Fresno cancels lease with Granite Park sports complex operator, citing unpaid bills
The rocky relationship between local developer Terance Frazier and the city of Fresno got a lot more heated this week after the city moved to end Frazier’s lease to operate the city-owned Granite Park sports complex.
City Manager Georgeanne White announced Wednesday she was terminating the 25-year lease agreement with Frazier’s Central Valley Community Sports Foundation for use of the site and operation of the sports complex in east-central Fresno.
In a Nov. 6 letter to Frazier, White provided a three-day notice that the city was terminating the foundation’s tenancy at the site for failure to pay rent and arrears of other expenses that the city maintains are the foundation’s responsibility.
The Fresno City Council approved the 25-year lease agreement with Frazier in 2015.
In addition to the lease, White said the city is also canceling its $150,000-per-year service agreement with the sports foundation to provide recreational programs at the site starting in December.
But Frazier vows that he will not go quietly. “We are not backing down,” Frazier told supporters and reporters at a gathering Friday afternoon at the sports park. “The city’s actions are illegal and, more disturbingly, immoral.”
“Let’s not forget what Granite Park was before we stepped in: a neglected, overgrown dumping ground,” Frazier added. “The city’s motives are clear. They want the millions of dollars of value we’ve created.”
Frazier said that with the $3 million in improvements that he and the sports foundation have made to the site, the property’s value has increased from $2.5 million in 2015 to more than $9 million now.
David Weiland, an attorney representing the sports foundation, said he expects the city to file an eviction action, or unlawful detainer, in court next week. He offered a blunt response when asked if Frazier and the foundation would comply with the termination notice and vacate the park.
“Hell, no,” Weiland said. “Why should the foundation give up something that they’ve worked seven years and invested $3 million in, and give it up for nothing? Why should they do that?”
Weiland added that “what Georgeanne White is saying (about the alleged breach of the lease) is false, pure lies.”
Frazier said the foundation’s expenses to operate the park, including payroll for its 40 part- and full-time employees, add up to about $110,000 per month.
In social media posts, Frazier called upon supporters of the park to rally against the lease cancellation. “After ten years of dedicated service, the city is now threatening to close the park again, and we need your support! … Time to fight back!,” Frazier said in a Facebook post on Thursday.
Also on Thursday, White said the city is not closing the park, but terminating the lease for the foundation to operate it.
“If there’s a tournament or something that’s already on the books, hopefully the operator will cooperate and hand over their calendar of events that they’ve booked,” White said.
“Right now we want to honor the events,” White added, “so that the kids who are committed to tournaments there can continue to play and put together our plan to make sure that the park is maintained. Then we’ll look at the next steps.”
The city alleges that Frazier — who filed a federal lawsuit against the city in 2020 over its Granite Park dealings — owes the city more than $700,000 in back rent, $151,000 for water and sewer fees, and $181,000 as the city’s share of revenue from an electronic billboard on the site. Additionally, city officials say Frazier owes the city another $263,000 in unpaid PG&E bills.
While the lease spells out that utilities, including electric bills, are the responsibility of the foundation, “multiple times we had to step in and pay the PG&E bill so that the park wouldn’t go dark,” White said. “I think the council and the administration at that time wanted to make sure that kids weren’t left in the dark, and we just continued to put the operator on notice, ‘You need to pay your bills.’”
White said the city’s termination of the lease is unrelated to Frazier’s lawsuit that is still pending in federal court. “For me, this is about implementing a lease that we’ve given more than enough time and more than enough notification that they need to come into compliance,” she said.
The city sent a first notice of default to Frazier and the sports foundation in May.
If Frazier declines to vacate the site, White said the city would proceed with eviction proceedings — a legal process that could leave the fate of the site in limbo for months.
Frazier has complained that he is being treated differently than other operators of city-owned facilities, particularly the Fresno Grizzlies baseball team that plays at the city’s Chukchansi Park baseball stadium. Over the years, the city and the baseball team have rearranged their agreements to provide varying measures of economic relief to the team.
White dismissed those complaints. “I think that when you have an entity that operates in good faith and compliance, there’s a process that you go through,” she said of the Grizzlies. “Every time that we have asked Mr. Frazier to operate in accordance with the terms of his lease, it’s either met with silence or defiance.”
“I think enough is enough,” White said. “We just want him to follow the terms of the lease in operating the facility.”
Dispute over the lease terms
Weiland, the sports foundation’s attorney, asserted in an August letter to White that the city made false allegations about the default status of the lease.
Weiland also disputed that utility bills went unpaid because “when those payments were made by the city, the foundation had a legally binding payment plan in effect with PG&E, which made the payments from the city gratuitious and without basis in law or fact.”
Weiland accused White and the city of “ongoing efforts to spread false allegations about Granite Park and about the Foundation,” describing it as “clearly retaliatory and an effort to make a proverbial ‘end run’ around the pending federal lawsuit.”
White, in correspondence with The Bee on Friday, referred to provisions in the lease about the capital improvements that Frazier and the foundation were supposed to make at Granite Park.
That construction included refurbishing three baseball fields and building new basketball and sand volleyball courts, a new restaurant, shop and walking and jogging paths. All of those were supposed to be completed within two years of signing the lease.
White said some of those required components were never built.
“(Frazier) doesn’t get to make whatever improvements he wants and then take it as a rent credit,” White said. “The lease called out the specific improvements.”
Weiland said Friday the projects mentioned in the lease that remain unbuilt at the park — the basketball, volleyball and sand volleyball courts and restaurant — “were intended to be included in the lease as an example of what to be built here” and “was never intended to be a set in stone (improvement).”
Weiland said that the foundation didn’t have the money to build the restaurant, but sidestepped a question about whether being unable to afford to complete those projects exempt the foundation from the terms of the lease.
“Are you saying that every word in that lease is to be interpreted literally?” Weiland responded, asserting that “the city isn’t following the lease.” Weiland suggested that may excuse the foundation from its lease obligations, as well.
“I guarantee you, we’re not going to lay down,” he added. “We’re going to fight and scratch and kick and do whatever we need to do to keep this park under the lease with the foundation.”
