Corona’s Green River Golf Club is set to be sold for an estimated $22 million to a group led by the county of Orange.
The Board of Supervisors on Tuesday is expected to give the county flood control district the OK to spend $19.8 million for most of the 412-acre golf course straddling Riverside, San Bernardino and Orange counties.
Flood control agencies in Riverside and San Bernardino counties are expected to pay the remaining $2.2 million to buy the course from Green River Golf Corp. and Amada America Inc., a sheet metal fabricator based in Buena Park.
The county isn’t going “into the golf business,” Supervisor Chris Norby said.
Instead, it and the other governments want to buy the course as part of planning for flooding along the Santa Ana River during major storms. The course could serve as a basin for excess water during heavy rains.
“The golf course is in a flood control plain,” Norby said. “And if you have to buy an easement, it may be cheaper to buy the course outright.”
Judy Saguchi, general manager of Green River, and Amada President George Kamimura, couldn’t be reached for comment on the sale.
How the county plans to run the golf course,either on its own or under contract with someone else,isn’t clear.
Green River Golf Club has two 18-hole courses facing the Riverside (91) Freeway. The course has been closed due to flooding several times in the past two decades.
Opened in 1958, Green River is in an idyllic setting, surrounded by oak, sycamore and cottonwood trees. Horses graze in the pastures and canyons next to the links.
If the supervisors sign off, the purchase would go into escrow and could take six months to close, said Nadeem Majaj, manager of OC’s flood control division.
District Ownership
The flood control district is a state agency run by the county. Technically, the flood control district, not the county, would own the golf course, said Lance Natsuhara, manager of OC’s Santa Ana River project.
The flood control district has been saving for such a deal for years, Natsuhara said. The agency is funded by taxes paid by homeowners.
The county is aiming to keep “OC from flooding,” according to Majaj. The worry is a build up of water at Prado Dam and in the Santa Ana River that runs through the county’s urban heartland before emptying into the Pacific Ocean in Huntington Beach.
“We will be improving the flood control system along the Santa Ana River with the acquisition of the course,” Majaj said.
In the heavy rain of early 2005, the banks of the river overflowed. Water seeping through a temporary dam set up close to nearby Prado Dam led to an evacuation of thousands of residents in the Green River area, just beyond the county line from Yorba Linda.
The three counties and their flood control districts, as well as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, began a plan in the late 1980s to raise the dam by roughly 30 feet and increase the discharge of water that flows through the south end of the golf course to the Santa Ana River.
Another dam is to be built northeast of San Bernardino County’s Redlands, called Highland Dam, which is intended as part of a big-picture strategy to protect OC from flooding, Majaj said.
