On July 25, 2022, Jane Garrison, the founder and executive director of the Oswit Land Trust, emailed local media representatives, Palm Springs officials and environmentally concerned citizens to invite them to a press conference the next day.
“This is THE one that everyone will talk about for years to come!” Garrison wrote. “This is THE one that other communities will look (at) as an example! This is THE one that exemplifies being proactive versus reactive! This is THE one that restores your faith in humans!”
At the press conference, Garrison celebrated a generous donation of much of the former Mesquite Golf and Country Club, worth roughly $9 million at the time. The caveat set by the donor, Brad Prescott, was that the land be used in perpetuity as a natural desert preserve or park. Garrison honored Prescott by announcing that the 120 or so acres would be called the Prescott Preserve, after Prescott bought the land from Ramin Saghian of Palms Partners.
More than two years later, the preserve Garrison and other OLT members anticipated has not come to be. Instead, the land and the OLT itself have become the targets of numerous complaints to the city of Palm Springs about failures to maintain those land parcels. Leading the opposition is the Mesquite Country Club Condominium Homeowners Association, which, just weeks after the land donation was finalized, filed a lawsuit and sought an injunction against OLT to prevent any landscape alterations. The OLT and the Mesquite HOA have since been dueling in a variety of legal maneuvers, seeking to jumpstart the preserve’s creation, to delay it or to outright halt it. The latter option could be the outcome of the Mesquite HOA lawsuit, which contends that the land in question can never be used for any purpose other than golf.
Meanwhile, a group of residents from three other HOA communities surrounding the former golf course have become increasingly aggressive in their opposition to the vision of a well-designed and well-maintained natural space in the heart of the city.
Why? Shaun Murphy, of the Palm Springs law firm Slovak Baron Empey Murphy & Pinkney LLP, was recently was appointed the Mesquite HOA’s lead attorney in the ongoing suit. In a recent interview, he shed light on the legal activity around this case over the past two years.
“This is a suit against (OLT),” Murphy said, “because, after acquiring the property, they have intended to use it in a way that is in violation of the (homeowners’) lease, and to a lesser extent, the CCRs (the HOA’s covenants, conditions and restrictions) that they are obligated to honor as purchasers of the property.”
Specifically, the lawsuit hinges on language in the HOA’s lease that states the club is prohibited from changing or redeveloping the course without the association’s prior written approval, and that if the property is sold, the buyer assumes the obligation to maintain the course.
“Palms Partners (now called the New Palm Group) retained a smaller segment of the development where the clubhouse, racquetball, tennis courts and those types of amenities are located,” Murphy said. “They still own that land; Oswit does not. But those amenities also have certain requirements under the lease and the CCRs, so a part of the suit is against the Palms Partners based on their failure to properly maintain those amenities.”
Murphy said the case has been moving slowly through the legal processes due to “trips up to the Court of Appeals.”
“Mesquite also got a preliminary injunction against Oswit at one point,” Murphy said, “but the court required a pretty significant bond ($5 million) to secure the injunction. … The (HOA) was not able to afford that, so the injunction was dissolved for failure to post the bond. Then the association appealed the trial court’s refusal to lower the bond. The Court of Appeals just heard that and issued an opinion … denying the association’s appeal.
“And then there was a third-party complaint filed by one of the individual homeowners in the association trying to intervene in the case. That party claimed that the association filed suit without getting member approval.” That matter was eventually dismissed after a decision by the Court of Appeals, Murphy said.
This recital of legal skirmishes doesn’t even include the latest controversy: Ramin Saghian recently delivered to Palm Springs city officials a proposal to build 15 two-story multi-unit apartment buildings (a total of about 130-plus units) with a variety of amenities on the one remaining parcel he still owns, at the northeast corner of Mesquite Avenue and Farrell Drive, next to the Mesquite Country Club’s Phase 5 community.
Yolanda Sandor lives in Phase 5. “In my humble opinion, (Saghian’s) end goal was always to build apartments or condos, and he has submitted a project to the city of Palm Springs. I hope it’s years away from being approved,” Sandor told the Independent.
Sandor and her neighbors have raised objections to the negative impacts the proposed housing development could have on them, including a reduction in their property values, the elimination of their scenic views to the north and west, and increased traffic on surrounding streets.
While this development proposal further complicates the picture as to how the former Mesquite Golf and Country Club grounds will be utilized, it is separate from the tug-of-war over the proposed Prescott Preserve’s future.
“My question to them always is the same: ‘What do you want? What is your end game?’” Garrison told the Independent. “They can’t answer. ‘If you want it to be a golf course, why didn’t you buy the property?’ It was for sale … and they can’t answer it. So, what do they want? That’s the million-dollar question.”
In this case, it’s become at least a $7.2 million question, since the Mesquite HOA lawsuit has prohibited OLT from obtaining a grant in that amount from the California Wildlife Conservation Board, which OLT would use to transform the Prescott Preserve from its previous golf course design into a “first-of-its-kind” natural desert preserve right in the heart of Palm Springs.
“When we first received this land, I consulted with a professor from (the University of California, Santa Barbara) who did a similar restoration project up in Santa Barbara,” Garrison said. “She took the Ocean Meadows golf course, and converted it back to a nature preserve. The very first piece of advice she gave us was, ‘Put a fence around it, and close it until it’s restored, and then you can allow the public to come out on the land.’ But we did not want to do that, because we felt it’s a great opportunity for people to enjoy this really beautiful property, whether it’s restored or not. It has incredible views; it’s easy to walk, regardless of your age or fitness ability. So we didn’t want to do that.
“But if we can’t get the funds to restore the land to native vegetation, and if we can’t get the funds to do the improvements to the irrigation that we need, and if we can’t get the funds to keep the trails open, safe and clean for the community, then we’re going to have some hard decisions on what happens to this property. Do we create a private preserve that we don’t have open to the public all the time? Do we sell the property? Do we give the property away? I mean, what do we do? Because if we don’t have the funds to do what we need to do, everything changes.”
In an email exchange, Sandor responded that Mesquite residents are “down-to-earth, everyday people with families who do not deserve being vilified for being concerned about the life/safety issues we now face. Concern about the blighted condition (of the golf course property), concern about property values already lost, concern the preserve could financially fail … concern that the preserve could fail because it is an experiment never undertaken before in an urban area, (and) concern about (Saghian’s) apartment plans.”
“My question to (the HOA) always is the same: ‘What do you want? What is your end game?’ They can’t answer.”
Jane Garrison, founder and executive director of the Oswit Land Trust
How long can the two parties afford to persist in this legal standoff? The Independent asked Angie Knapp, another member of the Mesquite HOA, how the HOA was financing their legal expenses.
“Legal fees for our MCCCHOA are being paid out of operating funds. No special assessment has been made, nor is planned at this time,” she said via email. “MCCCHOA has been able to offset about 50% of legal expenses incurred through ceased lease payments. Every year, we save over $250,000 in lease payments, (and that) should lead to not only covering the legal expenses, but substantially reducing (overall) operating expenses.”
While Knapp’s accounting does not include a potential lawsuit against the new Saghian development proposal, the HOA’s good financial standing is not good news for Garrison and the OLT, who are up against a seemingly inflexible deadline to convince the Mesquite HOA to drop their lawsuit and allow the grant process with the Wildlife Conservation Board to move ahead.
“Unfortunately, us receiving that grant is 100% in the hands of the HOA,” Garrison said. “Without the lawsuit, we would have had the grant by now. And in fact, without the lawsuit, we would have been halfway through our restoration. … So the grant is still completely dictated by the HOA. They had a chance to allow us to get the grant on May 23. All they had to do was provide a short statement to the Wildlife Conservation Board, and they refused to do that. So we have been told that, with a pending lawsuit, we will not be able to get the grant funds, and we also have been told that grant money is only going to be available to the end of the year.”
“(Mesquite HOA residents are) down-to-earth, everyday people with families who do not deserve being vilified for being concerned about the life/safety issues we now face.”
Yolanda Sandor, resident
Garrison said the final Wildlife Conservation Board meeting is in November. “And after that, we’re done. Actually, because the WCB is a state agency, they have to publish their agenda for their meetings 30 days before, so for a November approval of the grant, they’ll have to put us on the agenda in October. We’re getting very close.”
The next court date for the Mesquite HOA lawsuit is scheduled for Sept. 25, and it’s possible a trial start date could be set then. Still, both sides expressed a ray of hope that the impasse could be settled.
“In an interesting turn of events … what we have heard through the grapevine is that this new HOA lawyer is encouraging them to try to settle,” Garrison said.
We asked Murphy, that new lawyer, about Garrison’s statement.
“I can’t really comment on what prior negotiations took place,” he said, “but I think I can safely say that in any case … the issue of settlement is always a topic of discussion. So, undoubtedly, there will be discussions in that regard to see if something can be worked out that resolves the issue to everybody’s ‘mostly satisfaction,’ I should say. A good settlement is one where nobody’s happy, right?”
