POULSBO — Seattle Sounders co-owner Robin Waite’s plans to build a 6,000-seat professional soccer stadium in Poulsbo drew a favorable response from city officials Monday afternoon.

“Hooray for us,” Councilman Ed Stern said after listening to Mayor Kathryn Quade’s outline of the tentative proposal to construct the stadium on the western edge of the College Marketplace development.

Waite’s original plans were to locate the facility on the eastern side of Viking Avenue, but after city officials expressed concerns about the site, Waite moved his proposal to College Marketplace, Quade said.

“It is still viable as long as we get public usage,” she said.

A partnership could be formed with Chaffey Homes, property owner Brad Walker and others to provide public use on the practice fields, she said.

“I didn’t want to go any further with this if I didn’t think the council was remotely interested,” she told the committee.

Waite said he would ideally like to have the stadium complete by next year, but the most realistic timeframe would be some time in 2009, Quade said.

After hearing the details, Councilman Dale Rudolph voiced his support for the proposal.

“The intersection of Highway 305 and Highway 3 is something NASCAR never had,” Rudolph said.

Unlike the proposed NASCAR track site, which was void of the necessary infrastructure required to support such a use, the College Marketplace location is already capable of supporting such a use, Stern said.

“The property’s already zoned and the infrastructure is there,” he said. “Certainly at first blush I would support it.”

The stadium might offer some great views, so it at least needs to be vested in the city’s permitting processes, Stern said.

While not ruling out the potential for the stadium, Planning Director Barry Berezowsky said there are still several questions that must be answered before the project can proceed.

“There’s lots we need to look at carefully,” he cautioned. “There are number of things that still need to be worked out.”

Although Parks and Recreation director Mary McCluskey was supportive of the plan, she said she had one major concern.

“I just want to make sure we don’t lose sight of the public field,” McCluskey said. “For the first time, we’re about to call something Poulsbo’s without having to go to the school district.”

The ballfields in the College Marketplace Master Plan will be the first facilities wholly owned by the city and not shared with the North Kitsap School District.

“We’re not going to give anything away,” Stern replied.