The golfers who sued to reopen the former San Geronimo Golf Course and stop creek restoration work on the property were struck down in a final ruling. Last week, a Marin County judge denied a writ of mandate by the San Geronimo Heritage Alliance, which in 2020 first filed suit against the county, the Trust for Public Land and the Salmon Protection and Watershed Network, which planned to improve fish spawning habitat along San Geronimo Creek.
Judge Andrew Sweet rejected the alliance’s core argument that SPAWN’s county-issued creek permit violated the development code. He wrote that the suit “demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the differences” between Title 22, the development code, and Title 11, the code under which SPAWN aquired its permit, which regulates dams and waterways.
In the interim, SPAWN finished its habitat restoration work at Roy’s Pools, which was planned while the property was still a golf course. “From the outset this lawsuit by a few unhappy golfers seemed to be nothing more than a harassment tactic,” SPAWN conservation director Preston Brown said in a press release. “We are happy to have this lawsuit behind us, but more importantly, we are elated to have completed one of the most important restoration projects for coho salmon in the region,” he said.
Since the trust purchased the property in 2017, a contingent of valley golfers and homeowners has fought to prevent the land’s use from changing, arguing they had the countywide and community plans on their side. The suit they filed in 2020 was not the group’s first ill-fated effort to restore the golf course. That year, Measure D, drafted by some of the same golf course advocates as an attempt to reopen the links, failed at the ballot.
Later in 2020, the county gave SPAWN a permit to begin restoration work at Roy’s Pools to create a more friendly passage for salmon by removing a dam, installing a new bridge and restoring floodplains. Soon after, when an appeal to the Board of Supervisors failed, the alliance filed an ex parte application in an attempt to block SPAWN’s work, arguing it would destroy fairway and green areas and do harm to protected trees. But the alliance’s legal challenges, which asked the court to revoke SPAWN’s permit and compel T.P.L. to re-open the golf course, always appeared far-fetched.
The latest suit seemed unlikely to succeed after Judge Sweet upheld T.P.L.’s challenge to its validity last summer. The alliance’s attorney, Philip Snell, declined to comment on the case because a final judgment hasn’t yet been entered. “The case is still ongoing,” he emphasized. But with the final ruling in SPAWN’s favor, the alliance is out of options and will likely be on the hook for the nonprofit’s attorney fees.
SPAWN completed the $2 million Roy’s Pools restoration, which was funded by a California Department of Fish and Wildlife grant, last October. The project totally removed the century-old Roy’s Dam, which had already been converted into a series of pools by a 1999 NOAA Fisheries project that added sheet metal structures to help fish pass. SPAWN also installed a new pedestrian bridge for fish viewing and took out turf along San Geronimo Creek, replacing it with a floodplain meant to make the creek more resilient.