Waterfront Sports Complex Proposals Go Head To Head

Basketball and volleyball squared off against baseball and soccer at the City Council meeting on Wednesday, as two applicants for a waterfront sports complex described their visions and their financing to skeptical council members.

At issue is the use of one of two warehouses on the so-called Zocchi property near the Amtrak station and the waterfront. The property, owned by the city, has two empty warehouses, each about 48,000 square feet.

"This is a good opportunity to make something good out of something that's been sitting for a while," said Dan Middleton, Alhambra High basketball coach and the head of the California Sports Complex.

The company has a plan to construct a facility that would include five basketball courts and also could be used for volleyball. It ran into a snag, however, over the $30,000 cost for structural analysis of the tilt-up building. A previous analysis of the building estimated a cost of up to $400,000 to bring it up to modern earthquake standards. Middleton wants the city to pay for the additional analysis, but council members balked at the notion.

"It's up to the developer to do due dilligence," said Councilmember Janet Kennedy.

Instead, they invited another group, Universal Sports Academy, to present its plan for baseball and soccer fields at the facility. The far more modest proposal would cost an estimated $1 million, while Middleton's project would come in around $5 million.

Council members seemed to favor the Universal Sports Academy proposal because it would be designed to attract far more local users than the basketball/volleyball proposal, which would be aimed at league teams from the region and across the state.

Neither operator has financing in place and the cost of retrofitting the building needs to be negotiated. The council directed both operators to determine those issues and return next month with more specific proposals.