fenced in. You bought a beer inside a beer garden or the craft beer area and stayed there until you finished it. Guards at the exits made sure.⁷⁴

That changed quietly. The Desert Sun dates a loose, unofficial start to 2023 and the first clear year of walk-around drinking to 2024. Staff check IDs and give anyone 21 or older a wristband, and bars are scattered across the grounds. The beer gardens are still there, but nobody stops you at the gate any more. A 16-ounce Heineken was $15.⁷⁴ The Independent reported that the change followed complaints from 21-plus attendees.⁷⁵

Stagecoach, on the same grass, has always let people walk with a drink.⁷⁴

Why Coachella fenced alcohol in for so long is not on the record. It could have been a condition of the state liquor license, a term of Indio's permit, or Goldenvoice's own policy for an all-ages crowd. No source found for this piece says which.

The drinking spaces have their own history. Heineken has been the official beer since 2002; by 2014 it was in its 13th year.⁷⁶ Heineken House replaced the sponsor's domes that year, with sets by Skrillex, Outkast and Lorde.⁷⁶ In 2019 it was rebuilt with what its sponsor called a first-ever 21-plus beer garden, and De La Soul and The Roots played it.⁷⁷ The Craft Beer Barn arrived in 2014, built by Tony Yanow of Tony's Darts Away and Mohawk Bend at the invitation of Nic Adler. It poured 120-150 beers from no more than 40 taps, and it was cash only.⁷⁸

The rose garden

The oldest decoration on the grounds predates the festival. The Rose Garden Field, Field No. 3, was Empire's main Sunday polo field. Along its south side runs a garden of about 8,000 rose bushes in 107 varieties, with a life-size bronze called "She Gave Her Best" by Rich Roenisch.¹² Today it is marketed as a three-acre venue with statues, fountains, three Victorian gazebos and a 5,000-square-foot indoor pavilion.⁷⁹ Who planted it, and when, is not on the record.

At Coachella it is the VIP area: a walled-off garden of flowers, sculptures and palms, with air-conditioned restrooms and bars.⁸⁰ Every night of both weekends, the traveling dinner series Outstanding in the Field sets a long table there for about 200 guests.⁸¹ In 2025 a seat cost $350, on top of the VIP pass.⁸⁰

The garden has also been a neighbor to the noise. For years the Sahara, the dance tent, sat at the far edge of the grounds next to what became the Rose Garden VIP area.⁸² It stayed there until 2018.⁸³

The Rose Garden is not part of Stagecoach.⁸⁴

The landmarks

On a site this big, people navigate by the things that stick up.

The Ferris wheel. It belongs to Ray Cammack Shows, a Phoenix-area carnival family in business since 1963.⁸⁵ It was in place by 2010; nobody has pinned down its first year.³⁰ The current wheel, La Grande XL, replaced the original La Grande Wheel in 2017. It arrives on 20 semis and has 36 air-conditioned gondolas and more than 500,000 LEDs.⁸⁶ The build depends on who you ask: a 70-ton crane, 10 crew and five days, says the company's vice president in a 2026 report;⁸⁶ a 60-ton crane and about 10 days, says an undated Phoenix New Times piece, which also gives the wheel's height as 150 feet.⁸⁵ The two may describe different wheels. The rest of the year it tours fairs and rodeos.⁸⁶

Spectra. The seven-story spiral tower with an observation deck was commissioned in 2018 from Patrick O'Mahony's UK studio, Newsubstance. It was supposed to come down after 2020. Covid delays and fan affection kept it up, and it is now treated as a permanent feature of the festival.⁸⁷ "I don't think there's any other festival in the world that would commission something like this," O'Mahony said.⁸⁷ Whether it stands all year, through the summers and the soccer tournament, no source says outright.

The Sahara. Its concrete footing sits about two feet below the grass, permanent, while the tent above it has been put up and taken down each spring.⁸² In 2024 it moved for the second time, into a new steel structure between Avenue 51 and Polo Road, on about 1,500 tons of concrete poured overnight starting in December. Goldenvoice's Jason Brown called it a "whole new area of the venue that we've never been into before."⁸³

Even the water features work. Medjhool Lake, on the property, also supplies the trucks that spray down the dust during the festival.¹³

The flip to Stagecoach

Coachella's Sunday crowd leaves, and the changeover starts behind them. It runs through Monday and the rest of the week, until the grounds are a country-western venue.⁸⁸

Some things don't move. The Ferris wheel stays in the same spot for both festivals, and Spectra stays as a permanent installation.⁸⁴ Everything else gets a costume change:

• The Mojave tent becomes Palomino.
• Yuma becomes Diplo's Honkytonk.
• The air-conditioned Sonora becomes the Bud Light Backyard.
• Gobi becomes the Yellowstone Dutton Ranch.
• The craft beer barn is renamed for Guy Fieri.⁸⁴

The main stage turns too. Stagecoach's Mane Stage is set 90 degrees clockwise from where Coachella's biggest stage stood.⁸⁴ In 2014, Rat Sound's crew described the main stage moving to the old Outdoor Theatre site, with half the Sahara's gear taken out.⁸⁹ The Sahara is not part of Stagecoach, though you can see it in the distance. Most of the big art leaves, replaced by a horse sculpture and a cowboy boot. The green grass is mostly gone by then. Stagecoach allows lawn chairs; Coachella does not.⁸⁴

The smaller festival is not the smaller draw. In 2024 Indio counted 89,003 Stagecoach tickets, against 81,690 for Coachella's first weekend and 80,148 for its second.⁵⁵ Stagecoach also gets the end of the season's wind: on April 25, 2026, with gusts of 50-65 mph forecast, it was paused and evacuated for about an hour and a half.⁹⁰

The crew window covers all of it. AEG's 2025 stagehand posting asked for availability from March 17 to May 9, with the expected work running March 30 to May 3.⁹¹ Five weeks, three weekends, one patch of grass.

Still open

• When the 2012 land purchase closed, and for how much. Riverside County's deed records should say.
• A current, official acreage figure, from Goldenvoice or Indio's planning department.
• Why drinks were fenced in for 23 years: license condition, permit term or policy?
• Whether Spectra stands all year, and which numbered polo fields sit under which stages.