Ventura Site Leads Bidding for Minor League Ballpark

A barren field near the Ventura Auto Center remains the favored site for a proposed $15-million minor league ballpark--unless another landowner makes a better offer before the Oxnard, Camarillo and Ventura city councils vote on the plan in two weeks.

A committee working to bring a Class A baseball team to Ventura County chose the Ventura location Monday from among four sites after its owner, the Hofer family, agreed to donate all 35 acres needed for the facility.

“It should be a great asset for our entire county,” Ventura City Councilwoman Rosa Lee Measures said. “A multipurpose stadium would be great not just for Ventura, but for the entire region. I think it’s a healthy way to promote affordable family fun.”

But members of the committee--comprised of council members and city staff from Ventura, Oxnard and Camarillo--decided to leave the bidding open until the cities vote on the ballpark plan between Nov. 14 and 16.

“We wanted to keep this up in the air in case a better offer comes through in the next few days,” Camarillo Mayor Ken Gose said. “We didn’t want to shut the door on anyone.”

Ventura was chosen as the best site for the stadium in September, but a last-minute offer from a landowner near Camarillo Airport--deemed too good to ignore--forced committee members to re-evaluate the sites.

Although Ventura remained ranked first, the Camarillo Airport site came in a close second, an Oxnard location was third and another Camarillo parcel was fourth, said Gose, adding that the site proponents should be given an opportunity to make counteroffers.

But Measures said the deadline for submitting final offers was Oct. 27, and the haggling should be over.

“It’s just very annoying,” Measures said. “You never make a deal with a broker like that. It’s like an auction.”

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Hofer family members are seeking to develop land adjacent to the stadium acreage, Gose said. Twelve of the 35 acres they agreed to donate would be a parking lot shared with surrounding facilities, he said.

After voting on the ballpark itself, the three city councils will decide whether to form a joint-powers authority to pay for the stadium, which could be built by the 1996 baseball season.

Joint powers “seems to be the preferred way of doing this,” Gose said. “That’s the way we’re leaning.”

If the three city councils agree to form it, the Tri-Cities Sports Authority, as the joint project would be named, would own and operate the 5,500-seat ballpark and share all costs and profits. To pay for the stadium, the authority would issue bonds guaranteed by the cities.

The drive to build a stadium began last spring, when Joe Gagliardi, president of the California League, promised to deliver a Class A team to the county if someone built a ballpark. The three cities formed a committee in March and have spent $85,000 to study the idea.

The cities, which expect to start negotiating with Class A teams this month, are engaged in a cooperative effort to bring baseball to the region. That relationship will be tested when council members from two of the three cities are asked to contribute to a facility outside their boundaries.

“Obviously, I would have liked to have seen it in my own city, but I will support it,” Gose said. But “it’s much easier to sell to your council when it’s in your city.”

The Ventura County stadium would be as successful as minor league ballparks in Rancho Cucamonga and Lake Elsinore, said Dan Young, president of the Spectrum Group, an Irvine-based sports consultant. He predicted that the Ventura stadium would attract about 340,000 fans a year--a near sellout every game.