Roller Hockey Fans Get Tentative OK for Rink : Recreation: Torrance will draft a three-year contract allowing a skate association to build and operate a playing facility at Wilson Park.

When introduced to roller hockey two years ago, businessman Craig Hama became one of the fast-growing sport’s nomads, searching from city to city for places to play. He practiced with his employees in a parking lot behind his Gardena office. He slapped a hockey puck around tennis courts in Redondo Beach. He tended goal at Charles H. Wilson Park in Torrance.

“I became addicted to it,” said Hama, a 33-year-old graphic artist. “I loved the sport.”

The problem, according to Hama and others, has been the banning of the activity at many public parks and schools, limiting the number of places to play. But now, prospects for roller hockey enthusiasts may be improving, thanks to lobbying by Hama and an organization he belongs to, the Torrance Skate Assn.

On Tuesday, the Torrance City Council tentatively approved a plan by the association to allow it to build a $60,000 multiuse roller rink at Wilson Park at no cost to the city. The council directed staff members to come back with a three-year contract granting the association, which has applied for nonprofit status, the rights to build, operate and maintain the planned roller hockey site.

Tom Peffer, president of the Torrance Skate Assn. and owner of skate shops in Lomita and Culver City, and two associates would fund construction of the rink. They would be repaid by the association, Peffer said, adding that the city would reap 10% of the association’s profits.

“Realistically, there’s a great demand for this sport,” Hama said. “Once this facility is built, I think it is going to draw a lot of people that are currently playing in the city on tennis courts, parking lots and schoolyards to a first-class facility.”

Hama said the site could be ready by this summer and that more than 900 youths and adults are expected to participate in leagues the group is organizing.

Roller hockey players have long coveted Wilson Park. A 50,000-square-foot concrete slab at the park, larger than a football field and once the foundation of a Navy warehouse, has been ideal for weekly pickup games. Hama and dozens of other roller hockey enthusiasts ignored a city ban on the activity and regularly squared off at the site, which has been used by the city as a staging area for special events.

City officials, however, had stepped up enforcement of the roller hockey ban and, last March, posted signs around the playing field reminding everyone that the activity was prohibited.

Several months of lobbying by the association eventually persuaded city officials, who were concerned about liability issues, about the merits of the project. The association assured the city it would maintain an insurance policy to cover the organization and city from potential liability issues.

If constructed, the rink would be the center of organized roller hockey in the South Bay, Hama said.

“We’d like to see it like (American Youth Soccer Organization),” Hama said of the soccer group, which also got its start in Torrance. “It’s a good organization. . . . I think the (council’s decision) legitimizes the fact that roller hockey is a sport to be contended with.”

Roller hockey is similar to its ice counterpart but is much more affordable, its supporters say. It is played with a lighter-weight puck. Some players wear conventional roller skates but most are equipped with the newer in-line skates.

The outdoor rink at Wilson Park would include an electronic scoreboard, lighting system and four-foot high plywood hockey boards along the perimeter topped by four-foot fencing and netting, Peffer said.

The city abandoned its own plans to build a rink in the early 1980s because of a lack of funding. Gene Barnett, Torrance’s parks and recreation director, said the Torrance Skate Assn.’s proposal provides area youths with an additional recreational opportunity. He said the group’s plan benefits the city and roller hockey participants alike.

The rink would be utilized in a “more supervised and safe environment, both for the skaters and park users who frequent tennis courts and adjacent sidewalk areas,” Barnett said. “People jogging or walking on those paths have complained periodically that they’ve had to dodge errant pucks.”

The plan also has the strong support of the Los Angeles Kings professional ice hockey franchise.

“Your fans of tomorrow are really the kids playing and growing up today,” said Harvey Bowles, executive director of merchandising for the Kings. “This is good for hockey. It helps create fans.”

Indeed, many roller hockey supporters who attended Tuesday’s meeting had donned official jerseys and caps of several professional ice hockey teams, including the Kings.