There are early clues that something big is about to happen at State Fair Park: The roar of weed whackers, the colored flags fluttering across the street from the administration building.
ART HOVEY / Lincoln Journal Star | Posted: Saturday, August 16, 2008 7:00 pm
The woman in charge of a cleanup crew of some 200 people at the Nebraska State Fair has been in a unique position to monitor a surge in attendance the last few years.
“We’ve had more trash,” Ann McBride said with a laugh Friday. “We’ve used more paper towels — and more toilet paper.”
This is McBride’s 31st year on the fair payroll, and a broad smile spreads across her face as she thinks ahead to Friday and the start of the 11-day fair — the 139th edition of the event.
There are plenty of early clues that something big is about to happen at State Fair Park: The roar of weed whackers, the colored flags fluttering across the street from the administration building, the still-shuttered Ol’ Tex Bar-B-Q stand wheeled into position near the 4-H Youth Complex.
People hurry past McBride’s desk in the bowels of the Grandstand. A sign alerts them to an employee orientation later in the day.
Little more than a year from now, the day after Labor Day 2009, piles of soggy Kleenex are likely to be another paper measure of what’s happening with one of the state’s main cultural events.
That’s because tears are likely to be part of the end of the fair’s 107-year run north of Lincoln’s downtown area.
It will also mark the end of McBride’s many years of service in cleaning ranks.
At 66, she has no interest in following the fair to Grand Island in 2010.
“We raised our kids here and everything. I’m going to retire.”
Not far away, phones are ringing, staffers are ducking in and out, and Barney Cosner is getting ready to preside over his second Nebraska fair.
Yes, next year will be the last year at this site, Cosner said. After that comes “the first of the next 140.”
As a veteran fair manager — and as a guy who hasn’t missed a fair in 50 years — the Wyoming native will be watching keenly to judge the response to new entertainment options at the 2008 fair.
The Moo-Mania puppet show, the Pirates of the Caribbean diving act, the Extreme Canine stunt dogs and sand sculpture are among the entries on that list.
He’ll make his own mental list of what worked and what didn’t.
At least in his public moments, Cosner has no intention of getting wrapped up in the emotion of what’s behind or what’s ahead while the 2008 fair is in progress.
“Right now, the most important focus is to put on a 2008 fair that’s the best that’s ever been held in Nebraska.”
It was on the very weekend that Cosner drove toward Lincoln to start his new job in October 2006 that the news of a plan to turn State Fair Park into a showcase research campus anchored by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln hit the public domain.
“It was announced on a Friday. I showed up on Monday,” he said.
Almost two years later, the relatively new executive director can see the value in what is in Lincoln, and what can be 100 miles to the west.
“The history, the tradition and the potential that is State Fair Park is what a lot of people dream about,” he said.
On the other hand, everybody in fair leadership ranks knows something brand-new, with brand-new buildings, is taking shape.
“My God, that pumps everybody’s heart.”
Despite all the street-corner observations about fairs being past their glory days, Cosner and his crew move toward Friday with uplifting reports on attendance at earlier fairs in Wisconsin, Indiana and Ohio.
And there are other fairs dealing with the challenges of uprooting and moving down the road.
Tom Rout and the Mid-South Fair, for example, must be out of their century-old, 180-acre fairgrounds in Memphis, Tenn., after the end of the year. They’re headed about 20 miles away across the state border to Tunica, Miss.
That will put them about a mile from a casino complex.
In his soft drawl, Rout points to first-phase construction costs of about $35 million. The projected total bill is “somewhere between $75 million and $80 million,” he said, “but I think it will run a little more than that before it’s over.”
The comparable Nebraska tab approved in the 2008 legislative session is $42 million.
As is the case in Lincoln, the regional Memphis fair is moving because local movers and shakers decided they had a better idea for developing the property. The Tennessee idea revolves around the stadium where college football’s Liberty Bowl is played.
Rout said it’s not for him to decide if they’re right or wrong.
“But when they thrust you into the soup, you’ve got to figure it out. Are you going to drown in it or are you going to swim to shore?”
How about Harrah’s and all those other casinos right next door as new neighbors?
“We think there’s some synergism, not necessarily because of the gaming industry, but, we think, simply because they attract literally thousands of people each year.”
Back in Lincoln, state Sen. Phil Erdman of Bayard presides over an update session on moving the fair out of State Fair Park and moving the university and potential partners in.
Among the highlights provided Friday to a Capitol audience that included a half-dozen other state lawmakers:
* University officials expect to seek approval of the first $7.5 million portion of their $22 million share of fair-moving costs at the Sept. 5 meeting of the Nebraska Board of Regents. A request for proposals on the research campus is likely by early spring.
The $7.5 million and subsequent installments will not draw from student tuition or state appropriations, said Chris Jackson, vice chancellor for business and finance.
* Grand Island Mayor Margaret Hornady and her City Hall associates have settled on a tax on restaurant food as the means of finance for the public portion of their $8.5 million stake in a new fairgrounds.
Hornady brushed aside suggestions the Grand Island City Council might not get that job done by an Oct. 1 deadline. “When push comes to shove,” she said, “Grand Island comes through.”
Erdman said he’s not worried about financing falling into place. “Everybody I’ve talked to who has any say in this says it’s going to happen.”
* Legislators and state horse-racing officials are at work on an interim study that is supposed to show the value of horse-racing in the state. The first of three hearings is scheduled for Sept. 18 at 1:30 p.m. in Lincoln.
State Sen. Vickie McDonald of St. Paul said testimony there and in Omaha and Grand Island should help answer a number of questions, including whether the horse-racing season expected to be eventually displaced from State Fair Park “will stay in Lincoln or maybe not exist at all.”
Back at State Fair Park, interviews with several other full-timers from the cleaning staff quickly establish their unwillingness to move to Grand Island.
Robert Schuback, 42, who started his cleaning chores in 1992, will be happy to keep cleaning through the 2009 fair, even though it means 16- to 18-hour days and shifts that end at 4 a.m.
“It’s the people you meet from like Texas or West Virginia and different parts of the country that come out here that you see every year,” Schuback said. “It’s like a family reunion.”
He can’t imagine trying to recapture that feeling in Grand Island.
“Even if they asked me, I would turn it down,” he said. “My kids go to school here. And to relocate would cost me more than I think they’d be willing to pay me to go out there.”
His wife, Dawn, 37, a supervisor at the food court during the fair, sees things the same way. “I’m a Lincoln girl,” she said.
Cosner, of course, has already made it clear he’s going where the fair goes — but not before fairgoers in the Lincoln area get their last opportunities to attend here.
A new ticket teaser — $5 admission before 5 p.m. Monday through Friday — is part of the strategy to lure them in. And Cosner is not shy about promoting that, or the fair projects of thousands of 4-Hers and FFA members, or anything else.
“The public gets more value here for $5 than any other state fair I’ve been to,” he said. “I’m not telling you that just because I’m sitting here. I’m telling you that’s absolute fact.”
Ultimately, people go where they believe they get the best entertainment value for their dollar, he said.
“I watch a steady stream of lights and people paying $95 to go the Qwest Center” in Omaha, he said. “I don’t see a steady stream of lights of people willing to pay $25 to come to the Devaney Center” in Lincoln.
As Cosner speaks, work continues on an Antelope Valley project that is taking a 23-acre bite out of the 251-acre fairgrounds. And the university moves a day closer to occupancy.
One way or another, the show goes on.
Reach Art Hovey at 473-7223 or at ahovey@journalstar.com.