Move the State Fair

 32 comment(s)  
 E-mail Story
 Print Story
  Share

 digg it!
 Facebook
 del.icio.us
Seed Newsvine
Fark It
Reddit

Text Size: 

Tools Sponsor

BY ART HOVEY / Lincoln Journal Star

In the 1970s, when the irascible “Terrible Terry” Carpenter of Scottsbluff was a mover and shaker in the Legislature, the management of the Nebraska State Fair was told to determine the cost of moving the fair closer to Omaha.

Henry Brandt, in the middle of his 25-year tenure as fair manager at the time, never understood the rationale. But the 85-year-old retiree remembers the outcome.

“We put a cost figure together and it scared them to death,” Brandt said. “And they dropped it.”

View Slideshow

Nebraska State Fair Executive Director Barney Cosner shows off the master plan created for State Fair Park in 2000. (Eric Gregory)

Three decades later, a new generation of movers and shakers wants to move the fair several miles to the east. The 2015 Vision group has its eye on an area along 84th Street adjacent to the Lancaster Event Center.

Contrary to the century-old tradition of cows, carnivals and cotton candy, there’s a hard edge to the debate over turning the 251-acre fairgrounds into a technology showplace for the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

“We are instructed by statute to operate and manage the state fair at State Fair Park,” said fair board member Tam Allan of Lincoln, “and that’s what we intend to do.”

Allan recently cast one of 10 fair board votes in favor of keeping the fair where it is and foregoing a move expected to cost somebody $75 million or more.

Dick Campbell, a member of the Vision group, said he’s disappointed fair leadership isn’t open to further examining what is only a concept.

“What’s so worrying about taking a look at options? Why so fearful?” Campbell asked.

He acknowledged “a lot of history with the existing grounds, and I’m very conscious of that history and very aware of that history.”

“I guess my question, though — is there a better economic model and a better mousetrap that we can create by co-locating the facilities?”

He speaks of “a top-notch ag exposition center” and a chance “to create a celebration for agriculture” for the county and the state.

Allan doesn’t feel much like celebrating suggestions the fair board take on $40 million to $50 million in bond financing to cover much of the cost of moving.

“Being buried under that amount of debt isn’t going to make us a bigger or better fair,” he said.

“Putting that amount of debt on the fair would, in our opinion, kill the fair.”

nnn

The case for possible co-location of the fair and Event Center wouldn’t even be in the cards without past pivotal decisions.

The Event Center is where it is now because the county fair and county horse enthusiasts left State Fair Park as a result of a 1990s deadlock.

It happened after state fair officials decided to let the Lincoln Stars and hockey fans occupy the Coliseum, a venue for horse shows, and after the state and county couldn’t agree on who would control a possible replacement building for horse events.

Matters might not have gotten this far either if Nebraska voters hadn’t bailed the fair out of approaching financial ruin in 2004.

Passage of Amendment 4 routed about $2 million per year in lottery proceeds to the fair. It also required the host community to provide a 10 percent match to each year’s lottery revenue.

Voters responded after the amendment’s promoters billed it as a way to repair and renovate deteriorating buildings and grounds.

These events, almost 10 years apart, color attitudes now about co-location.

Why should the fair be the one to move to re-establish what had become an unhappy relationship?

And how can the fair contradict the promise it gave voters to fix up the fairgrounds?

According to Allan, it can’t and it won’t.

“Amendment 4 was a referendum on the future of the state fair,” he said. “It was an overwhelming vote in favor of that. And we take that as an endorsement of what we’re trying to do at the historic fairgrounds.”

Campbell, however, came away with a different message when he and other members of the Mayor’s Event Center Task Force examined State Fair Park as the possible co-location site.

Up to that point, it seemed “a no-brainer” to him, as task force chairman, and to others that the fairgrounds would be the choice.

But he said the tour group found the infrastructure “in a very sad state of repairs. And it would need a tremendous amount of work.”

Furthermore, when task force members looked at the most recent master plan for the fairgrounds, they noticed the number of buildings targeted for demolition.

“If that master plan is viable,” Campbell said, “and they’re tearing everything down and building all new, should we be looking at if there’s a better way to do this — and what the fair should look like in 20 years?”

Barney Cosner, named fair manager last year, said Campbell is overstating demolition plans, although Cosner did not provide details.

“You don’t survive at a spot for 101 years without some solid basics here,” he said, “and I think the basics are here.”

But when decision time came in late 2006, the task force favored Event Center facilities that were only about five years old.

nnn

Closely tied to recent fair history are other relevant questions.

How much is State Fair Park used between fairs?

How much is the Lancaster Event Center used five years after it opened?

Is moving the state fair an underhanded way of propping up an event center that has mostly dirt floors, a history of management problems and an annual dependence on local taxpayers of almost $800,000?

Back at State Fair Park, are such venerable but decaying buildings as the 90-year-old Industrial Arts Building and the 76-year-old 4-H Youth Complex functional enough to be worth air conditioning and other investments that could surpass $5 million each?

Cosner brushed aside questions about utilization.

He said the grounds logged 904 event days last year for horse-racing and other happenings before and after the fair.

An event day is four hours or longer when space is rented or otherwise occupied under the fair board’s control.

He cited Jan. 6, for example, when there were two basketball games at the Bob Devaney Sports Complex, a hockey match “and a huge Christmas party all at the same time.”

“And those kinds of things happen pretty frequently out here. And I don’t think the outside world pays enough attention to know how much of that stuff does go on.”

Cosner also pointed to a recent decision to retain a Des Moines, Iowa, consultant to do at least a preliminary study of repairs at the Industrial Arts Building and 4-H Youth Complex.

“Those are the two historical buildings,” he said, “part of the heartbeat, part of the center of State Fair Park.”

Meanwhile, Ron Snover, managing director at an event center targeted for a $15 million expansion, cited recent annual profits of about $100,000 per year there and made a similar case about utilization.

“It looks like we lost one show from last year,” Snover said, “but it looks like we’re gaining close to 20 new shows for this year, so we’re way up. We’re almost out of room.”

Among the new additions are a three-year contract to host the seven-state Interstate Rodeo Association, two more Lincoln proms and, for the first time, go-cart racing.

Back at State Fair Park, it could be argued basketball at Devaney and hockey at the Coliseum — now called the Ice Box — would go on with either a state fair or UNL presence.

But Campbell comes back to the point about plans for tearing down buildings at State Fair Park.

“That starts raising a question in my own mind. Is there a higher and better use for this ground?”

Reach Art Hovey at (402) 523-4949 or ahovey@alltel.net.