UPDATED: Soccer League Offers $300,000 to City

Updated at 5:50 p.m. June 30 with information from Blenheim Facility Management.

A youth soccer league is offering the city big incentives to keep its weekend tournaments at the Rancho Mission Viejo Riding Park.

For 15 years, the riding park—with its seven soccer fields—has played host to Coast Soccer League's "premier" league, whose teams are said to have had more national championships than any other youth soccer gaming circuit in America.

Although the riding park is publicly owned, it's managed by an equestrian events company. Blenheim Facility Management did not renew Coast's lease for the fall of 2011 when the San Juan Capistrano teams who played for the league split off to form their own circuit.

Coast League Soccer is proposing that the city sidestep its license agreement with Blenheim so that the league and the city could enter into their own agreement, with the league willing to pay roughly $300,000 in rent and other fees starting Jan. 1, 2012.

According to San Juan's Open Space, Equestrian and Trails Committee Chairman Robert Ferguson, the city runs the risk of having no tenants at the riding park if it snubs Coast soccer. It's possible that Blenheim Facility Management may leave San Juan Capistrano for a new venture in Norco, he said.

"If our current licensee is successful in its Norco venture and decides to leave and move its operations, the city will have at least a known tenant in hand that will at least be able to provide the minimum revenue that we currently have, while we look for another equestrian type operator," Ferguson said. "If we do not have this, we run the risk of having no tenants at the [riding park.]"

However, a spokeswoman for Blenhiem said that the management company has every intention of staying in San Juan as long as the city allows it. "If we're given the choice, we'd absolutely love to say," said Melissa Brands.

Blenheim leases the riding park for $200,000 a year under a license agreement that ends Dec. 31. The city inherited the contract when it  purchased the grounds in January 2010 as part of a much larger acquisition of 132 acres owned by —a large Orange County landowner and developer.

Brands explained that Blenhiem began looking at the Norco site when Rancho Mission Viejo still owned the riding park in San Juan Capistrano and was considering building there. "We've always wanted to stay here ... we've always looked at Norco as a secondary situation," she said.

The rodeo grounds are a well-known venue for competitive English horse shows, Western horse shows, annual rodeo, soccer tournaments, antique car shows, dog shows and several other youth athletic events.

Also included in Coast Soccer League's proposal:

• CSL will apply for $100,000 in grant funding to install lights at two other sports field in the city limits.
• CSL will partner with AYSO to have the sports fields behind the San Juan Capistrano Community Center re-sodded at no cost to the city if the city gives CSL dibs on all of the fields at the riding park.

San Juan Capistrano's assistant city manager, Cindy Russell, said staffers need to weigh the pros and cons of the proposal before making a recommendation to the City Council.