The regional soccer fields on Condit Road that have kept motels
across the street busy and active youngsters chasing balls instead
of books on weekends since 1993 are about to change hands.
The regional soccer fields on Condit Road that have kept motels across the street busy and active youngsters chasing balls instead of books on weekends since 1993 are about to change hands.
The City of Morgan Hill, which owns the 35-acre complex and leases them to the California Youth Soccer Association, will not extend its contract with CYSA beyond December except on a month-to-month basis.
CYSA is looking to make other arrangements and the city will, instead, add the Condit Road soccer fields to the aquatics center to make an Outdoor Sports Complex.
Land in San Jose’s greenbelt, next to the athletic fields being built for the Morgan Hill School District’s Ann Sobrato High School on Burnett Avenue between Monterey Road and Highway 101 could possibly be the new site for as many as 15 fields, a CYSA representative said last week. But there are issues over restrooms and other utilities.
The City of San Jose refused to allow restrooms or concession stands on the Sobrato High fields and CYSA expects the same ban on their adjacent fields.
Charlotte Powers, a CYSA District 3 representative and also a former San Jose councilwoman, said the soccer association is working on resolving the problems.
“We are working with the City of San Jose, the Morgan Hill School District and the City of Morgan Hill,” Powers said. “San Jose has spent $300,000 for an EIR (environmental impact report).”
The EIR is necessary, she said, not because the fields would affect the greenbelt – they would largely be grass – but because any regional soccer meet would produce significant traffic to the formerly quiet neighborhood. Access to the fields, as with Sobrato High School, would likely be from Burnett Avenue, past two mobile home parks.
“We are hoping, by mid-summer, to have the report back on the EIR,” Powers said, “and be able to start working to draft agreements between the groups.”
Morgan Hill’s contribution to the EIR will be a site plan, paid for from the $1 million the city set aside to help CYSA stay nearby, said Ed Tewes, city manager.
Originally CYSA had expected Sobrato to provide restrooms for the soccer fields, but San Jose expressly forbade MHSD from installing any structures at all on the property. All Sobrato High School buildings are on a separate piece of land in San Jose, which is in the process of being brought into the Morgan Hill city limits.
If neither Sobrato nor CYSA could install restrooms or concession stands, what will CYSA do? “We can use modulars, just like we have been using at the Condit Road fields,” Powers said. “Removable portables.”
She said CYSA is raising money for a minimum of 15 soccer fields.
“There is some state grant money for soccer fields,” Powers said, though there is some question about whether it will be available after billions are cut from the state budget.
“We wanted to help them stay in the area,” said Morgan Hill Councilwoman Hedy Chang. She was one of the group that proposed that the city buy the property on Condit Road between Tennant Avenue and San Pedro Road for a regional soccer complex.
“The city gets a lot of hotel taxes (Transient Occupancy Tax) from people staying for the games,” Chang said, “and we didn’t want that to go away.
The existing complex draws teams from throughout the Bay Area and California for weekend tournaments. Often, all fields on in use.
Besides helping the local hotel business, Chang said, soccer visitors also frequent the many fast food restaurants that have sprung up around the Condit Road, East Dunne intersection.
Ramona Etchebarne, owner of Best Western Country Inn across from the current fields, said the weekend sports enthusiasts and their families, many of whom travel long distances, have helped to fill her motel, welcome in the post-9/11 atmosphere that has been especially hard on hotels and motels.
“It’s going to be a big change,” Etchebarne said. She hopes the families will remember her hospitality when they move to the Sobrato area, though there are several large hotels arrayed along Cochrane Road, far closer to the new fields.
Once the aquatic center gets going, its regional meets should help to fill the Condit Road rooms.
“I hope they will bring us business but I have no idea how much,” she said.
The current Condit Road soccer fields will become part of the Morgan Hill Outdoor Sports Center, a complex with fields for soccer and baseball. Together with the $13 million aquatics center with three pools and meeting rooms just across Barrett Avenue, and due to open in mid-June, the sports center will be the first public sports facilities east of the freeway.
“This (the sports center) will be good for the city and for the children,” Chang said.
The city is also spending more than $21 million on an indoor sports center on West Edmundson Avenue next to Community Park, the city’s largest. That center, with gymnasium, indoor warm water pool, senior and youth centers. It will also include space for birthday parties and other events, adding to the popular, dedicated blue roofed building on the community center campus.
All facility construction money, except the almost $3 million for the sports fields, comes from Redevelopment Agency funds. The $3 million exception comes from park funds, Tewes said.
CYSA is a Pleasanton-based organization providing soccer training, games and tournaments for children ages four through 19 plus workshops to train coaches and referees. CYSA North’s membership includes 221,000 players, 30,000 coaches and 11,000 referees. The CYSA Northern District is bounded by Bakersfield, the Pacific Ocean and the Oregon and Nevada borders.
Soccer Start is a separate program designed to bring children living in rural and inner city areas – economically disadvantaged – to the soccer experience and, in doing so, raise their self-esteem and give them skills useful in later life.
The city will receive $25,000 from CYSA for use, through December, of the Condit Road fields.
