Committee seeks fairground renovations

Hope is for city, county to work together on improvements

A group of volunteers is hoping to give the Grant County Fairgrounds a new look.

On Aug. 10, members of the Fair Facility Advisory Committee (FFAC) and their support groups will go before the Moses Lake City Council to request that the city extend its sewer and water through the fairgrounds with an easement, without annexing the property.

FFAC chair Bob Russell said that the city would benefit by extending its sewer and water through the fairgrounds with an easement to Airway Drive, having it for future use, with the county paying. The resulting events that would come to town would provide an economic spin-off in the city and the surrounding area with the number of people that they would attract.

"By not annexing, they also don't have to provide fire, police and other services out of the general fund for the little bit of tax revenue that would have been generated from the fairground itself," Russell said. "The county, we benefit because we are able to grow. We are able to complete our plan the way we'd like to do it efficiently. There's alternatives, but they don't make as much sense."

Russell said that the feeling is that Grant County citizens would resist putting tax dollars into the fairgrounds and then giving it to the city.

"The final benefit, we feel, is to the citizens themselves," he said. "The city and the county are working together, partnering together, for the good of all. Moses Lake citizens are also Grant County citizens. It's a win-win-win, that's the way we're looking at it."

Grant County commissioners commissioned the FFAC committee over a year ago with the purpose of modernizing the fairgrounds and making it a year-round facility in hopes of making it financially self-sufficient, Russell said.

"The need for improvements go back for years and years and years," Russell said.

Al Holman, fair and facilities manager for the Grant County Fairgrounds, said that it has been in its current location since 1946, after World War II. Prior to that, it was located in Wilson Creek, Ephrata and across from where Safeway currently stands. The rodeo grandstand was built in 1962.

"It's very common for fairgrounds all over the country to have been built in fits and starts (by) volunteer labor and donated materials," Holman said. He said that means low costs for the supervising entity, but now problems are becoming obvious. Fairground staff was unable to keep up with water breaks last year.

"Also, fairgrounds tend to have been built originally for single events — fairs and rodeos," Holman said. "Over time, it becomes a larger and larger community need … The time bell has rang, and now we're in a situation where if we're going to keep our fairgrounds up, we need to move forward."

Russell said that the facility infrastructure is shot, the water is shot, the power situation is spotty and there's a need to separate potable water from irrigation and livestock.

The first thing that has to be done is rebuild the infrastructure and put in new water and sewers in order to upgrade the bathrooms to better fit events, he said.

Russell said other renovations in the plan include modernizing many buildings with heat and air conditioning, new horse stalls, connecting some of the existing buildings for events and adding break-out rooms for recreational vehicle rallies, which is the most profitable thing at the fairgrounds, according to Holman.

The largest rally pulled in 1,009 units in 2002, Holman said.

"With our modernization, we could pull in a 3,000 unit rally without a problem," Holman said.

"That's a huge economic boom to the area, and there's a lot of things that the facility could do if we were able to complete this conceptual plan," Russell said.

Holman said that the facility could also prove useful in attracting new businesses to the area. If there's a workforce of 600 or 700 people, it could house a Christmas party, he said.

Russell said that other community fairgrounds have had similar situations in Yakima, Lacey in Thurston County, Walla Walla, Monroe in Snohomish County and Spokane.

"They all have city services, they all pay the surcharge, which we are quite willing to do, but none of them are annexed," he said.

While renovating the fairgrounds has been in discussion for a while, the recent possibility of the 2006 Washington State Potato Conference and Trade Show relocating to the Tri-Cities has sped up the process, because those interested in seeing the conference remain in Moses Lake need to put in a bid by Aug. 16.

"We would like to say that we are going to have these bathrooms out there ready for them by 2006," Russell said. "That is definitely one of the reasons we're pushing … There's other groups out there besides the potato conference that we could be getting to, like the potato conference, if we can move ahead with this thing."

"The potato conference escalated our process," explained Larry Schwab, member and former chair of the FFAC committee.

Russell urged interested citizens to attend the Aug. 10 meeting if they are interested in the situation one way or another, share their input and be a part of the process.

Draft conceptual plans for the fairgrounds are available for viewing and public input on http://www.grantcountyfair.com/FFAC.html.