Opinion: Before San Diego bulldozes golf courses, it should fix leases

Last year, the eight San Diego golf courses leased to private operators brought in about $34 million in revenue for the companies running them. The city’s cut was $3.7 million. Four of those eight leases have expired and haven’t been renegotiated. That gap, laid out in a February 2026 city audit, is the real starting point for a debate San Diego can no longer put off: What should happen to its golf-course land?

The city owns 11 golf courses in all. Three — Torrey Pines, Mission Bay and Balboa Park — are run in-house. The other eight, including Fairbanks Ranch Country Club and Carlton Oaks, are leased out, and together they cover more than 800 acres of city-owned land. That’s a significant piece of San Diego’s real estate portfolio, sitting at the intersection of two pressures the city is feeling at once: a housing shortage that demands more units and a budget crisis that’s forced cuts in popular programs. The audit’s finding — that the city may be leaving real money on the table through outdated leases — has put those 800 acres squarely in the conversation about how San Diego responds to these pressures.

This is not just a San Diego story. Statewide, golf is a bigger economic presence than most residents realize. The California Alliance for Golf, an industry group, puts the sport’s annual economic activity in the state at $15.5 billion, while estimating that courses use less than 1% of California’s potable water. Those numbers come from golf’s own advocates, and they deserve the same scrutiny as any other industry’s self-reported figures — but they’re also a reminder that “golf course” doesn’t automatically mean “underused land.” It can mean jobs, tourism dollars and green space that isn’t drawing on the water supply the way critics sometimes assume.

San Diego has already seen what golf-course redevelopment looks like in practice. The former Carmel Mountain Ranch golf course, a private club that closed in 2018, was approved in 2021 for a 1,200-unit housing project, along with roughly 110 acres of open space and six miles of trails. It’s neither a triumph nor a cautionary tale on its own — it’s simply evidence that when golf-course land goes up for redevelopment, the outcome isn’t always all-or-nothing. Housing and open space can, and did, coexist on the same footprint.

That’s a point San Diego’s leaders should be weighing seriously as they look at the eight leased courses now under scrutiny. The instinct at City Hall may be to ask how much housing, or how much revenue, this land could generate if used for another purpose. But that framing skips past what the land is already providing — recreation for residents, water-fund revenue that helps offset ratepayer bills, and, in some cases, general fund dollars that support public safety, parks and libraries. Converting or redeveloping any of it means giving up something real, not just unlocking something new.

None of this is an argument for leaving every course exactly as it is. An audit that finds nearly 90% of a public asset’s revenue going somewhere other than the public is a legitimate problem, and it deserves a real fix — starting with the four lapsed leases sitting unrenegotiated right now. But fixing a bad lease is a different project than bulldozing a golf course, and San Diego shouldn’t treat them as the same conversation.

The city has more tools available than “keep it” or “redevelop it.” Better lease terms, updated rent structures and clearer accountability for the courses the city already owns could yield a much better outcome without touching a single fairway. Before San Diego decides what these properties should become, it owes residents a fuller accounting of what they already are — and what the city stands to lose, as well as gain, in trading them away.

Petersen is the founder of Golf Trip Junkie, a golf travel agency.