Camarillo Commissioners Expected to Advance Plans for Sport Complex

Despite a series of rival proposals, plans for a multiuse sports complex here are moving ahead as the Planning Commission will decide tonight whether to pursue zoning changes to accommodate the center.

Commissioners are expected to approve a resolution that permits developer Tim L. Wood to proceed with Sportsplex, a sprawling ice-skating and athletic training center he wants to build near Camarillo Airport.

The resolution does not amount to formal approval of the project, which would feature a skating rink, arena, water park, skateboard park, fitness center and retail shops and restaurants on 75 acres west of Las Posas Road.

But it does allow Wood to continue plans for the complex, which would require rezoning to build on property adjacent to the Ventura Freeway.

“This is a regional training center that serves all of Ventura County,” said Wood, a former world-class figure skater who captured a silver medal in the 1968 Winter Olympic Games.

“I’m sure that a lot of events and training for young people will be pulled here from Malibu, the [San Fernando] Valley and Santa Barbara,” said Wood, who hopes to break ground next spring and open in two years.

Sportsplex, however, is competing with several other projects pitched by separate investors, all of whom want to be the first to field a minor-league baseball club in west Ventura County by next spring.

Wood is seeking permission to move ahead with Sportsplex less than a week before the Ventura City Council is scheduled to consider a financing plan to pay for Centerplex, a 5,000-seat stadium planned behind the Ventura Auto Center.

Meanwhile, an Orange County attorney who owns property next to the Sportsplex proposal is awaiting a decision by the Ventura council before he proceeds with plans for a ballpark.

Oxnard developer Stanley Moorman also has announced plans for a stadium in his city. But he has not yet applied for any permits.

Ventura Mayor Jack Tingstrom said that a negotiating team next Monday will present a detailed financial analysis of the Centerplex plan to the full City Council.

“That decision will be made--up or down--by next week, or certainly the week after,” Tingstrom said.

Already, Centerplex promoters have begun displaying a model of the stadium they want to build behind the Ventura Auto Center.

A tabletop replica model was exhibited at the Fourth of July street fair, and Tingstrom said a California League team already has agreed to move to Ventura when the stadium is built.

Minor-league baseball could begin locally as soon as next spring, the mayor said.

Sportsplex would not necessarily compete with a baseball stadium in another city. Wood first pitched Sportsplex earlier this year as a combination baseball stadium and ice-skating training center. He received conceptual approval from the Camarillo City Council in April, although Mayor David M. Smith voted no, saying the project would be too close to the Camarillo Airport.

But negotiations between Wood and Pearson have stalled, Wood said, and the ballpark is no longer part of Sportsplex.

Pearson said Monday that he still plans to bring a minor league team to west Ventura County. For now, however, he is watching the Ventura proposal, which relies heavily on taxpayer dollars.

“The citizens of Ventura are in no way going to sanction the expenditure of public money to build a stadium,” Pearson said, “especially when they can have a superior facility right down that road that’s privately funded.”

Last July, the Ventura City Council denied a financing plan proposed by the Centerplex developers because it put too much of the risk on taxpayers.

Tingstrom said he feels confident that the negotiating team now studying funding proposals for Centerplex will come up with a plan that benefits both the developer and city residents.

Wood said that even if the Ventura stadium is approved and construction begins later this year, he still plans to pursue the Sportsplex project.

“There is no facility in Southern California that would be like this,” he said.