Olga Trehub
Johnny, Juan Manuel, Claudia, and Camila Rose at Rancho 51.
It started with park lights. In 2019, Claudia and Johnny Alvarado couldn’t understand why the city of Coachella wouldn’t turn on the public park lights. Claudia was afraid her kids, Juan Manuel and Camilla, would break their legs kicking a soccer ball around in the dark. But, she was also concerned that the community wasn’t getting to use the parks at night, especially when it was too hot to go there during the day.
She went to the city for answers. “I went the first day,” Claudia recalls. “I was respectful. I said, ‘I need you guys to turn on the lights.’ They were like, ‘It’s not going to happen.’ And they laughed. I go the next Tuesday and I said, ‘I come in peace with a really good attitude today. So, please, help us.’ They laughed. I said, ‘I came here today with good energy. Now, you are going to see me with upset energy.’”
Little did the city bureaucrats know that Claudia and Johnny are well-versed in social media and all its platforms. A little film she made with her phone about her kids having to play in a dark park “goes massive,” Claudia says. “It explodes.” Several radio stations and Telemundo interviewed her. While the City Council’s heads were exploding from this sudden maelstrom, Claudia and Johnny received a tip from one of the supervisors about the city’s plentiful bank account — the city spent $60K on a single weekend event but balked about spending $50K to light the park for an entire year.
The Alvarados made this known to their growing army of supporters. It wasn’t long before the lights came on at the park.
Johnny was born and raised in Indio; his father immigrated from Mexico when he was 19. Claudia was born in Mexico but her parents immigrated to the U.S. when she was young. The couple knew each other at Indio High School but didn’t start dating until they were in college. Johnny went to Cal State University Dominguez Hills and Claudia attended LA’s FIDM (Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising). They had other things in common. They both had parents who worked continuously, sacrificed so their kids had access to higher education, and instilled an unstoppable work ethic in their kids.
That work ethic served them well in LA. “We owned a home, we invested, and we had made a lot of good moves throughout our 15 years in LA,” Claudia says.
Johnny went to work for Enterprise after college while Claudia worked in the fashion industry. Johnny says they were both making six-figure salaries and living the American dream — but it just felt off to both of them. “We would drop off our son at 7 a.m. and Claudia would pick him up at 7:30 p.m.,” Johnny says. “We had everything except quality of life and we finally decided, ‘This not going to work.’”
Within two weeks, they sold their home and everything they owned and moved their family back to the Coachella Valley. It was a huge leap into the unknown, but they had one thing going for them. “For Mexican-Americans, it is all about family … and we have a lot of family,” Claudia says. “My family owns a lot of event businesses. My mom is a decorator. My brother owns a photo booth business and my sister is an event coordinator. So, with me in and designing and selling thousand-dollar quinceañera dresses, it made sense. The point is, we are very united, and that’s what it’s all about for us.”
When Johnny was growing up, his father had a one-man gardening business and Johnny learned the basics. When they returned to the Valley, Johnny got a job in landscaping, doing sales and project management. Still, they hadn’t quite found the niche they wanted and kept looking for opportunities. At one point, Claudia was in such high demand for her quinceañera gowns that they realized she could no longer run her business out of the house. She rented a small casita so she could receive clients, but then outgrew it. Johnny started looking for warehouses. At the time, his landscaping business was right around the corner from the property that would become Rancho 51. He was intrigued by it and when he found out there was a warehouse on the eight-acre property, they thought, “Well, why not pay a mortgage instead of rent on a warehouse?”
They purchased the property in 2018. It was a working date farm, but the owner was in her 80s and left the running of the ranch to a subcontractor. Dates were harvested, but the property was a mess; there were huge stacks of dead palm fronds everywhere. Claudia says it took six months of hard, dirty work to get the property clean … but they had a deadline. They bought the property in March 2018 and booked their first quinceañera for the following October. They were on the clock.
While they were getting the property ready, they were also taken with the possibilities of the Coachella and Stagecoach festivals. They knew that several property owners had made some money by offering camping spaces. So, in April 2018, they did a “soft opening” of Rancho 51’s glamping experience but held it at Johnny’s parents’ house. They’d acquired some tents and lined up some food trucks and it was just enough of a success to convince them that they could make it a profitable business at their date ranch.
Speaking of dates, Johnny says one of the reasons that purchasing the property made sense was the fact that seven and a half acres of date trees produce nearly 60,000 pounds of dates per year. “It’s kind of like we inherited it because we didn’t come in to be date farmers,” Johnny says. “It was about the shade. But, then I realized that if we bought a property without dates … well, I said to Claudia, ‘I can’t sell dirt, but if we have the date ranch, then they can be our security blanket if we can’t make the [mortgage] payment.’”
“We had a very successful day,” Claudia says about the first quinceañera. “We had the family — nearly 200 people — come and celebrate. It was perfect.”
Thanks to the couple’s social media savvy, it wasn’t long until they were booked up nearly every weekend when the weather was nice. Claudia estimates that they now average 36 quinceañeras a season, and that’s not counting weddings, corporate events, and other celebrations. But, three weeks in April 2019 was blacked out so they could focus on their festival glamping vision.
There was now a huge lawn under the date palms that offered shade and a row of huge, potted date palms to block off the parking area. Using their extensive local network of friends and acquaintances, Claudia and Johnny were able to provide their festival guests with free yoga, food vendors and trucks, a slushy station, a masseuse, a beauty bar, and a DJ. They bought huge glamping tents off the internet so they could offer options such as a two-bed, fully furnished tent; people could pitch their own tents on campsites. Options ranged from $230 to $800 per night with a three-night minimum and approximately 120 guests, so the Alvarados were poised to make some serious bank. But, for Johnny, all profits were used to pay off what they’d already invested and the capital improvements (such as a 75-foot swimming pool) they planned on making for the following year’s festivals. “All my relatives were asking, ‘So, how was Coachella? How did you do?’” Johnny says. “And I just said, ‘I’m waiting for 2020.’”
Then, a month before Coachella 2020, the pandemic struck. The festival was canceled and so were all the reservations. It was a huge blow. Johnny put the pool on hold because he didn’t want to pay for maintenance before they knew when the festival would be back. However, one thing they did learn in 2019 was that their instincts had been right.
“The festivalgoers were great,” Claudia says. “We had the best guests. Not a bit of trash on the ground. So much respect. They may go over [to the festival] to rage and party, but when they come back here … they just want to relax. The atmosphere is very zen and peaceful.”
During the pandemic, the couple continued with their other projects, not the least of which was raising their kids, Juan Manuel, 8, and Camila Rose, 6. Claudia made quinceañera dresses and Johnny turned his attention to the profitability of their date operation. “The problem is that the packing houses pay us $1 per pound, but they retail them for $10 per pound,” Johnny says. “At $1 per pound, I can barely pay the guy who does the work on [the] trees.”
The real profit comes from selling directly to the consumer. The Alvarados are working in that direction. During the pandemic, they hosted several successful events around their dates. They’ve done well on Etsy and farmers markets, but even with their adept use of social media, it takes time to build a brand and a regular base of online customers.
Luckily, Coachella and Stagecoach came back in 2022 and the Alvarados had over 130 guests camping out for the festivals. With the pool complete, the festivalgoers were in desert heaven. The Alvarados brought back the hairdressers, make-up artists, yoga instructors, masseuses, and food trucks. “And the best thing is, these are all our friends; these people are family,” Claudia says. “So, it’s not this big lump of money going out of the Valley; it’s money being shared by people in our community.”
However, the shared success of those involved in Rancho 51’s glamping festival almost didn’t happen. A year before, in May 2021, the Alvarados were informed by Riverside County that their event business would be limited to four events per year. The Alvarados never fully understood the reason for the new ordinance. (According to Darin Schemmer, communications director for V. Manuel Perez, District 4’s supervisor, the previous ordinance limited events to 10 for the lifetime of the property. The 2021 change to four per year was thought to be a liberalization of the previous policy.) The problem, Claudia says, was the Riverside County Planning Department’s interpretation of the previous ordinance and the ranchos’ interpretation. For the latter, they believed the law granted them an unlimited number of events per year as long as attendance was under 200 people. The misunderstanding or misinterpretation of the ordinance was potentially disastrous for the ranchos. The quinceañeras, the weddings, the festival glamping — it was all going to disappear.
Johnny and Claudia were incensed. “These are $30,000 events,” Claudia says. “In most families, the quinceañera is more important than a wedding. People start saving for their daughter’s quinceañera the moment she is born.”
“If you close down the ranchos from holding these events, where are these people supposed to go?” Johnny says. “They can’t go to the Ritz-Carlton or the Marriott.”
The Alvarados say the real victims of the ordinance were the small business owners who make a living on the events. “Even if the quinceañera is booked into one of the big hotels, the DJ isn’t going to get the job because they have their own people,” Johnny says. “The guy here who rents chairs for $4 apiece will go out of business because the hotels have their own chairs.”
“We stood front and center on that unfairness,” Claudia says. “I’m very proud to say that I took the lead. I told them, ‘I didn’t take the biggest risk of my life at 36 years old to buy a million-dollar ranch, with the business plan that you guys looked at and told [me] that I can move forward with camping, events, and my business … and then three years later [tell me] that my investment was the stupidest thing I ever did.’”
At first, some of the other rancho owners were hesitant to get involved in protesting against the county. “Rancho people are sometimes older people; some are first-generation,” Johnny says. "A politician tells them something and they get intimidated.”
“They’re like, ‘I don’t want to deal with them (the county),’” Claudia says. “But, for us, we are never disrespectful. I will never be disrespectful to the county or the supervisor because they are working with us. But, I will be firm and I will be fair.”
Within a relatively short time, the Alvarados were able to organize a majority of the rancho owners. Their message went out on social media and helped rally support from throughout the Valley. “You can imagine thousands of vendors reposting: ‘Shut down. All your quinceañeras will be canceled,’” Claudia says. “Families’ dreams, goals. They have saved for years, booked this ranch two years ago. All for the county to say, ‘No, you’re not going to have a quinceañera. You guys are all shut down.’”
Toward the end of the summer, the Alvarados organized a rally with 200 to 300 rancho owners and supporters at Rancho 51. The plan was to attend the county supervisors’ meeting en masse and make themselves heard. “Riverside County called and said, ‘Hey, we’re going to help. We’re going to work with you guys. Just don’t bring all the people,’” Johnny recalls. “So, I said, ‘Great, I’ll cancel the two buses that were going.’”
Schemmer says, “There was not a rescission of any ordinance. There was a revision of the temporary events ordinance … and there is also a separate rancho ordinance that is under development currently that will give more options for ranchos that make sense for their business for the events they hold. The goal is to help events be successful while also following county regulations.”
The ranchos were back in business. Claudia says a lot of the credit goes to Perez for helping navigate a solution. The Alvarados were able to reconfirm the season’s quinceañeras and prep for festival glamping was back in full force. “It’s been the hardest,” Claudia says. “Owning a business, owning a ranch, I always thought was going to be a lot of hard work. And I’m always ready to work. But, I never thought my job was going to be protecting my land and protecting my business. [We] can’t give up. We won’t. I will never, ever stop. I am determined to get to the finish line. We will not give up our dreams for anyone.”