The Econ Soccer Complex: Where the East Side Plays
On the greenway's route sits the Econ Soccer Complex — the county's football fields named for the river, and a Saturday institution for Union Park and the whole east side.
1 minute read
The Little Econ gives Union Park its park, its trail and its name for Saturday morning: the Econ Soccer Complex, the Orange County sports grounds on the greenway’s corridor, where the east side’s youth leagues run their seasons within sight of the river the complex is named for.
A complex as a community centre
Soccer complexes are the true civic centres of suburban Florida — the place the whole community, across every line the census draws, actually assembles weekly. The Econ’s fields draw Union Park’s families together with those of the surrounding east side: Azalea Park and East Orlando teams on the fixture list, the greenway delivering half the crowd by bike, the river running past the touchlines.
The name is the geography
It is worth pausing on the naming: park, trail, complex — Union Park’s institutions keep taking the river’s name, because the river is the community’s organising fact. This hub has a piece on the Econ itself and one on the greenway; the soccer complex completes the set. A suburb whose landmarks are a river, a park and a playing field is a suburb that has its priorities in an order this magazine endorses.
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