Eastwood Leisure Complex Redevelopment

We are redeveloping Eastwood Leisure Complex, located at 20 Eastwood Street, Ballarat Central into a new community hub.

The project will see existing Eastwood buildings – other than the basketball stadium – demolished and replaced with a contemporary, accessible facility featuring flexible meeting spaces a medium sized conference and community events space, several meeting rooms, three multipurpose activity rooms and associated kitchen facilities.

Eastwood is one of Ballarat’s most frequently used community facilities and has been a meeting place for Ballarat and the region for eight decades.

Up to100 groups use Eastwood each year and more than 1,000 participants visit each week.

Since it was first built in the 1940s, Eastwood has had several upgrades and expansions and has been used for different community purposes.

It has now reached the end of its useful life: its facilities are outdated and no longer fit for purpose.  

The redevelopment was identified as a high priority in the City of Ballarat Community Infrastructure Plan 2022-2037.

Key deliverables of the project

• A new multipurpose community hub on the existing Eastwood Leisure Complex site.
• Medium-sized conference and community event space for community celebrations, cultural events and meetings.
• Meeting rooms, training rooms, multipurpose activity rooms that can be configured into a main hall.  
• Fully accessible toilets, storage, office and administration areas
• Changing Places facility  
• Improvements to the cladding of basketball stadium
• Associated landscaping and ESD, Greenstar initiatives.

The Eastwood Leisure Complex Redevelopment will deliver a multipurpose community hub; a high quality, accessible and fit for purpose facility to foster community participation and meet the needs of the growing Ballarat community.

The facility will provide contemporary training, meeting and activity rooms creating spaces for education, training, service delivery, physical activity, arts and culture and social connection and support programs.

It will also provide increased opportunities for socialising and lifelong learning to support the educational, social, physical and emotional health and wellbeing of the community.

The new complex will be fully accessible for all users and will support social connections for community members.

A community survey was undertaken in 2023 to understand current visitation and usage of Eastwood Leisure Complex, and to identify priorities and ideas for the facility in the future.

More than 250 people participated in community engagement activities, which helped shaped the detailed design of the facility.

An engagement summary can be found on the City of Ballarat MySay page.

City of Ballarat: $9.01 million commitment
Federal Government: $8.53 million via the Growing Regions Program