The last two grass-and-dirt diamonds at the EastSide Centre sports complex in East Peoria will be converted to synthetic turf.
Culminating a phased five-year effort to install turf at all 10 outdoor baseball and softball fields, the East Peoria City Council on Tuesday unanimously approved a $2.6 million contract with ATG Sports for Fields 5 and 6.
“This is the best year we've ever had gross revenue-wise, and a lot of that has to do with the turf,” said Kory Brown, the city’s director of tourism and special events. “So it's paying dividends.”
ATG Sports handled the “turnkey installation” of its RamTurf fiber field material on the other eight fields. The product is expected to withstand higher traffic levels and last longer.
The city chose to stick with ATG to assure consistency among all the EastSide Centre diamonds to ensure player safety and uniform quality of play.
“I think it's very important to have a consistent project,” said Mayor John Kahl, when asked by a resident why the city didn’t consider a contractor other than ATG. “They've been phenomenal to deal with, and we’re prudent to using taxpayer money wisely, including getting a quality product.”
The included alternate additions to the project include $397,000 for seven poles of LED lighting on the final two fields; the smallest diamonds at the complex currently have no lighting.
In a separate action, the council approved a nearly $20,000 contract with Sports Imports to upgrade the 40-year-old venue’s volleyball courts. The full system upgrade includes new poles, nets, referee stands, padding and more.
Centennial Drive pavement
East Peoria is looking to commit $1.8 million to improving the pavement on Centennial Drive, extending from Main Street up the hill to the Illinois Central College campus entrance at Highview Road.
The council approved the city’s funding portion for the project, looking to leverage a $640,000 award from the Tri-County Regional Planning Commission with a matching amount not to exceed $1.2 million in hopes of gaining grant money through the Illinois Department of Transportation [IDOT].
“Centennial Drive is in great disrepair, and we've needed to do something with it,” said city commissioner Dan Decker. “We've been hoping to get some funding because we do believe that it is as much of a regional road as many of the others.”
The city originally sought regional planning commission funding for two projects, with the other intended for Riverside Drive. With the most recent work on the Centennial hill coming in 2008, that corridor took priority.
An engineering estimate puts the project cost at $1.56 million, with another $260,000 contingency expected to cover increasing costs of labor and material.
With the council approval, the city hopes the project will get through the IDOT approval process in time to have the mill and overlay work completed before the end of next year.
Long-term plans for the corridor include upgrading the signalized intersection of Centennial and Highview.
“Those signals are past their useful life, and at times, for anyone that's been up there, they don't activate at times,” said Kahl. “People sit there and sit there and sit there, and then you see people run the red lights because they're tired of sitting there, and they realize the signals aren't working properly. So it's a safety concern.”
