The Many Claims of Michael Schlesinger On July 25th the UT San Diego published an article by Michael Schlesinger, who owns the Escondido Country Club property through his company Stuck in the Rough, LLC (SITR). Mr. Schlesinger is the one who has driven what was once a lush green golf course into a dead and desolate eyesore. Upon arriving in Escondido Mr. Schlesinger claimed that he bought the Country Club with the intention of operating the golf course. He claimed that he only changed his mind months later when he realized the golf course was not financially viable. Recently, however, he admitted under penalty of perjury that he actually bought the property only after investigating whether he could develop houses on it and that he wouldn’t have bought the property just as a golf course. In his article Mr. Schlesinger makes many more claims about the Country Club. As with his first claims, it’s hard to tell which ones to believe. As with his investigation, it is hard to tell how many mistakes he has made. Mr. Schlesinger claims that community members and their group ECCHO, the Escondido Country Club and Community Homeowners Organization, blocked meetings between the community and SITR. In reality Mr. Schlesinger actually hired guards to exclude community members and homeowners from meetings regarding the golf course’s fate. In reality, instead of being cooperative Mr. Schlesinger has been using scare tactics and bullying to force the community into submission. Recently he went so far as to tell Council members that if they don’t let him build his houses he will fence the property for ten years until it is completely unsalvageable. Mr. Schlesinger goes on at length about the golf course’s financial troubles. What he fails to mention is that it was not the golf course itself, but the company that owned it, that declared bankruptcy. He fails to mention that the official records of the Bankruptcy Court state that the golf course was making a $10,000 a month profit before Mr. Schlesinger took it over. Mr. Schlesinger claims that ECCHO’s initiative is an illegal spot zoning. This is simply not true. Spot-zoning is the act of changing the zoning on a small piece of private property to a specific use inconsistent to the surrounding uses. The initiative circulated by ECCHO does not attempt to change the zoning on the property; it merely confirms the property’s actual use for the last 50 years. Mr. Schlesinger claims that ECCHO wants to rezone the property into a private park “paid for by an unknown source”. Again, Mr. Schlesinger fails to grasp the concept of the initiative. ECCHO is not asking for a park of any kind. The original developer was allowed to build extra houses on smaller lots and with narrower streets because he agreed to build the golf course as a permanently open space in the community. So it is not a park, either public or private, that ECCHO seeks, merely the preservation of what little open space there is in the neighborhood. Mr. Schlesinger speaks very highly of his “compromise”. However, the “community parks” he refers to are just small plots of grass that he threatens will “go away” unless funded by the taxpayers. His “lakes and ponds” are merely retention basins that are required anyway because he wants to build in a floodway. The 50% of the property he claims will be open space is merely unusable land he can’t squeeze houses onto because he is trying to build on an irregularly shaped golf course. Mr. Schlesinger states that there are 100 or so other golf courses in San Diego for people to use. This merely shows how out of touch Mr. Schlesinger is with the community he claims to be working with so closely. This is not a matter of ECCHO members wanting a place to golf, it is a matter of preserving what little open space there is in a community built at such a high density. Finally, Mr. Schlesinger accuses ECCHO and the community members of wanting to help “the few” at the cost to the “many taxpayers”. If by “the few” Mr. Schlesinger is referring to the over 9,300 homeowners and concerned citizens that signed the petitions to stop him from plundering the Country Club community, then yes, ECCHO is standing up for “the few”. Just as David slew Goliath, ECCHO plans on tossing a stone on behalf of those “few” that will send the multi-million dollar SITR back to Beverly Hills. This is not a matter of a few homeowners concerned about their backyards. This is a matter of Escondido citizens standing up to a bully to preserve their historic landmark and save their community from over-crowding. The decision will soon be in the hands of the City Council and ECCHO trusts they will side with David and not Goliath.
Posted on: Sat, 27 Jul 2013 22:01:30 +0000
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