SAN DIEGO (CN) — Open space, horses, and soccer are all factors at play in a lawsuit filed Thursday in San Diego Superior Court in which a homeowner claims he was swindled out of property in one of Southern California’s wealthiest neighborhoods in a scheme to benefit a youth soccer organization and turn tranquil fields into a busy entertainment hub.
Corwyn Ha’o owned two acres of land in Del Mar, a small and wealthy seaside town in San Diego County. The land included a home and horse stables that adjoined a field that had been used to play polo in the past. In the early 1980s, the city of San Diego was granted the field under a deed that mandated keeping the land as open space.
But according to Ha’o’s complaint, since the mid-1980s the city has leased the land to a number of different organizations, including a polo club which then subleased it to a youth soccer organization called Surf Cup Sports that’s used the land to host tournaments.
Surf Cup Sports then subleased the land to San Diego Wave FC, the city’s professional women’s soccer team, to hold practices, tournaments, camps, and a proposed training facility, Ha’o says in his complaint. He says Surf Cup Sports has reconstructed the polo field by widening road entrances, adding concrete pads, and other construction projects.
All of this, Ha’o says, draws an audience, traffic, and a lot of noise which Ha’o and his neighbors have tried to fight for years, including by having the local homeowners' association sue the city over what they claim are violations of the land's grant deed.
"Ultimately, Ha’o has witnessed the neighboring polo fields transform from a quiet park to a busy stadium complex in the past few years and has passionately fought against these changes in order to preserve what he could of the once natural space. As a result of the significant strife caused to Ha’o by this dispute, Ha’o had little choice but to sell the property," he says in the complaint.
When he put his 2-acre property on the market, Ha’o tried to find a buyer who “would not contribute to Surf Cup Sports' ongoing violations of the grant deed or further disrupt the community,” he says in his complaint.
He eventually sold the home for $2.9 million to Wendy Naerbo, who presented herself as an equestrian who wanted to use the land as a “horse property,” Ha’o says.
Ha’o claims Naerbo then transferred the property to a Florida-based LLC called Surf Del Mar Two for the same price, which Ha’o claims is a subsidiary or affiliate of Surf Cup Sports. Naerbo is also a partner of Surf Cup Sports' vice president, according to the complaint.
Ha’o refers to Naerbo as a “straw man” who manipulated him into selling his property “to the very people he has been fighting against for years.”
Ha’o's claims against Naerbo and Surf Del Mar Two include fraud and breach of contract. He seeks damages including punitive damages, and is represented by Jeffrey Singletary and others from the Costa Mesa firm Snell & Wilmer.
“It was critical to Ha’o that he locate a buyer that would use the property in a manner like his and would not contribute to Surf Cup’s ongoing violations of the grant deed or further disrupt the community. Ha’o wanted to ensure that his passions for preserving open spaces for his community and playing polo carried on through the next owner of the Property to ultimately protect the Property against the encroaching changes around it,” Ha’o says in this complaint.
Ha’o’s attorney declined to comment.
Representatives of Surf Cup Sports did not responded to requests for comment by press time.
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