Oversights Stall Plans for Roller Hockey Arena : Recreation: Two government panels mistakenly believed preliminary procedures had been completed.

VENTURA —  A proposal to build an outdoor roller hockey rink at Ventura Harbor has been delayed because city planners discovered lapses in the approval process.

Members of a local in-line hockey league want to construct a 180-by-80-foot rink on a 34,290-square-foot lot near Ventura Harbor Village.

The Ventura Planning Commission was scheduled to vote on the project Tuesday night, but tabled the proposal until January because of two bureaucratic glitches.

City officials thought the rink proposal had already been reviewed by the Ventura Port District, the public agency that owns the land and operates the harbor.

Port District officials thought the city had conducted an environmental review of the proposed $180,000 skate center.

But neither steps have been taken, city and district officials said. They must be completed before the project can move forward.

“Somehow it slipped through the cracks,” said Port District General Manager Richard Parsons.

Parsons said the city will conduct an environmental review of the project. “It is obvious to everybody it doesn’t have any environmental impacts,” he said. “But procedurally, they need to go through that step.”

The ice-less skate complex would be modeled after a National Hockey League rink, complete with Plexiglass siding, grandstands and a locker room.

The center would be the first outdoor facility designed specifically for roller hockey in Ventura County. An indoor hockey rink opened in Thousand Oaks earlier this year.

Roller hockey enthusiasts said the postponement is a minor setback, and will give them more time to finalize rink designs.

“It is more of the hurry-up-and-wait game,” said Nicole Soroka, who, along with her husband, Steve, applied for a development permit.

“It is just one of those formalities,” Nicole Soroka said. “That is just going to give us more time to firm up everything else.”

The center will be bankrolled by private investors and members of the Street Sharks hockey league, a group of about 500 roller hockey enthusiasts who have been searching for a rink site for more than two years.

The hockey rink proposal will be reviewed by the port district Dec. 20. It will come back before the Planning Commission on Jan. 9. If approved, hockey players hope to have the rink built by April.