City of Canyon Lake, POA work toward re-opening golf course

With COVID-19 cases beginning to flatten, the City of Canyon Lake has relaxed its stay at home emergency order to coincide with the county’s newly-issued golf course re-opening standards. The Canyon Lake POA is prepping its facility and procedure to adhere to these new orders and is planning on reopening soon.

The city’s confirmed cases of COVID-19 are at eight individuals. Canyon Lake continues to be one of the least infected cities in the county. The city has approximately .072 percent of its population testing positive for COVID-19 compared to the county’s .129 percent. Only the cities of Blythe, Banning and Norco have a lower per capita rate of COVID-19 than does Canyon Lake in Riverside County. (These percentages are based on 2016 population projections and on data provided by the County Health Department.)

“I issued an amended emergency order which allows the POA to open the golf course should they choose to do so, subject to certain restrictions and requirements,” Canyon Lake City Manager Chris Mann said. “Most of these requirements mirror those that the county is imposing in their order.”

Chris said that should the POA decide to re-open the course, it will need to agree to post the new regulations, to self-patrol the course and to eject any golfers who are not abiding by the rules.

“We want people to be able to enjoy the golf course again,” he said, “but we still need to make sure we are being responsible and doing everything we can to prevent the spread of COVID-19.”

Meanwhile, the Canyon Lake POA is moving forward with preparing the course and procedures to allow the golf course to reopen.

“We will need to prepare our facilities to meet these requirements,” the association mentioned on its website. “Some of the Park and Play program requirements have already been implemented by our team. It is conceivable that our course could be open again in the very near future. We will continue to update our members as this develops.”

The new requirements include:

1. No more than one person may use or be present within a golf cart at any time.
2. All persons must maintain at least six feet of distance from each other at all times.
3. All persons must wear face coverings.
4. At least one person provided by the course needs to be present during hours of play to patrol the entire course to ensure compliance.
5. Expel any person found violating the order and prohibit his or her use of the course for at least 30 days.
6. Warning signs describing the requirements and the consequences for violation need to be posted at prominent locations throughout the course.

For now, Chris said the pickleball and tennis courts in Canyon Lake are to remain closed.

“Our understanding is that the United States Tennis Association is still saying that playing tennis is unsafe, but that they are working on putting out some guidelines perhaps as early as this week,” he said. “We plan to take a look at those guidelines when they become available and re-evaluate. Until then, POA and city management both feel that the courts should remain closed.”

Latest update on this can be read here >> https://fridayflyer.com/breaking/canyon-lake-golf-course-re-opens/