BILL STEWART, The Oregonian

VANCOUVER -- When it comes to youth sports in Vancouver and Clark County, growth is threatening to bench a number of young athletes.

Developers are looking at fields as good places for residential subdivisions, schools are being built on sports fields, and one sports complex will be bulldozed so the property can be mined for gravel.

In addition, property suitable for sports fields now carries big price tags, often topping the $1 million mark for bare ground.

County commissioners, responding to parents' demands for more sports fields, discovered that no one has an inventory of fields and their conditions. In fact, no one even knows how many fields are available this year: That figure is always in flux, and they haven't been counted in years.

As a result, several studies have been started. One is counting baseball and soccer players. Another, ordered by the Vancouver/Clark Parks and Recreation agency, will tally sports fields and note where more fields could be squeezed in. Then the commissioners will know how to respond to parent complaints.

And because no one acts as sports czar, coordinating what teams play where and when, the parks agency will look at that need, too. At present, only Little League baseball and fall soccer is being tracked by the consulting firm ED Hovee, according to David Sacamano, planner for the parks agency that serves Vancouver and the county. But the next efforts will include other sports.

Paul Dennis, an economic planning consultant for ED Hovee, expects to complete a study in April or May, looking at the growing number of youths in the Vancouver area playing baseball and soccer. He said he was not asked to count playing fields. He said collecting information has been slow because the sports are not active at the same time. His tally is about 6,000 athletes in Vancouver and its suburbs.

The county commissioners, in ordering the players counted, gave orders to focus first on young people, then -- as a future part of the study -- look at how many fields are needed for adult teams. In most cases, adult teams, with more mobility than the kids, will have longer drives to get to fields.

The overall problem, said Dan George, a planner for the parks agency, is that fields today cost more to build and more to maintain. "I think we are going to have to be more innovative. If a neighborhood or a league offers to do park maintenance for the first three years, they have a leg up, compared to an area that simply demands a park. And we do have some of those agreements."

George acknowledges that mixing different sports on a play field isn't the best thing to do, but that will be the formula for the future. The most compact design, he said, is to take a square parcel of land and place a baseball home plate in each corner. Fabric fences will create the outfield wall. Then when that season is over, the fences will be rolled up and stored, replaced by a row of soccer fields. "It's nice to give the grass a rest, but that's not possible any more," he said.

One of the current worries is that a sports field complex on Northeast Fourth Plain Boulevard could be developed as homesites after this season, evicting Evergreen Little League and about 700 young players. The league is in its 51st season on the property. The site has several owners, each with a different asking price.

George, ever the optimist, hopes the so-called Wineberg sports complex can be purchased by the city. "Ideally, to get more street appeal," he said as he sketched a combination park and sports complex, "we would create a shallow park along the street," with the play fields moved back from the street, but he said he is "not sure this can come together."

George said he found a suitable parcel of land in the neighborhood for a replacement sports complex, "but the asking price is over $1 million, and we don't have that kind of money."

The county, with an inventory of 356 acres of land for future parks, is inching toward asking voters to approve a new metropolitan parks district for the suburban areas outside Vancouver. The planned district would develop 35 new parks, but only five sites are large enough to include formal sports fields. And few of the properties are close to transit so players can get to practices and games. "These kids need a way to get to practice," George said. "It's either that or provide fields they can walk to."

What has been a common source of sports fields -- school grounds -- is under pressure. In the past, the county funded construction of fields on school playgrounds. Then the schools maintained the fields and used them for school programs. Sports leagues also helped with maintenance.

But growth has been a deal-breaker. Some school districts purchased property for future schools and allowed the land to be used for sports fields until it was time to build. Now, the schools are being built. In the case of several older schools, replacement buildings are being built on baseball diamonds and soccer pitches. The old buildings will be demolished later, but there's no assurance that sports fields will be rebuilt.

George also cites a change in a decades-old demographics pattern. "In my neighborhood, an older part of Vancouver, a family moved in and had kids, who used sports fields in the area," he said. "When the kids grew up and moved away, the parents left and a new couple would move in.

"That's still the pattern, but now the newcomers are empty-nesters moving into large homes. That means fewer youngsters living close enough to use the fields. I cannot guess what is behind this change, or whether the new pattern will last."

The area in and around Vancouver is divided into separate leagues, primarily by geography. There have been flare-ups between sports organizations, often about fields. At a recent meeting with county commissioners, representatives of the various leagues complained about a failure to share.

There were raised eyebrows from the commissioners when one league accused another of alerting Portland teams instead of rival Clark County leagues when fields become available. The commissioners' questions indicated the fields were built for Clark County players, not Portland teams.

Sacamano, project manager for the planned Fairgrounds Community Park and sports complex, said the four lighted, all-weather fields to be built southwest of the fairgrounds might be limited to adult teams because of the cost of synthetic turf and because county commissioners want to recover as much money as possible. Adult leagues usually pay four to six times more than youth teams.

The county hopes to qualify the initial fields for state tourism funds so the fields will be built to attract out-of-town tournaments. The park does have room for future fields. Commissioners hope to get the park construction started this year, if financing can be worked out.

On the east side, George said, the county is expecting to replace the Harmony Sports Complex. The private group has a long-term contract, but the fields sit above about 70 feet of county-owned commercial gravel deposits. The plan is for the county to build a comparable number of baseball and soccer fields a few yards to the west, but the new fields will be at the bottom of a pit already mined for its gravel.

Across the street from the proposed replacement site for Harmony Sports Complex is a new 42-acre park now devoted to off-leash dog use. But George said the dog area will be reduced to three acres, with the remainder becoming picnic, play and parking areas, when the county accumulates enough money to cover development costs. The possibility of sports fields has not been worked out.

Bill Stewart: 360-896-5722 or 503-294-5900; billstewart@news.oregonian.com

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