United for Costa Mesa sports

Here’s a question: What’s the biggest city in California without a

high school football and track stadium and an aquatic center?

If you guessed Costa Mesa, you’re right. Fortunatey, though, there

is an effort right now to get those facilities built -- the pool at

Costa Mesa High and the stadium at Estancia. The two facilities would

be shared by the schools.

The group of business and school leaders behind this project,

Costa Mesa United, is about a third of the way to its $7.25-million

goal. Among the group’s numbers are key members of the community too

numerous to list, among them leaders in City Hall, the Newport-Mesa

Unified School District and the Costa Mesa Chamber of Commerce. The

list of major sponsors includes such familiar names as Newport Rib

Company, Balboa Instruments, Harbor Boulevard of Cars, Weichman

Associates Realtors, City of Costa Mesa, Rainbow Magnetics, C.J.

Segerstrom & Sons and the Mesa Verde Country Club. In the past weeks,

Kingston Technology and Paul Salata and his Irrelevant Week have each

given $10,000. The group is making steady progress that appears to be

gaining steam, in part due to a golf tournament fundraiser scheduled

for Monday. (The Daily Pilot is one of two major backers of the

tournament, along with host Mesa Verde Country Club.)

But as much steam as the group has, there’s still a ways to go --

some $4 million needs to be raised by the end of June. If that goal

is reached, plans call for construction to begin in the fall and

group leaders hope football games in the fall of 2006 will kickoff in

the new stadium.

There’s still one truly big way to help. The group is looking for

a donor interested in the naming rights for the stadium and/or

aquatic center. The cost would break down to about $500,000 a year

for three years. That’s a lot of money, but also a sum that we in

Newport-Mesa are fortunate enough to be able to afford.

Anyone who’s committed to youth sports should consider giving

money to this worthwhile and needed cause. Much news and debate in

recent months has focused on the state and availability of our

community’s fields and whether the quality of those in Newport Beach

and Costa Mesa are equal. Adding these two state-of-the-art

facilities would go a long way toward ending that debate.

Costa Mesa simply shouldn’t be without a stadium and pool which

its residents -- most importantly its young athletes -- can proudly

call their own.