CITY ENVISIONS FIELDS OF DREAMS $30 MILLION DEAL WOULD SEE PARK WITH BIG-LEAGUE LOOK.

Byline: JUDY O'ROURKE

Staff Writer

SANTA CLARITA -- If the city builds it, they will come.

Santa Clarita is looking at ponying up $30 million to build a sports park whose fields would resemble Fenway Park or Yankee Stadium -- where youth and adult leagues would play.

"It appears to be an exciting option to meet the parks and recreation needs of the valley," said Rick Gould, Santa Clarita's director of parks and recreation. "The experience ... ratchets up the level of competitiveness and excitement because you feel like you're playing at a big league park."

Chino Hills, Calif.-based Big League Dreams Sports Park furnishes the layout and operates the scaled-down regulation-size amateur venues in five California cities and one in Texas, with more on the way. The company relies on cities to build the parks.

Santa Clarita officials visited one in Chino Hills, where roughly 360 softball leagues play on six fields. The park hosts a World Series for Little League, an array of tournaments and arena soccer is played in a pavilion.

Before the park opened about five years ago in the city of some 79,000, youth and adult leagues jockeyed for tight space in the city's parks.

"It (gave) relief to other impacted facilities," said Michael Fleager, Chino Hills' director of community services, who oversaw the project and administers the lease. And it allowed that city to stretch its budget.

"If we built a city park there ... we'd have to maintain it, but the terms of the lease require them to maintain it."

Chino Hills already owned the land and now owns the $15 million facility.

More than 280 teams play softball in Santa Clarita's public programs; others play T-ball and flag football. The William S. Hart PONY Baseball and Softball League is one of the largest of its kind nationwide and there are three local Little Leagues. Also more than 7,000 youngsters play soccer in AYSO programs.

The venues charge nominal entry fees. Sales of food and alcohol in plush concession areas, which resemble sports-bar restaurants, often generate millions in profits. Big League customizes revenue-sharing agreements with each city.

Other California parks are in Cathedral City, Mira Loma, Redding and Manteca.

Public golf courses are run the same way, Gould said, built by cities that rely on the expertise of private companies to run them.

"Everybody wins," Gould said.

Like other growing cities, Santa Clarita is strapped for park space. Instead of providing 800 to 900 acres for its 180,000 residents, it has 260 acres of parks, with an additional 10 acres being built.

Gould said the city is able to honor just half of the 35,000 requests to reserve field spaces each year.

In Chino Hills, the facility generates sales tax on food and beverages from two concession areas and retail sales in the pro shop. Events often jam local hotels and visitors patronize local businesses. Fleager said the park is meeting the city's financial expectations.

In Santa Clarita's 2007-08 budget unveiled Tuesday, $850,000 was set aside for the project, which would allow the city and Big League to begin talking about a long-term consulting agreement that would include an analysis of potential sites, design and construction. The sum is a place holder, Gould said, meaning the Santa Clarita City Council would need to approve the contract.

Chino Hills' 36 acres of fields fall midway between the smallest parks, at 15 acres, and the largest, at about 70 acres. They are reproductions of Chicago's legendary Wrigley Field; Ebbets Field, where the Brooklyn Dodgers played; and Fenway Park in Boston.

Gould said the site hasn't been picked yet -- it could land on the nearly 1,000-acre Whittaker-Bermite site, where decades-old contamination is being cleaned up -- but he expects the park to be modeled after Chino Hills' sizewise.

Chino Hills put its fields in a flood inundation area at the high-water mark behind a dam where little else could be built.

Big League is in the midst of an expansion plan that might include Santa Clarita, said Rick Odekirk, managing director for Big League Dreams USA. Eight facilities in the works -- four in California -- are due to open in the next 1 1/2 years.

The company plans to create two more parks next year and is considering bids from about 24 candidates, Odekirk said.

Cathedral City, near Palm Springs, raves about its three fields, which are a magnet for thousands of softball players, youth sports and men's softball tournaments.

"Every weekend it's packed," said Julie Baumer, Cathedral City's deputy city manager. A chain hotel built a hotel nearby to accommodate the steady stream of visitors, she said.

Unlike more recent deals, Cathedral City didn't build its venue, but instead guaranteed a construction loan when the park was built about eight years ago.

Santa Clarita Councilman Tim Ben Boydston said he abstained Tuesday from voting on the draft budget, set for approval June 12, because he received it shortly before the meeting and didn't have time to digest it. The other four council members approved the move.

Boydston hasn't taken a stand but has questions.

"It would be appropriate for an outside consultant to study the Big League Dreams track record, parks in other cities and the benefits and drawbacks of doing this public-private partnership so the taxpayers of Santa Clarita will feel comfortable they're getting a good deal," he said Thursday. "After all, $30 million without the cost of interest included is enough to build a road. We have to balance all of the needs of the citizens of Santa Clarita."

judy.orourke(at)dailynews.com

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