If you live inside the gates at Fairbanks Ranch, you've heard some version of this story by now. The City Council voted. The lease got amended. The fight over the old polo grounds at Via de la Valle and El Camino Real is over, and Surf Cup Sports keeps running its tournaments under new, clearer rules.
That version is wrong on two counts. The council vote didn't end the legal fight, it started two more. And the "clearer rules" the city promised turn out to raise the ceiling on activity rather than simply modernize an outdated deed. If you've been assuming this settles into background noise this year, the docket says otherwise.
What the council actually approved
The land in question, roughly 114 acres where the San Dieguito River crosses Via de la Valle, came to the City of San Diego in 1983 under a grant deed from developer Watt Industries, the same deal that cleared the way for Fairbanks Ranch itself to be built. The deed required the land stay in "natural condition" for passive, non-commercial use and capped organized events at 25 days a year. For about 26 years the Fairbanks Polo Club leased it for equestrian use. In 2016 the city signed a 28-year lease with Surf Cup Sports LLC, and the pace of activity on the fields changed.
By 2023, Fairbanks Polo Club Homes, the homeowners' group holding the grantor's rights under that original deed, sued the city in Vista Superior Court, arguing Surf had been running events on the site far beyond the 25-day cap. That case sat in front of Judge Earl H. Maas III for two years while both sides argued over discovery.
Then, on October 27, 2025, the San Diego City Council voted 6-2 to remove the old use restrictions from the grant deed entirely and to amend the Surf Cup lease in their place. Councilmember Raul Campillo told the chamber the original deed language was "vague" and hard to enforce, and that the city had "let the problem fester for nine years." Council President Joe LaCava, whose district includes the site, said the new terms would let the city "assert its rightful role of managing and enforcing the uses of the property."
Here is the part that's easy to miss if you only read the headline. The new lease sets an annual cap of 40 days for "large events," up from the deed's 25-day limit for any organized activity. But a "large event" is now defined narrowly: it has to use at least 18 of the site's 24 soccer fields, or, for non-sporting events, draw at least 2,000 attendees. Anything smaller than that threshold doesn't count against the cap at all.
| Old grant deed (1983) | New lease terms (Oct. 2025) | |
|---|---|---|
| Annual cap | 25 days for any organized event | 40 days, but only for "large events" |
| What counts | Any assemblage of people or vehicles | 18+ of 24 fields in use, or 2,000+ attendees for non-sporting events |
| Permitted use | Passive, non-commercial recreation | Youth soccer operations plus subleased commercial uses |
The number went up. The definition of what triggers the count got smaller. Put those two changes together and the effective ceiling on field activity is higher than 40 days suggests, since a lot of what residents actually experience, weekday training sessions, smaller weekend showcases, evening games under lights, may never register against the cap at all.
The pushback came fast
Two days after the council vote, Fairbanks Polo Club Homes filed a motion for a preliminary injunction, arguing that Ocean Industries, the successor to the original 1983 grantor, had already handed over its rights to the homeowners' group in 2018 and no longer had standing to agree to any deed changes.
Then, on December 5, 2025, the Sierra Club filed a separate lawsuit against the city, this one built on environmental review law rather than deed language. Sierra Club's complaint argued the city's own account of historical field use relied on data that stopped at 2016, with no more recent figures to justify calling this a continuation of past practice rather than an expansion of it.
"This Project would result in more annual events, including a less strict definition of what events count towards the total permitted event days, and proposes to remove protections from the remaining Affected Land, leaving them vulnerable to intensified use."
That's the Sierra Club's own language from its December filing, and it lines up with the cap-and-definition mismatch above. Sierra Club San Diego's chair, Lisa Ross, framed the stakes in a December 8 statement around access rather than traffic alone, arguing that public open space and trails shouldn't depend on whether a family can afford organized sports fees.
The city's position, argued by Surf's own attorneys in earlier phases of the litigation, has been that current uses simply continue decades of established activity and involve no new impact requiring review under the California Environmental Quality Act.
On January 16, 2026, Judge Maas ruled on the Fairbanks Polo Club Homes motion. He denied the preliminary injunction, but not because he rejected the underlying argument. He said he was uncomfortable with the specific remedy the homeowners' group asked for, a court order blocking Ocean Industries from signing off on the deed termination at all. Instead, he invited the homeowners' legal team to refile as a motion for summary adjudication, a narrower procedural step that could resolve the grantor-rights question ahead of a full trial. As of the coalition's own tracking, a new hearing was expected sometime in spring 2026. If you're checking the calendar and wondering whether that's already resolved, the honest answer is that the most recent confirmed update puts the next real milestone there, and anyone following closely should look at the actual Superior Court docket rather than assume a result either way.
Two lawsuits, two different legal theories, both still open as of this writing. That's not a settled case. That's a case paused mid-argument.
Your neighbors don't agree on this, and that matters
It would be simple to tell this as neighbors against a company. It isn't that clean. Fairbanks Polo Club Estates, the 54-home community closest to the fields, has residents active on both sides. Some have spent years pushing the Coalition to Preserve the Polo Fields Neighborhood's case forward, citing traffic on Via de la Valle, noise, and the erosion of open space promised in the original 1983 deed. Others, organized loosely as Friends of Surf Sports Park, point to two decades of youth soccer access and argue the economic and developmental benefit to thousands of kids outweighs the disruption.
Local governments have weighed in too, and not only in one direction. The cities of Del Mar and Solana Beach, state Senator Catherine Blakespear, the San Dieguito Planning Group, and the Rancho Santa Fe Association all registered formal opposition to the October termination agreement. Surf's side has pointed to roughly 1,500 letters of community support collected ahead of the vote, along with the field's long-running role as the training site for San Diego Wave FC's youth program. Both of those things are true at once, and that tension is exactly what makes the outcome hard to predict from outside the courtroom.
What this means if you're planning around this year
If your household is near enough to Via de la Valle or El Camino Real to notice tournament weekends, don't plan your year around the assumption that the 40-day cap, or its narrower definition of what counts toward it, is final law. It's an amended lease term sitting under active challenge from two directions at once. A summary adjudication ruling in the deed-rights case, or progress in the Sierra Club's CEQA suit, could still reopen the terms the council approved in October.
Watching the actual filings is more reliable than watching the calendar. The Coalition to Preserve the Polo Fields Neighborhood posts docket updates as they happen, and outlets like KPBS and The Coast News have covered each turn of this case since 2023 with on-record quotes from both the city and the litigants.
For homeowners weighing how something like this factors into property value, traffic patterns, or long-term neighborhood character, the honest answer is that it's still moving. I'd rather tell you that plainly than pretend a single council vote closed the book.
If you'd like to talk through what any of this means for a specific property near the fields, or anywhere else in Fairbanks Ranch, Barbara Leinenweber is glad to help you think it through. Let's Connect.
