Youth Soccer Group Willing to Vacate Site

City officials are asking a local youth soccer organization to abandon its headquarters to make way for the Long Beach Riptide baseball team, but leaders of the group say they don’t mind.

“Having minor league ball in Mission Viejo is good for the community,” Alan Gallup, chairman of the Mission Viejo Soccer Foundation, said Tuesday. “I’m not a baseball fan, but I have a great appreciation for the community pride that comes with these minor league teams.”

The City Council agreed in closed session to give the soccer group 30 days’ notice to vacate the World Cup Center offices at Oso and Marguerite parkways.

In return for requiring the youth soccer group to move, the city agreed to provide the organization with a new office: a city-owned building on Melinda Road that was formerly a model home showroom.

“We were disappointed,” Gallup said of having to move. “But in the greater scheme of things, getting a minor league baseball team is a greater opportunity for the city.”

The small office complex the soccer group is vacating would be a temporary administrative center for the Long Beach Riptide if plans to build a 4,500-seat baseball stadium at Saddleback College are successful.

City officials are negotiating with the college to allow construction of the stadium on campus.

Gallup, who is on the Saddleback College Board of Governors, a community support group, said the baseball field also might be used for soccer and other activities.

“There are clearly many ways to design the facility to accommodate multi-uses,” he said. “We could use it for a lot of different things, such as a pro football training camp.”