FedEx and ZOLL will eliminate 140 more positions as their Palm Springs operations close, while the former Desert Sun campus remains vacant. Together, the three sites put nearly 278,000 square feet in play and test the city’s ability to replace specialized, year-round employment.
On Sept. 29, FedEx is scheduled to close its distribution facility on Bird Center Drive. Four months later, on Feb. 1, ZOLL Medical is scheduled to end operations in the neighboring plant where ventilators have been made under a succession of corporate owners.
A few miles south, the former Desert Sun campus at 750 N. Gene Autry Trail is vacant and for sale. The 96,353-square-foot warehouse and office complex has been offered through successive marketing campaigns for years. Its current LoopNet listing, posted April 13, asks $8.286 million.
Unless new users are secured, three large employment sites near Palm Springs International Airport will soon be dark at the same time. Their combined space totals 277,767 square feet, or about 1.6 percent of all industrial inventory in the Coachella Valley. Meanwhile, the city of Palm Springs’ former economic development director resigned in June, and city manager Scott Stiles this week announced his retirement, with a final day of November 1.
The immediate employment loss is also substantial. FedEx identified 62 positions in its closure notice, and ZOLL identified 78 positions in its final closure filing. That is 140 more local positions scheduled for elimination. An earlier ZOLL notice covered 96 positions that were scheduled to end in December 2025, bringing the two companies’ announced reductions to 236 positions across the full sequence.
Those figures require one qualification. FedEx said affected workers would be offered options that could include transfers, severance or leaves of absence while they pursue other company jobs. Its state notice counts positions affected at the Palm Springs facility, not the final number of people who will leave FedEx employment.
The closures do not amount to an industrial crisis, as inventory in the region is extremely tight. A February Coachella Valley industrial market report prepared for Riverside County put regional vacancy at 5.9 percent across 17.6 million square feet. The report also recorded 653,442 square feet of newly completed space, reflecting Amazon’s new facility in Desert Hot Springs, and positive net absorption over the preceding year.
The Palm Springs concentration still matters. Each site supported a large operation with a function that is difficult to replace. Together they show that an acceptable regional vacancy rate can obscure a more specific local problem: the loss of employers that provide year-round logistics, manufacturing, engineering and production work in an economy heavily identified with hospitality and visitor services.
Three Buildings and Three Different Reuse Problems
The FedEx building is the smallest of the three. Commercial property records in the Riverside County report place it at 40,233 square feet. The July 29 WARN notice says the closure will be permanent and lists 53 courier or swing-driver positions, five senior service agents, three managers and one warehouse handler.
FedEx attributed the move to Network 2.0, its national effort to combine parts of the historically separate Express and Ground systems. The company still lists another ship center on West Garnett Road in North Palm Springs. The closure therefore does not mean FedEx is leaving the broader market, but it raises practical questions about where routes will be based, how many employees will transfer, and whether service times will change for local businesses.
The ZOLL campus is a more specialized proposition. As GPS Business Insider reported, the operation traces its local manufacturing lineage to aviation medicine pioneer Forrest Bird and later owners that included CareFusion and Vyaire Medical. ZOLL acquired selected Vyaire ventilator assets in 2024 for $37 million, but bankruptcy records said the Palm Springs operation was running at roughly 20 percent of capacity at the time.
The Colliers lease offering describes a 141,181-square-foot campus on 14.3 acres, including 5.2 acres of excess land. It has assembly, high-pile storage and machine-shop areas, full air conditioning and 3,000 amps of three-phase power. Those features are valuable, but they also narrow the field of companies that can use the facility without major changes.
The Desert Sun property presents a third challenge. Its layout combines two floors of offices with open warehouse and production areas. The listing says it has multiple loading docks, 4,000 amps of power and planned-development zoning that permits a range of commercial, industrial, professional and manufacturing uses. At 8.5 acres and nearly 100,000 square feet, however, it remains a large owner-user purchase in a market with a limited pool of companies seeking that much space.
The current asking price equals $86 a square foot, well below the property’s assessed value of about $10.4 million. That gap does not determine market value, but it is another sign that the next use may depend on a buyer willing to invest in renovation, subdivision or redevelopment rather than simply move into the building as it stands.
The Market Is Healthier Than the Empty Buildings Suggest
The regional numbers provide useful restraint. The three properties together are large, but they would not create a 1.6 percentage-point increase in vacancy. The ZOLL campus was already listed as vacant in commercial market data during the fourth quarter of 2025, even though the final group of employees remains at work. The Desert Sun campus was already on the market. Only the FedEx closure appears to create clearly new available square footage.
The market report also shows why the Desert Sun building could take time to absorb. Flex properties, the category that mixes offices, showrooms, laboratories or light production with warehouse space, had a 16.1 percent vacancy rate in early 2026. That was far above the valley-wide industrial rate. Specialized industrial space had a much lower reported vacancy rate, but a building designed around medical-device production still needs the right company, power demand and capital plan.
Palm Springs also competes with newer industrial corridors closer to Interstate 10, where sites in Desert Hot Springs, Indio and Coachella can offer larger parcels and modern distribution buildings. The airport area has different strengths: central location, existing utilities, proximity to air service and buildings with substantial electrical capacity. Those advantages will matter only if brokers, owners and public officials can match them to users that fit the sites.
A Test of Economic Development Strategy
The central public question is whether Palm Springs will treat the three properties as unrelated private listings, as a coordinated economic development assignment, or completely stay out of the situation while the commercial brokers promote the space.
The buildings do not need identical tenants. The FedEx site could appeal to another distribution or service operation. The ZOLL campus may be better suited to medical technology, advanced manufacturing or a corporate user that needs assembly space and heavy power. The Desert Sun property could support a headquarters, light production, professional or medical offices, or a multi-tenant conversion if the economics and zoning allow it.
Those are possibilities, not announced prospects. The fastest path to a credible strategy starts with facts the public does not yet have. City leaders should know whether the properties can be economically divided, what infrastructure upgrades a new user would require, which incentives are legally available and which industries are actively being recruited. They should also know how many displaced employees have skills that could help attract a replacement employer.
The labor questions are immediate. FedEx should disclose how many of the 62 workers accept transfers and where the delivery routes will move. ZOLL should identify which functions and products are leaving Palm Springs, where the work will go and whether any local employees can move into other company positions. Riverside County workforce officials should be prepared to report how many workers seek retraining, unemployment benefits or placement assistance.
The real estate questions will take longer. Owners and brokers should disclose whether the properties have drawn serious offers, whether prospective users have been lost because of price, configuration, or entitlement issues, and whether subdivision would produce smaller spaces that match local demand. The city should explain who is responsible for recruitment and how the effort fits its broader goal of expanding employment beyond tourism.
Empty industrial buildings are not permanent economic failures. They are assets waiting for a workable use. But time changes the equation. Long vacancies increase carrying costs, defer investment and make productive sites feel normal as empty sites.
Palm Springs still has a chance to turn the FedEx and ZOLL closures, together with the long-marketed Desert Sun campus, into a focused recruitment campaign. The city’s success should be measured in occupied square feet, private investment and jobs that replace the ones now disappearing.
Bob Marra is the CEO/Publisher of GPS Business Insider and GPS Market Intel. He has been studying, writing and giving presentations about business, economic and public affairs news and issues and the local economy in the Greater Palm Springs/Coachella Valley region for more than 20 years.
