EastSide Centre continues to remain an East Peoria staple while attracting tourists from around the Midwest. What started as solely a community center in the ‘90s, soon after turned into a tourism destination. EastSide still has so much to offer all the folks who visit the complex to this day.

With a rich history dating back over 25 years, EastSide Centre Sports Complex remains one of the premier athletic facilities in the Midwest. Longtime host to both IHSA’s State Softball Championships and IESA’s State Track and Baseball Finals, EastSide Centre has hosted a variety of sports and special events over the years. We view ourselves as a “do it all facility” that can cater to weeknight ball games, folks who want to work out, and lastly all the visitors that come to East Peoria from out of town. No event, game, or rental is too big or too small for our great complex. 

What started as a place for kids in the East Peoria community to come and play, has since turned into a large-scale tourist destination for youth sports enthusiasts all over the Midwest. 

Our complex is coming up on 30 years old and still has so much to offer. Not only are we reinvesting into the facility, but we have also rebranded with a new logo and new colors following the turn of the new year. With the reinvestment, we have 102 acres of green space that has begun a transformation into green synthetic turf. 

We began turfing our baseball and softball fields in the fall of 2022. By April 2025, we will have 6 of the 10 ball fields completely done. The City plans to turf all 10 baseball and softball fields and to have them all completed by the spring of 2027. The change to turf comes from the City wanting to reinvest in the facility after the complex became debt-free. With so many different youth sports complexes popping up in Illinois and surrounding states, we felt it necessary to reinvest in our spaces to make sure we stay competitive within this market. 

While one of our goals is to attract tourism events, we are still home to East Peoria Community High School’s baseball, softball, soccer, football, and track programs. We are also the home of Peoria Christian High School’s soccer and softball programs. The East Peoria Express still plays their home games here, along with East Peoria Community Baseball. Though the complex is changing, we still stick to our roots to let the local kids and teens in the area come play at our complex.

Over the years the events kept on coming to our town, and the word about EastSide began to grow. We are long-time hosts of the Great Lakes Valley Conference NCAA Division II Softball Championships. We remain the host of IESA State Track and IESA State Baseball, and host numerous large-scale baseball and softball tournaments, the likes of Greater Midwest Baseball, JP Sports, USSSA-sanctioned events, IHSA regionals, sectionals, and super-sectionals, amongst many other special events and tournaments. 

Overall, the City plans to reinvest north of $10 million back into the facility. This includes the turf fields you see today, along with concrete/sidewalk work, repaving parking lots and EastSide Drive, new gateway signage, fencing and infrastructure, a new gym floor and track for the fitness center, amongst many other incredible updates!

We view our complex as a staple in this community. With the help of the Mayor, City Council, our residents, and visitors we plan to continue to be just that. From all of us at EastSide Centre, we want to say thank you for your years of promoting and visiting our facility. Without all of you, it would not be the place that it is today.

While we appreciate our decades of growth, we are most certainly excited for our incredible future that is coming! We look forward to showing all of you these updates as they continue to take shape.