With Grand Island as their new dance partner, it isn't taking long for members of the Nebraska State Fair Board to start bobbing and weaving westward.
ART HOVEY / Lincoln Journal Star | Posted: Thursday, May 8, 2008 7:00 pm
With Grand Island as their new dance partner, it isn’t taking long for members of the Nebraska State Fair Board to start bobbing and weaving westward.
As Grand Island representative Jay Vavricek listened in approvingly from the audience in Lincoln on Friday, the board voted to spend up to $10,000 on a preliminary site plan for the fair’s new home at Grand Island’s Fonner Park, and President Jerry Fitzgerald gave a strong nudge to the need to create a master plan for the property.
“We’re starting from scratch basically,” said Fitzgerald, of Gering. “And we want to make sure it’s as perfect as we can possibly make it perfect — so when people walk in there in 2010 we’ve got the wow factor to present to them.”
The operative word among fair fans in Lincoln might be something closer to “ouch.”
Even though they still have the 2008 and 2009 fairs ahead in their hometown, the end of a tradition that stretches back more than a century is definitely in sight.
The Legislature decreed last month that the fair would go to Grand Island and that State Fair Park would be converted to a research campus under the supervision of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Fair board member Jana Kruger of Arlington predicted Friday that the last two fairs in Lincoln would draw large and largely sentimental crowds.
Fitzgerald said things get a lot more fluid after that. “It looks to me like a daunting situation,” he said, as he announced that HOK Smith Forkner of Knoxville, Tenn., had agreed to provide its consultant services to try to help smooth out the future.
“It will be a quick study kind of deal,” he said, “but in depth enough to help us with what we would like to do.”
HOK was also involved in the $150,000 study provided to the Legislature that focused on a projected $175 million cost of the ideal fair and on comparisons of State Fair Park to that model.
Vavricek, former mayor of Grand Island and part of its delegation in presentations to the Legislature’s Agriculture Committee, said the new host city is also swinging into action.
Both the Grand Island city council and the Hall County commissioners have financing proposals on their Tuesday agendas.
He alluded to “potentially a $5 million bond” that would go toward Grand Island’s $8.5 million share of the $42 million cost of moving the fair.
The financing package approved by the Legislature also calls for some $21.5 million in compensation from the university, $7 million from the fair board, and $5 million from state revenues.
Fitzgerald said some of that money might be spent on such underground infrastructure needs as electricity and plumbing at Fonner Park yet this year.
“I think we could start next year digging in the dirt,” he said, “but in the meantime we need to have everything ready to go.”
Reach Art Hovey at 473-7223 or at ahovey@journalstar.com.