It’s not personal, just business, right?

No, it’s both, money and more, bad moods to people who have done business at or around the Nebraska State Fair for more than a generation. 

As the fair appears to be packing up for a move to Grand Island, they’re losing more than a week and a half of reliable business in Lincoln every year.

John Grasmick of rural Garland got his first job there, at 16, galloping race horses toward a career spent at tracks and fairs and livestock shows, in pickups and around barns and stalls, delivering sweet hay and bedding straw to familiar, friendly country people caring for and proudly displaying their valuable animals. 

From the Budweister horses to chickens, as Grasmick said. 

“You’re talking to a bummed-out guy,” Grasmick said last week, as he and other business people started sharpening pencils, revising their plans and imagining out loud what might have been. 

 “I was running some short numbers today,” he said.  “How many people do you think live within 50 miles of Grand Island?  So you figure maybe 200,000 people within 50 miles?   Within 50 miles of Lincoln, 1.1 million. You get me? 

“How’s this gonna work?    It just astounds me.   We’re the only state I know, because of thickheaded personalities they can’t get their act together and they take a show like this away from a population center.”

It’s financial, sure.   Grasmick works the Iowa State Fair, the American Royal show in Kansas City,  Tulsa, among others. 

“All my contracts are important to me, financially,” he said.   It’ll be a financial loss, even if he still gets a chance to contract hay and straw for a Grand Island fair.

But it’s bruising personally, too, as he considers his relationships at State Fair Park. 

“Down at the shop, there’s all these guys who have been down there forever,” Grasmick said.  “A plumber who’s gonna retire in five years.  He knows where every valve is.  None of those guys are gonna move their families to Grand Island.

“I’m bummed.” 

* * * 

Laurie Novak, AKA Lolo, of the Tom “Train Wreck” Novak family, started at age 12 working for Dick Skold at the fair, vending A&W root beer.

She’s a trained and registered dietitian.

“I should be teaching people how to eat right, but instead I sell junk food,” she said. 

When Skold died she inherited the business, known since about ‘77 as Lolo’s.  

 They have good locations selling burgers, brats and dogs  outside the open-air auditorium and outside the food court.

Serving the State Fair, the big auto parts swap meet and other events at State Fair Park is part of a business that also feeds the Wilber Czech Festival, corporate events, Husker football fans around the stadium.

To Lolo, too, it’s business and personal. 

“I just know that when I was notified yesterday that this was moving I was really sad,” she said.  “I have a real emotional connection to that fairground.  I’ve participated in that fair when it was really rolling.  We had a state fair that rolled big-time.  We made good money and people had a good time.”

She saw the fair go downhill and she’s seen it start to make that turn back up, with help from the lottery money and fair management believing in what they were doing. 

“I was really excited,” she said.

She intends to tough it out.

“If the State Fair Board feels this is the best move for us, I need to be a participant, and my business is mobile. I’m sorry for this.  I’m really sorry to see it leave Lincoln.”

She believes Lincoln is underestimating the financial loss to its business people, the economy and the fair itself.

“Because all they want to see is the technology park,” she said.

“I’d think attendance (in Grand Island) would be about half of what it is in the city of  Lincoln.  That would affect me seriously.  The numbers thing is very frightening.  We like to do events with lots of people.  My expenses go up and the numbers go down.”

Asked to measure whether this is a bigger emotional or financial issue for her, she ponders, then  decides it’s financial.  Sort of.

“I’m hoping it’s a bad nightmare and I’ll wake up tomorrow,” Novak said.  “I’m very sad.”

State Fair sales aren’t confined to State Fair Park. 

It even brings in car buyers, according to Ryan Mathis at Husker Auto Group on North 27th Street.

“We sell cars off that,” he said. Out-of-town visitors get a bigger selection and more competitive prices than they do at home, Mathis said.   He figures 10 sales per fair, half new and half used. 

“It’s gonna hurt the dealerships,” he said.  

 Jim Snyder is a little unsure about the future of the Rocky Manginelli Memorial Swap Meet.

The event, held the second Sunday of March, has been  at the state fairgrounds for 35 years.

There’s a reason for that, said Snyder, who organizes the event: The fairgrounds is the only place in Lincoln large enough to accommodate the thousands of attendees and vendors who come from across the country.

“We take every parking place that people can find at the fairgrounds,” he said.

The Lancaster Event Center has enough exhibition space to accommodate the event, but there’s not nearly enough parking, Snyder said.

The swap meet is again booked at the fairgrounds next year, but after that, Snyder’s not sure what will happen.

“We may have to go to Grand Island with the fair,” he said. “I sure don’t want to; we’ve been here 35 years.”

“I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

Lodging managers near the fairgrounds say they’re sure to take a hit in business if the State Fair leaves Lincoln.

An employee at the Holiday Inn Express at 11th Street and Cornhusker Highway, who declined to give her name, said the hotel’s business would definitely suffer from the loss of the State Fair.

The hotel is only a few blocks from the fairgrounds, accepts pets and has rooms where smoking is allowed, making it appealing to fairgoers, the employee said.

Neil Sullivan, manager of the Super 8 motel at 25th Street and Cornhusker Highway, agreed that business would take a hit if the fair leaves.

He said the fair is one of the hotel’s busiest times, along with home Nebraska football games and the annual Jehovah’s Witness district convention that’s held at the Bob Devaney Sports Center during the summer.

“We’ve got a lot of loyal customers and vendors who come here every year,” Sullivan said.

While he doesn’t want to see the fair leave, Sullivan said he’s optimistic the Super 8 will eventually benefit from a research and development park.

“Of course the best solution would be having both so we’re getting business from both places,” he said.

* *  *

Grasmick still thinks this could have  been done differently.  Better.  Something that could have kept the fair in Lincoln.

“You know what a board member said to me?” Grasmick asked. “Outside of me and a couple of other people, nobody had complained a lot that the fair was gonna move.  Either they don’t care, or it’s not on their radar any more.”

The smart move would have been 84th and Havelock, he said.

He wonders aloud.

“Why didn’t those guys throw them the keys?   Bring your racetrack.   Can you imagine no horse racing in Lincoln?  

“Why couldn’t you get to have a beer in something other than a   fenced beer garden that madeyou feel like a criminal?     

“Why isn’t the state horseshoe-pitching championship at the fair?”

 At the Iowa fair, a buddy told Grasmick, the governor gives out all the lifesaving awards for the year.

“What a great tradition,” Grasmick said.   “Why don’t we have something like that? 

“So I mean what does a  good fair have that we don’t have?   Really, just some entertainment.  They all got cows.”

Reach Richard Piersol at 473-7241 or at dpiersol@journalstar.com.

Journal Star Matt Olberding contributed to this report.