In a disturbing development in the lawsuit brought by Fairbanks Polo Club Homes against the City of San Diego to enforce the land-use and environmental restrictions governing the former polo fields in the San Dieguito River Valley, it appears the City now has colluded with Surf Cup Sports and Ocean Industries – the original owner of the polo fields – to ask the City Council to erase those restrictions altogether.
This is no less than an attempt to prevent the court from adjudicating in the Fairbanks case whether the City and Surf are in violation of those restrictions, and, even more important, to remove those legal safeguards from Surf’s future exploitation of the fields. If the City Council agrees, it would completely eviscerate the legal protections that were expressly for the benefit of communities neighboring the fields and to which the City and Surf freely agreed when they leased the land in the first place.
The City, for its part, agreed to those use restrictions when it acquired the polo fields in 1983 through a Grant Deed which required the restrictions as part of the deal. Surf, in turn, agreed to abide by the Grant Deed incorporating those restrictions when it signed the lease for the 114-acre property in 2016.
Yet in a joint filing dated June 30, 2025, the City and Surf announced that they have agreed with Ocean “to present a resolution to the City Council which would result in a termination of the use restrictions [in the Grant Deed] that are the subject of the [Fairbanks] litigation.” Now the legal battle that was expected to take place in a courtroom in December, appears headed for a purely political decision at the City Council sometime this summer.
As of this writing we are waiting to hear from the Coast Law team on next steps and how individuals, homeowners’ associations, and businesses can best express their alarm directly to the City Council, either in writing, in person at the City Council, or both.
In the meantime, please share this information widely with your neighbors and friends in Rancho Santa Fe, Carmel Valley, Del Mar, Solana Beach and other communities that have been adversely affected by Surf’s overuse of the fields and associated traffic, noise, and dust – and which fear how the City and Surf may exacerbate those harms in the future if existing legal safeguards are removed.