Drive through the Stoneridge area of north Poway today, past Stoneridge Chateaus, and you'll pass two different timelines side by side. On one side, new rooflines and freshly planted flower fields. On the other, land that voters approved for public use six years ago and still can't walk into. Both sides sit on what used to be the same golf course.
Here's the part that surprises most people who've watched this site since 2017: the homes on the old StoneRidge Country Club property got built close to schedule. The public amenities that were the entire justification for approving those homes in the first place are the pieces still stuck in permitting, delayed by an operator's illness, or quietly swapped out after a fight over how big a private gym should be allowed to get. If you live anywhere in the Stoneridge area, you already sense this. What follows is the paper trail that explains why.
How a private golf course became a fenced field of weeds
StoneRidge Country Club opened in 1962, an 18-hole course designed by Ted Robinson Sr. that ran through canyon terrain and mature oak groves at 17166 Stoneridge Country Club Lane. It stayed private and mostly unremarkable to anyone outside its membership until November 2017, when owner Michael Schlesinger of Western Golf Properties put a measure on the ballot asking Poway voters to rezone up to 25 acres from open space to residential condominiums so he could build up to 180 units for buyers over 55.
Voters said no. Decisively. Measure A failed 62.28 percent to 37.72 percent, with 6,450 ballots cast against it. Schlesinger closed the course the next morning. A handwritten sign went up at the entrance:
"Goodbye Poway, it was a great 60 years."
What followed was not a quiet standoff. The course sat fenced and unmaintained for years, and neighbors described it turning into what one resident called a "zoo," with bee colonies, snakes, and gopher holes taking over fairways that used to host casual weekend rounds. Rosalind Duddy, who had lived along the course since 1991, took to clearing dry brush herself with a weed trimmer, worried about fire risk in a neighborhood where roughly 20 homes had already burned in the 2007 wildfires.
What Poway actually voted to trade for 160 new houses
A local developer, Kevin McNamara, spent roughly two years assembling a different pitch than Schlesinger's: instead of dense senior condos, a lower-density community built around public access. The Poway City Council approved the specific plan and sent it to voters as Measure P in November 2020. Voters said yes this time, and the terms of that yes are worth knowing if you live anywhere near the site.
The approved plan capped homes at 160 units across 117 acres, split between up to 22 attached homes and up to 138 detached homes, with residential development limited to under 29 percent of the total property. The remaining land, more than 55 acres of conservation open space and over 14 acres of publicly accessible recreation space, was locked in by a recorded public access easement, meaning the homeowners association that eventually formed cannot vote later to close it off. The plan promised 3.5 miles of trails, an off-leash dog park, a grass amphitheater, a butterfly vivarium, an event barn, a cafe, and a small fitness club sized at just 2,953 square feet.
Here's where the timeline splits. Lennar built the homes under names like The Meadows and The Cottages, and by the community association's most recent construction update, only one home remained for sale, pending the city's final sign-off on remaining site improvements. Everything else on that list is a different story:
| Promised in the 2020 plan | Status as of 2026 |
|---|---|
| Up to 160 homes | Nearly complete, one unit pending final city approvals |
| Flower fields | Fully planted and maturing |
| Off-leash dog park and amphitheater | Plans approved by the city, but construction can't start until permits are issued, and the build itself is expected to take about 14 months once it does |
| Butterfly vivarium | Delayed after the operator became unexpectedly ill, following completed engineering |
| Event barn and cafe ("The Social") | On hold, land currently being marketed for sale amid high construction costs and interest rates; a planned classroom was dropped from the project entirely |
| Fitness club | Original 2,953 sq ft plan replaced twice, most recently by a 6,000 sq ft gym proposal with no pool |
The pattern is not subtle. The part of the deal that generates revenue moved on schedule. The part that was supposed to belong to every Poway resident, not just the people who bought a Farm address, is the part still waiting.
The gym that tried to get ten times bigger, then walked away
The fitness club is the clearest example of how a small, specific promise can quietly balloon. The 2020 plan allocated 2,953 square feet for what it called simply "The Club," part of a broader 30,000 square foot commercial cap for the whole project. A few years later, Life Time Fitness put its name on the site and proposed something else entirely: a 30,500 square foot commercial gym with 20 multi-purpose tennis and pickleball courts, a building larger by itself than the entire commercial allowance originally approved for the whole property.
That required a citywide vote, Measure H, in November 2024 to amend the specific plan. The Green Valley Civic Association surveyed roughly 4,000 Poway households, got 440 responses, and found more than 80 percent opposed the larger facility, citing traffic concerns on Goodeve Drive, a narrow residential street with a 25 mph limit, and the fact that a publicly traded company drawing members from outside Poway wasn't what the original plan promised.
Life Time never broke ground. Their development option on the site eventually expired, and by the community association's most recent update, the fitness parcel is under contract to a different, unnamed San Diego gym operator with a much smaller footprint: 6,000 square feet, the same 20 courts, and notably no pool, even though the existing approvals require one, which means the new operator will need the City Council to modify the conditional use permit before they can leave it out.
Whether that gets built as proposed, or gets renegotiated again, is an open question. What's already clear is that the site has now cycled through three different fitness plans in six years, and none of them has opened.
What's actually open if you live near Stoneridge Chateaus today
If your daily walk takes you through this part of north Poway, here's the honest state of things right now. The flower fields are planted and worth a look if you haven't driven by recently. The trail mileage tied to the housing phase is largely in place. The dog park and amphitheater have cleared city review, which is real progress, but permits haven't issued yet, and the association's own estimate puts construction at roughly 14 months after that happens, meaning residents shouldn't expect an opening date before well into 2027 even under a clean timeline. The butterfly vivarium has no announced restart date. The barn and cafe are on hold while that land sits on the market, and the classroom that was once part of the plan has been dropped for good.
A few things worth watching over the next year if this stretch of Poway is part of your regular routine:
- Whether the city issues permits for the dog park and amphitheater, since that starts the 14-month construction clock
- Who the new gym operator turns out to be, and whether the City Council approves dropping the required pool
- Whether the butterfly vivarium operator situation resolves, since engineering was already finished before the delay
None of this changes what makes the immediate area work day to day. Stoneridge Chateaus residents still have their own two pools, clubhouses, and greenbelt walkways regardless of what happens next door, and if you're curious about the complex itself rather than the site beside it, we've written a longer look at unit sizes and HOA details at Stoneridge Chateaus separately. But the open space next door was sold to voters as something that would belong to the whole community, not just to whoever eventually buys the last Farm home. Six years in, that part of the deal is still being built.
If you've got questions about what's happening on your own street, or you're trying to figure out what a stalled amenity or an approved-but-unpermitted project might mean for a home you're watching in this part of Poway, Lydia Buchanan has been tracking North County construction and development long enough to help you separate what's actually finished from what's still on paper. Reach out anytime to talk through what you're seeing on the ground.
