Team Promised for County if Stadium Is Built : Baseball: Camarillo, Oxnard and Ventura officials agree to take the offer from a minor league president to their city councils.

A minor league baseball official Thursday promised Ventura County a team if communities agree to build a stadium.

“If they go ahead with the project, I can deliver a ball club here,” said Joseph Gagliardi, president of the California League, a class A league with 10 teams statewide.

“I’ve got about four or five clubs that probably will have to move in the next two years: No ifs, ands or buts.”

Officials from Camarillo, Oxnard and Ventura agreed to take the concept to their city councils in the weeks ahead and look for ways to fund the stadium project jointly.

“We are interested in getting a sports complex in Ventura County, I mean a first-class one, that will house a minor league baseball team and keep it,” Camarillo Mayor Ken Gose told about 100 supporters at a meeting Thursday morning.

Officials from the three cities have already visited other minor league stadiums and identified about 10 potential sites in the west county. They invited mayors and public officials from the east county to attend Thursday’s meeting, but received no response.

“It just didn’t tickle anybody’s fancy as a real priority right now,” said Greg Stratton, mayor of Simi Valley. “If people want to go to a ball game, you can go down to Dodger Stadium.”

He also questioned the cost of building a stadium and the return on the investment.

“You need to spend a lot of money on a stadium . . . and we have a lot of things we need in this community more than a baseball stadium,” he said.

The three west Ventura County communities hope to explore using redevelopment bonds or public-private partnerships to fund the project, which could cost $3.5 million to $12 million.

Even so, the stadium and the team would not make up the money invested in them, a consultant warned the group Thursday.

“Minor league teams cannot pay the mortgage. It won’t happen,” said Don Young, who developed a stadium in Lake Elsinore southeast of Los Angeles. “You will be lucky if they pay the ongoing operating expenses.”

Instead, he said, the community should look at the team as a quality-of-life investment. West Ventura County’s demographics--136,000 families with children live in a 20-mile radius of a central site--makes it an ideal location for minor league ball, he said.

The county’s last experience with class A baseball ended after only one year, when the Ventura Gulls moved to San Bernardino in search of a stadium. Forced to play at Ventura College, the Gulls had neither professional locker rooms nor lights for night games.

This time, west county leaders hope to line up the stadium before the team arrives. An Oxnard businessman, Stanley Moorman, expressed interest last year in buying a minor league franchise. Thursday, Moorman declined comment.

New league rules, requiring bigger and better stadiums, have prompted many ball clubs to look for new homes. Some of the older cities have neither the money nor the inclination to upgrade their stadiums, said Gagliardi of the California League.

At the same time, communities such as Lake Elsinore and Rancho Cucamonga have found a growing audience for the game. Rancho Cucamonga, in San Bernardino County, drew 330,000 fans last year and sold out 90% of its games.

Lake Elsinore in Riverside County drew 6,700 fans to the opening of its 6,000-seat stadium last week, and brought in a total of 30,000 fans in less than a week, Young said.

The new stadiums can also be used for concerts, soccer matches and other events, he said.

City officials in Ventura County began talking about a cooperative effort last fall and have already drawn up a list of sites that fit the specifications--at least 20 acres of privately owned land, which does not fall in the county’s greenbelt.

The sites include land near the Auto Center in Oxnard, sites off Victoria and Valentine roads in Ventura and property in Camarillo Springs and near Adolpho Camarillo High School.

Before considering a site, however, the communities must develop a business plan and study the feasibility of a stadium, Gose said. He will seek approval for further study from the Camarillo City Council next week. Oxnard and Ventura are expected to consider the matter in two or three weeks, officials said.

Thousand Oaks Councilman Frank Schillo said he could not attend Thursday’s meeting, but planned to refer the issue to a new committee, the Conejo Sports Federation.