Defying spirited calls that it carry out a competitive bid for which company would get the privilege of running the El Prado Golf Course going forward, the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday , April 29 voted to perpetuate the county’s sublease of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers with the golf course’s current operator for the next 22 years.
In 1975, the county entered into a sublease of roughly 314.21 acres with a consortium of medical and dental professionals, El Prado Golf Course Management, LLC, led by Leo Kenneth Heuler, DDS, who undertook to develop the property as two 18-hole golf courses, situated around the intersection of Euclid and Pine Avenue. In 1976, Prado Regional Park opened, a major component of which was the first of the 18-hole golf courses that had been completed by the consortium of doctors who had leased the property. Subsequently, the second 18-hole course was completed, and both have remained continuously open to the public for 44 years, with the exception of days when the courses were flooded. From 1999 until 2000, the original participants in the El Prado Golf Course Management, LLC made a gradual handoff of the golfing operations at El Prado to another generation of medical professionals, who were headed by Heuler’s son, Walter Heuler. In 2014, El Prado Golf Course Management, LLC undertook talks with the county about exercising an option to renew the sublease for another 40 years, but the county, contemplating potential future options for the property that went beyond utilizing it as a golf course, renewed the sublease for five years only.
By 2019, Walter Heuler was 70 years old and both he and virtually all of his partners in the Prado golf courses venture, several of whom lived outside California, had lost the enthusiasm for the golf operation. The county was leaning toward revamping its master plan for El Prado Regional Park, which was to include the addition of an entertainment/concert venue, special sports event/tournament centers, perhaps to feature a soccer complex that would entail up to 24 soccer fields and water park amenities. To accommodate these there was talk of dispensing with one or even both of the golf courses. Upon the expiration of the lease on August 31, 2020, no action to renew it had been taken and instead, a month-to-month perpetuation of the golfing operation went into effect and remained in place over the next six months while discussions between the county and Heuler proceeded. Ultimately, on March 9, 2021, the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors approved a five-year sublease extension backdated to September 1, 2020 and running through to August 31, 2025. At that point, employees of the El Prado golf facilities, including the operations manager, head golf professional, director of golf, the golf shop manager, café manager, marketing director and head groundskeeper, approached Heuler about assuming ownership and control over the golf operations at El Prado Regional Park from him and his fellow investors.
In the same timeframe, a local attorney, Frank Lizarraga, whose brother worked as part of the grounds-keeping crew at the El Prado courses, came in to represent the facility employees in their takeover bid.
Penultimately, Lizarraga, learning there was dissatisfaction on the part of the county with regard to the condition of the golf course and its facilities and a determination on the part of the county, if the golfing use at the park was to be perpetuated and a sublease on a long-term basis was to be entered into, that new arrangement should be made with a different subleasing entity that would be more diligent about maintaining the golfing facilities and country club than El Prado Golf Course Management, LLC had.
With the advantage of knowing…