In December, Phil Erdman warned those with differing plans for State Fair Park to make every effort to reach an agreement on their own. Otherwise, the chairman of the Legislature's Agriculture Co
ART HOVEY / Lincoln Journal Star | Posted: Monday, February 25, 2008 6:00 pm
In December, Phil Erdman warned those with differing plans for State Fair Park to make every effort to reach an agreement on their own.
Otherwise, the chairman of the Legislature’s Agriculture Committee said, state lawmakers might act on their own and produce a result that nobody likes.
As of Tuesday, Erdman’s advice still looked to be very much in vogue. A marathon hearing in front of the agricultural panel and a standing-room-only audience showed no signs of a consensus taking shape.
Instead, the University of Nebraska and a coalition of Lincoln business and civic leaders continued to argue strongly for turning the 251-acre parcel into a research park and moving the fair several miles east to the area of the Lancaster Event Center.
Grand Island upped the ante on its offer to host the fair at Fonner Park by committing to a $75 million price tag. That’s not to say the revenue sources are nailed down.
Rather than stepping forward for a symbolic handshake with the technology-park team, those testifying on behalf of the Nebraska State Fair Board raised new questions about how much of the land adjacent to the event center was prone to flooding.
Halfway through the 2008 legislative session, the distance between negotiating positions among Lincoln interests might have looked more familiar in divorce court.
Despite that, Erdman said making a decision this year is crucial to the future of the fair and to the university’s competing plan.
“By not doing that this session, we’ll start that debate all over again next year and the year after that and the year after that,” he said.
State Sen. Ron Raikes of Lincoln voiced agreement as he put forward his timetable for moving the fair out of State Fair Park no later than 2012 and handing the keys to the university. “The Legislature can best serve by arriving at a decision,” Raikes said.
But as the hearing reached the three-hour mark, still a long way from its end, and as the university completed testimony on its State Fair Park vision, Erdman sounded a softer note about the Legislature’s landlord responsibilities.
“We’ve been asked to choose as parents, essentially between two of our children.”
Perhaps the biggest developments of the day were the financial details Grand Island attached to its proposal and the questions raised by both the fair leadership and Erdman about the effect drainage might have on potential development in the event center area at 84th Street and Havelock Avenue.
Don Dunn of the Grand Island Chamber of Commerce offered a slide presentation that showed near-term plans for a 100,000-square-foot livestock facility, an exhibition building of similar size and two 67,500-square-foot horse barns near the Fonner Park race track.
Dunn said that and other improvements would provide “a campus feel” in a $75 million package, $35 million of it represented as the value of the Heartland Event Center already in use in the center of the complex.
“If the State Fair moves, it needs to move to Grand Island, Nebraska,” Dunn said. Referencing a competing proposal from Lincoln promoters of the Lancaster Event Center areas, he said “they have no proposal for anything like the Heartland Event Center.”
In breaking down potential revenue sources, he cited $30 million from the sale of State Fair Park, $5 million from local sources, $5 million from the state fair and $5 million from the Legislature.
“We have a budget for $45 million here,” Dunn said. However, he said, Grand Island could get the job done without the $5 million from the state.
State Fair leaders produced their own estimate for the cost of moving the fair to Grand Island. Their number was $51.9 million.
Lincoln businessman Tonn Ostergard, who helped lay out the Lancaster Event Center option later in the hearing, stayed with a financial package that calls for about $30 million in bonding by the fair board, $6 million in donations from the 2015 Vision group, $15.8 million from the University of Nebraska Foundation and $10.5 million from the university.
The UNL contribution could come from the sale of land it owns west of 84th Street near the event center.
Ostergard, University of Nebraska President J.B. Milliken and others said turning State Fair Park into a university technology showcase represented the highest and best use of the property.
They also pointed to the higher population concentration in Lincoln as a reason to keep the fair where it has been for the past 106 years.
Ostergard disputed the assertions of state fair leaders that the east Lincoln option was too expensive.
“It’s not a cost to relocate the fair, but an investment in the state that provides a win-win situation,” he said.
Milliken made a similar point. “We need to take steps to leverage our growth and leverage our talent for the economy of the state of Nebraska,” he said.
Tam Allan, who provided much of the fair board’s testimony, tried to sound agreeable to compromise. “I honestly think everybody is trying to figure out what would be a win-win for the state,” Allan said.
But he said cost estimates suggest that keeping the fair where it is or moving to Grand Island seemed the cheapest ways to go. “I would say at this time, if we relocate to the Grand Island site, it has more of the things that would make it compatible to be there.”
Despite lengthy dialogue with state fair officials, Ostergard said his group favors a Raikes strategy that would have a six-member commission preside over finding a new home for the fair.
That would lead to a decision that could be made “without emotion and without sentimentality.”
Building from scratch makes sense, he said. Those who want a successful fair should not “patch up inefficient and old buildings.”
Allan raised concerns about a city map that showed that much of the land near the event center was either in the floodplain or the floodway, meaning water was likely to flow through it during a major precipitation event.
Kent Seacrest, part of the Lincoln presentation team, said dirt could be moved to take care of the biggest drainage problems.
Beyond that, “floodplains are wonderful places for parking lots, open space and a midway,” Seacrest said.
Allan sounded unpersuaded.
When it comes to hosting a horse-racing season, under event center limitations, using horses known as “mudders” might not be good enough, he said. “I think we would need swimmers at this location.”
Reach Art Hovey at 473-7223 or at ahovey@journalstar.com.