The Sierra Club has filed a lawsuit in response to the City of San Diego’s October 2025 vote to remove open-space protections on the former polo fields and exempt their long-term tenant, Surf Cup Sports, from any environmental review under the California Environmental Quality Act.
The lawsuit, filed Dec. 5, 2025, challenges the City Council’s actions affecting the lands in the San Dieguito River Valley and sets out numerous reasons for strict environmental review including impacts on natural resources, public safety, and equitable access.
The Friends of the San Dieguito River Valley fully supports and commends the Sierra Club for taking this important step to protect our sensitive river valley environment and the recently restored wetlands just downstream of the fields.
“These lands were never meant for private or commercial exploitation. They were meant for everyone – the community, for nature, and for future generations,” according to Pam Heatherington, Sierra Club’s representative to the San Dieguito River Valley.
Please sign the petition at the link below to share your concerns about the resolution to be considered by the San Diego City Council on October 27 that could gut the Grant Deed restrictions governing use of the former polo fields. Adding your voice to the thousands of individuals, environmental organizations, community groups, and neighboring cities will send the message to San Diego that removal of environmental protections over some 600 acres of open space in the San Dieguito River Valley is unacceptable and a betrayal of public trust.
As stewards of the San Dieguito River Valley, we are writing to express outrage over an issue of critical public concern threatening one of the last protected river valleys in San Diego County.
Jenny Goodman, your deputy city attorney, is scheming with Surf Cup Sports to dodge a difficult lawsuit and ask for your approval of a resolution to eviscerate all environmental and land use restrictions on some 114-acres of sensitive open space in the San Dieguito River Valley currently leased from the City by Surf Cup Sports.
That property was set aside by the City in 1983 as permanent open space park with habitat and trail systems in exchange for Watt Industries’ development of the Fairbanks Ranch neighborhoods. The land, first used as polo fields and today abused for commercial sporting and other large-scale events throughout the year, is meant to be protected under a grant deed that prohibits commercial use, large gatherings of people and vehicles, and limits use to 25 days a year among other restrictions.
The Fairbanks Polo Club Homes homeowners’ association holds that grant deed and, as you know, sued the City of San Diego for not enforcing the grant deed provisions as they relate to Surf Cup Sports’ tenancy and use of the fields. Ms. Goodman and Surf Cup Sports now are hoping to sidestep that trial and, in a betrayal of your Council’s commitments to the public, are seeking your votes to gut and destroy the grant deed.
Not only would this set a bad precedent for you and your fellow councilmembers, it would put the Council’s credibility on the line for the entire City of San Diego: Will anyone trust the Council to honor current open-space deals or future ones? If you and your colleagues unwind the deed restrictions on this sensitive open space in the San Dieguito River Valley – a clear violation of the public trust – your credibility will be tarnished and your district may well be next in line.
We urge you to vote NO on any resolution to terminate the Grant Deed restrictions.
We are saddened to report the passing of Maggie Brown, Friends of the San Dieguito River Valley president, on June 29, 2025. She was 82.
Margaret (Maggie) Elizabeth Brown 9/18/1942 – 6/29/2025
Maggie, a member of the Royal family, was born in Shreveport, Louisiana on September 18, 1942, to Marion and Eric H. Royal, the eldest of their two children. Her younger brother, Eric (Ricky) Royal, Jr. was killed in a train-car crash in 1968.
Her father worked for International Harvester and moved the family around the country at least a dozen times during Maggie’s childhood. The Royals eventually settled in Texarkana, Arkansas where Maggie graduated from Arkansas High School in the class of 1958. Not surprisingly, Maggie was active in numerous school clubs – the Latin Club, Library Club, Student Education Association, Americanism Club, Allied Youth, Feature Editor, Homecoming Maid, Junior-Senior Prom Committee, as well as the school’s Quill and Scroll literary magazine.
She went on to receive her Bachelor of Science degree in Art Education from the State University College of New York at Buffalo, and her Master’s in Art Education from the University of Cincinnati. Maggie was later certified to teach English as a Second/Foreign Language.
After a stint teaching high school art in Cincinnati in the late 1960s, Maggie moved to San Diego where her educational career diverged into mortgage banking, real estate development, sales & marketing, and design. “Uptown” Maggie Brown was honored as Person of the Year in 1996 by the Del Mar Chamber of Commerce for her tireless work in the community. Even in retirement she returned to her first love of teaching by working with struggling early readers at the Paul Ecke Elementary School in Encinitas.
A dedicated environmental steward since the early 1980s, Maggie joined the FSDRV board in 1999 and served as president from 2013 until her recent passing, working assiduously by way of legal battles and increasing public awareness, to preserve and protect the river valley. Her dedication was also evident in her perfect attendance at meetings of regional governmental agencies, conservation groups, and of course, the Friends. Her advocacy and spirit were admired by all; her positive presence will be sorely missed.
Her marriages to William Lamar Herrin and Thomas F. Brown, Jr. ended in divorce. There were no children and no immediate survivors.
Maggie often told people she lived by a principle imparted by her mother, an English teacher, who was fond of quoting Shakespeare when Maggie would come whining and crying to her about something. “This above all: To thine own self be true. Then it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.”
The Friends of the San Dieguito River Valley has contributed $16,000 in support of the Fairbanks Polo Club Homes’ ongoing litigation with the City of San Diego and intervenor Surf Cup Sports, LLC.
In a generous related contribution, the Rancho Del Mar Association provided an additional $1,000 to support the lawsuit. Both June 2025 donations come on the heels of an encouraging and strategic change in the HOA’s legal representation.
Attorney David Peck of Coast Law Group now represents Fairbanks Polo Club Homes in the lawsuit. Mr. Peck, a seasoned litigator, brings extensive experience in land use and environmental law, a proven track record of success, and a collaborative, team-based approach that aligns with the goal of moving forward vigorously and efficiently. Mr. Peck and his team will guide the lawsuit through its current deposition and discovery phase to a jury trial set for December 5, 2025.
The Friends urges all concerned residents to continue to help fund this lawsuit and its goal of protecting the San Dieguito River Valley from overuse and commercial expansion by Surf Cup Sports and its related business entities – such as the most recent breach of the Grant Deed that governs use of the property: installation without permit or public review, a commercial training facility run by Performance Sports Lab that trains some 500 athletes a week, bringing more unwanted traffic, noise, and dust to neighboring communities.
Checks should be made payable to: “Coast Law Group Client Trust – FPCH” Mail to: 1140 S. Coast Hwy 101, Encinitas, CA 92024
The new trail just below El Camino Real, looking west
A short, one-mile-long tidal trail now is open to the public along the recently restored salt marsh in the San Dieguito River Valley. The trail, which can be accessed from the Dust Devil Nature Trail parking area, parallels the sweeping curve of El Camino Real and ends just short of the El Camino Real bridge. For now, it is only an out-and-back spur overlooking the tidal wetlands and active birdlife that includes California gnatcatchers, light-footed Ridgway’s rails, herons, egrets, and ospreys diving for fish that have already found their way up river. Eventually the trail will connect to the 71-mile Coast-to-Crest Trail system running from the ocean at Del Mar to the source of the San Dieguito on Volcan Mountain.
Maggie Brown’s decades-long environmental activism and fight to protect the San Dieguito River Valley was highlighted in an August 13, 2024 story in The Washington Post. The article looks at the overuse of the sports fields by Pioneer Sports & Entertainment (Surf Sports) and the City of San Diego’s failure to enforce the grant deed restrictions that run with the land. Click on this link for the story as it appeared on the Post’s website, or see file below.
The restoration of the San Dieguito Lagoon achieved a major breakthrough – literally – in early June when a berm holding back the sea was opened, allowing salt water to fill a new area of the 64-acre salt marsh and wetlands just east of Interstate 5 (above).
One of the last steps in Caltrans and SANDAG’s ambitious two-year, $87 million W-19 restoration project, the work is designed to sustain flooding and future sea level rise – along with creating nesting and foraging areas for threatened and endangered wildlife.
A recent aerial view looking west (below) shows the entire restored tidal channel and saltwater wetlands enclosed by newly planted berms that parallel the San Dieguito River channel to the north. Most of the reclaimed river valley was once a maze of tomato and bean fields as seen in a view looking south over the same area in 1987 (bottom photo).
The parcel at 3975 Via de la Valle in the San Dieguito River Valley where Surf Sports Del Mar now is proposing a massive two-story facility. Photo shows property after illegal grading in September 2022.
Despite a current lawsuit against the City of San Diego seeking enforcement of the grant deed that limits use of the former polo fields to 25 days a year, a Nov. 21, 2023 permit application filed by Surf Sports Del Mar, (d.b.a. Pioneer Sports and Entertainment) proposes a two-story sports facility for the 24-acre agriculturally zoned parcel adjacent to the former polo fields. The property at 3975 Via de la Valle was purchased two years ago for $6.6 million by a Florida shell company related to Surf Cup Sports.
The environmentally sensitive parcel in the San Dieguito River Valley has faced intense scrutiny over the past decade, starting with a proposed senior housing project that was eventually abandoned after several years of mitigation and permitting roadblocks. Since the property’s sale in 2021, Surf Cup has twice been served with civil penalties and fines, as well as two cease-and-desist orders from the State of California for illegal grading of wetlands and pumping runoff water into the San Dieguito River.
The most recent permit application, moving at an unusually swift pace through City offices, has already prompted a slew of letters in opposition to the project from the Coalition to Preserve the Polo Fields Neighborhood as well as a thorough admonition from Douglas Dill, chairman of the San Dieguito Planning Group, an advisory board that follows developments in the region. Mr. Dill’s letter follows in its entirety in the link below.
