It’s a land grab.

That’s how Van Neidig of Battle Creek, a member of the Nebraska State Fair Board, characterized a Lincoln group’s vision for moving the fair to a new location.

His was not the only less-than-complimentary reaction Monday to a proposal from a group of business people to move the fair from its 250 acres north of downtown to the area of the Lancaster County Event Center at 84th and Havelock.

Tam Allan of Lincoln used the words “the fix is in” to convey his belief a mayor’s task force studying the subject for more than a year was mostly going through the motions in apparently heading toward the same co-location conclusion.

“The State Fair Board has suspected that the outcome has been predetermined for some time,” said Allan, the fair board’s representative on the task force.

In an Oct. 18 letter provided by fair management Monday, Kent Seacrest, a Lincoln development attorney, thanked Fair Board Chairman Steve Kruger of Arlington and other fair representatives, including Allan, for sitting in on a Oct. 17 discussion at the office of State Budget Director Gerry Oligmueller.

That’s where Seacrest and several other members of the 2015 Visioning Group provided broader details of a plan that would, among other things, move the fair and make the fairgrounds available to the nearby University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Asked for comment Monday, Seacrest disputed the “land grab” and “the fix is in” assertions. He raised this question: “Is the state fair better off financially by being on its own campus or by co-locating?”

In the letter, Seacrest asked to be part of the agenda for the board’s Nov. 10 meeting so he could fill in more details and answer questions in front of all 13 members.

While he’s agreeable to talking, Kruger wasn’t exactly throwing down the welcome mat Monday.

He said it was hard to set aside the impression that “they’d just like us moved off the grounds.”

And he questioned how the city of Lincoln could hold up its end of a financial challenge that includes building a new downtown arena, at an estimated cost of $245 million, and helping create a new home for the fair at an estimated cost of $70 million.

“It’s not bad to have an exercise,” Kruger said. “But at some point, if it’s not feasible, why even discuss it, because the price tag is too high.”

Seacrest offered countering thoughts.

“The mayor’s task force has been meeting for almost two years,” he said, “and the group I’m working with started to formulate at the beginning of the summer months.”

As for a land grab, “our group feels the state fair is a very important resource for the state and the city. And we want to get it in a model that helps assure its long-term viability and success.

“We want to explore whether co-location might be, overall, cheaper for the taxpayer, as well as produce a better state fair and other activities over the other 350 days of the year.”

Part of the unease by fair board members comes with the realization that some members of the mayor’s task force also belong to the University Foundation and/or the visioning group.

“We don’t know what’s going on,” Allan said, “but it seems fairly well organized.”

Neidig had stronger things to say, both about the Visioning Group and about Harvey Perlman serving as UNL chancellor and as a member of the fair board.

“It’s not an attempt to make the state fair better,” he said. “It’s an attempt to get property.”

As Neidig sees it, “there’s no reason for us to pull up stakes and move. And if the time comes to do so, I’m quite certain 84th and Havelock will not be the location we would choose. I’m not sure we’d even choose to be in Lincoln.”

Of Perlman, Neidig said: “Somewhere, sometime, especially now that this is all out in the open, there’s going to come a time when he’s going to have to choose.”

Perlman noted he’s a member of the fair board because the legislation that created it reserved a seat for the campus’s top administrator.

As he had done at the fair board’s Oct. 13 meeting in Lincoln, he again questioned whether the board has enough money to fix deteriorating buildings while working to make the fair bigger and better.

And he portrayed the Visioning Group’s emergence as merely a matter of its members stepping forward with ideas when they were ready to present them.

“There are groups meeting all over the place,” he said, “and it’s hard for me to see anything sinister in that.”

As long as what’s being done is “a proposal to the state fair board, it’s hard for me to see how you call that a fix.”

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