Palm Springs to Pay: Donor Didn’t Have Golf in Mind

Talk about looking a gift horse in the mouth . . .

The city of Palm Springs agreed to accept 30 acres of land on the condition that it would forever use the property as a desert preserve.

But city officials instead decided to build a golf course on the site. When other interested parties wouldn’t agree to the change, the city used its powers of eminent domain to condemn the property and take legal possession of it.

In a decision issued last week, a state appeals court in Riverside criticized the city’s tactics as “unfair and unseemly.”

“Not infrequently, wealthy individuals, intending both to promote the common [good] and memorialize themselves, give property to a city on the condition that it be used in perpetuity for some specified purpose,” the panel stated. “With disturbing regularity, the city . . . seeks to convert the property to some other use.”

The land was donated in 1986 by the late Pearl M. McManus, a daughter of one of the city’s earliest settlers. The deed transferred her interest in the land to Living Desert Preserve in Palm Desert--if the city ever violated the conditions.

The panel’s decision, which reverses a lower court’s decision, means that the city will have to compensate the wildlife preserve for the property.

Peter Shack, a lawyer with the state attorney general’s office, which filed court papers criticizing the city’s actions, applauded the panel’s ruling.

“People who make wills need to be assured that recipients are going to live up to their obligations,” Shack said. “If everyone behaved like Palm Springs, people’s confidence will forever be damaged.”