Grand Park (Indiana)

• 1. Introduction

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  Grand Park Sports Campus sits in Westfield, Indiana, about 30 mi north of Indianapolis. The park spreads across 400 acres and holds 26 baseball and softball diamonds alongside 31 more fields for soccer, football, and lacrosse. A campus this size raises an obvious question: what does a small Indiana city do with that much dedicated ground? The answer involves a mayor who staked his own campaign on the project. It also involves a professional basketball franchise that later bought a piece of the land outright. And it involves an events hall large enough to host national tournaments, a presidential campaign stop, and a night of music, none of it sport. What follows traces who built Grand Park, who owns different corners of it today, and what has walked through its gates since it opened.

• 2. Who Built the Park

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  Andy Cook, the mayor of Westfield, conceived Grand Park and then ran his own campaign on the promise of building it. What began as a single elected official's pitch to voters grew into a multi-use sports campus with facilities well beyond diamonds and fields.

  Johnathan Byrd sold the Pacers Athletic Center to the Indiana Pacers in 2017. That sale made the indoor facility the property of an NBA franchise rather than the city of Westfield. The Pacers now own that single building outright, inside a campus that Westfield otherwise built and runs. Ownership of the indoor arena set it apart from the diamonds and open fields spreading across the rest of the property.

• 3. Diamonds, Fields, and Trails

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  Eight of Grand Park's baseball diamonds are built with synthetic turf, and every diamond on the complex is lit for night games. Seven of the soccer fields also use synthetic turf, and eight are lit for evening matches.

  Indy Eleven trains on these soccer fields. Since 2022, the complex has also served as home field for the Indy Eleven USL W League team.

  More than 10 mi of pedestrian and bicycle trails wind through Grand Park, including the largest trailhead on the Monon Trail. All of that lies outdoors. Indoors, Grand Park tells a different story, one built around turf under a roof rather than trails and open diamonds.

• 4. Indoors at Grand Park

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  In January 2016, the Pacers Athletic Center opened as an indoor basketball and volleyball facility on the Grand Park campus. The building holds five basketball courts and two additional multipurpose indoor courts for other sports.

  The Grand Park Events Center opened in the summer of 2016. It has been described as one of the largest sporting complexes in the world. The building holds three full-sized indoor soccer fields, a restaurant, a spectator lounge, and retail space. It also contains locker facilities and office and meeting space, all inside a 370,000 square foot structure. Eric Weflen of RQAW Corporation served as architect of record for the project.

  The Events Center's uses extend past sports to trade shows, live entertainment, and conventions. Since 2018, the Indianapolis AlleyCats of the Ultimate Frisbee Association's Central Division have called the Events Center their home field. A hall built for trade shows and frisbee matches would go on to host far stranger company.

• 5. Big Games and Bigger Names

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  Grand Park hosted the 2016 Big Ten Conference Men's Soccer Tournament, followed by the 2017 Big Ten Conference Women's Soccer Tournament.

  Machine Gun Kelly and Donald Trump have both appeared in the main events center, Trump during his 2016 presidential campaign. The Indianapolis Colts also use the site for training camp.

  Where a musician and a presidential candidate made one-time stops, the Colts return to Grand Park's fields as a recurring part of their training schedule.