Ready to build a new fair

LINCOLN — Having survived a lawsuit and with $42 million in funding in hand, Nebraska State Fair leaders are to officially kick off construction of the new fairgrounds at Grand Island's Fonner Park today.

Gov. Dave Heineman will be among those participating in the 2 p.m. groundbreaking ceremony, which is open to the public.

Fair officials emphasize that they are not limping off in exile to a new location. The Grand Island fairgrounds will give them a chance to reinvent the fair in buildings that rival facilities anywhere in the country and to escape the logistical difficulties that long plagued the fair in Lincoln.

Workers for Brandt Excavating and Hooker Brothers Construction began moving in 60,000 square yards of fill dirt on Monday, needed to raise the ground level to keep the new buildings' footings above the water table.

General contractor Sampson Construction Co. has 14 months to finish construction, including five new buildings in time for the first Grand Island fair, Aug. 27 through Sept. 6, 2010.

“It's the end of a chapter, but it's the beginning of a new book,” said Fair Board Chairman Jerry Fitzgerald. “We're not just writing a new chapter going to Grand Island, we're writing a whole new book.”

Officials plan to celebrate the fair's past and its future during the grand finale fair in Lincoln, which runs Aug. 28 through Sept. 7.

Preparations for the move will begin as soon as the 2009 fair closes. The deed to the fairgrounds must be surrendered by Jan. 1 to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, which plans a research campus on the site.

The move means fair staff will be reduced from about 25 to around 10. Significantly fewer maintenance workers will be needed because Grand Island's Fonner Park, a nonprofit corporation that manages the Hall County fair, horse racing and the Heartland Events Center, will own and maintain most of the buildings.

By the time the carnival tents and the midway rides go up for the first fair in Grand Island, fair patrons will find what fair officials say is a better-designed fairgrounds and a fair more focused on livestock and agriculture.

Last year, the Legislature passed a law moving the fair to Grand Island.

As part of the deal, the University of Nebraska put up $21.5 million toward the move; the City of Grand Island, $8.5 million; the state, $5 million; and the fair, up to $7 million.

Grand Island imposed a 1.5 cent tax on restaurant food and beverages to provide most of its share.

“Onward and upward,” said Fair Board member Van Neidig, a Battle Creek farmer, who had been a vocal skeptic of the move. “I think Grand Island will prove to be a better location.”

Although fair officials say they expect more people to show livestock and enter exhibits in the fair, they can't predict whether attendance in Grand Island will match the 309,000 people who attended the 2008 fair. Being farther from the metropolitan populations of Lincoln and Omaha may hurt attendance.

Lincoln businessman Roger Yant said it doesn't matter to him how big the livestock barns may be.

“I don't go to Grand Island,” he said. “I have nothing against it, but I have no reason to go to Grand Island. I'll go to the Iowa State Fair if I want to go to a big fair.”

Yant said he is appealing a Lancaster County district court judge ruling last month against his challenge of the move.

Fair officials say the new fairgrounds in Grand Island will in many ways improve upon the Lincoln site.

The Fonner Park fairgrounds are roughly the same size as the 225-acre State Fair Park in Lincoln. Although there will be fewer buildings on the grounds — only about 10, compared with 70 in Lincoln — they will be significantly larger than those in Lincoln.

A 290,000 square-foot livestock pavilion — a beef barn and a small-animal barn connected by an air-conditioned show arena — will be one of the largest such facilities in the nation, fair officials said. In the offseason, Fonner Park may be able to use it to attract national-scale livestock events to Grand Island.

Even with the advantages of the new location, leaving Lincoln will be undeniably bittersweet, Fitzgerald said.

“We're going to leave a home that's been home for a long time,” he said. “Every once in while I go out the middle of the fairgrounds, look around and say ‘you're leaving a lot here that will be hard to replace.'”

Contact the writer:

402-473-9581, leslie.reed@owh.com