In 2018, Los Angeles will get a new Major League Soccer team. Tustin, however, might land the club’s headquarters, training facilities and one of the largest youth athletic complexes in the nation.

For the past year, the Los Angeles Football Club – a team with a star-studded list of minority investors, including Magic Johnson, Mia Hamm, Nomar Garciaparra and Will Ferrell – has pursued a proposal to build the facility on 85 acres of Navy-owned land surrounding the north Tustin blimp hangar that was once slated to become a regional park.

But when the north blimp hangar’s roof partially collapsed in 2013, the county of Orange, to which the Navy has promised to convey the large parcel, no longer saw the park plan as financially feasible and instead began pursuing a way to monetize the land.

Last summer, representatives from LAFC met with county and Tustin officials to propose a massive two-phase project that called for the construction of a 5,000- to 8,000-seat stadium, 18 sports fields, 12 baseball diamonds, a “cutting-edge training and medical center” to “host top athletes from around the world,” a sports research lab and center for sports medicine, three hotels, an enormous field house similar to the American Sports Center in Anaheim, and a promenade of restaurants, retail stores and apartments.

“This would be a real destination attraction,” said Tom Penn, president and co-owner of the LAFC and a former NBA executive for the Memphis Grizzlies and the Portland Trail Blazers.

Penn compared the youth athletic facilities in the proposal to the 220-acre ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex in Orlando and other portions to the IMG Academy sport training facilities in Bradenton, Fla. – examples for which he said there are no equivalents on the West Coast.

“There are a number of places around the country that are well-known to host prominent sports tournaments, and people come from around the country and spend days at these types of events,” Penn said. “There’s a tremendous amount of economic development going on with the Tustin Legacy project, and this would complement all of that and create a great deal of activity and sports tourism.”

Penn said the team is looking at other Southern California locations for its headquarters and facilities but would not say where. He said there is no firm deadline to make the decision but that the new facility would need to be operational in time for the team’s 2018 maiden season.

But so far, there has been little movement on the proposal aside from preliminary discussions. That’s because of what Penn calls “the complexity” of the parcel; the land is owned by the Navy and promised to the county for use once it has been cleaned, but also requires the city of Tustin to sign off on any developments.

Supervisor Todd Spitzer said Tustin officials have been hindering the process.

“The deal should’ve been cut a long time ago,” Spitzer said. “But we can’t get Tustin to sit down and agree to a deal that would put O.C. on the international soccer map, providing outstanding recreational opportunities for our young children and be a nationally rated training center.”

Tustin City Manager Jeff Parker disagreed with Spitzer’s characterization, saying the city is open to the proposal but wants a guarantee that the land would still have public open space, as he says was promised under the regional park concept plan approve by the county’s Board of Supervisors in 2012.

He said the proposal would at the very least have to include a ring of public park space surrounding the athletic complex to provide a buffer between the facility and the surrounding community.

“We’ve said if it’s commercial recreation, we don’t have a problem with it. We just want a mix there,” Parker said. “But if you take all 85 acres for a private venture, we would have some concern because then it’s no longer a park that the community can enjoy.”

Supervisor Shawn Nelson said he thinks LAFC’s proposal struck a fair compromise between Tustin’s wish for green space and the county’s desire to make money off the land. He said he thought the presence of another professional sports team’s headquarters in Orange County could benefit youth athletics similar to how the Ducks “brought life to local youth hockey clubs.”

“I think there is unquestionably a lot of middle ground there, which is, can you have recreational facilities that generate some revenue, not just for the county, but for the region,” Nelson said.

When asked whether the complex’s fields would be open to the public, Penn said the specifics had not been decided but noted that the development includes plans for public park space, calling it “a blend of public and commercial green space.”

In May, LAFC received approval from the Los Angeles City Council to build a $250 million, 22,000-seat, open-air stadium in Exposition Park at the site of the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena, which is set to be demolished this summer. Those plans also call for the addition of 100,000 square feet of restaurants and a new soccer museum.

The team will be Los Angeles’ second pro soccer club, joining the Galaxy.

Contact the writer: 714-796-7960 or jgraham@ocregister.com