Sprucing up for summerGrant County Fairgrounds projects expected to be done by fair time
Construction crews lower the new restroom facilities into place at the Grant County Fairgrounds Wednesday afternoon. The project is part of a new upgrade, hooking the fairgrounds into the city sewer system.
MOSES LAKE — It’s one of those upgrades that’s not particularly a great topic of discussion, but you sure do appreciate it when it’s all in place.
Construction crews set the new restroom facilities in place Wednesday afternoon at the Grant County Fairgrounds. The new pre-fab building also includes men’s and women’s showers. Grant County Central Services director Tom Gaines said he expects the new sewer construction project to be completed by the end of July in plenty of time for the Grant County Fair, which runs Aug. 16-20.
“The bathrooms and showers will be done today, but they won’t actually be hooked up to the city sewer system until we’ve completed the sewer project,” he said. “Instead of putting in more monitoring wells and an evaporating lagoon, we worked with the city about hooking into their system.”
Once the project is completed, crews still have to come in and replace the sod and redo all the pavement in the front. So there is still a bit of work to be done, but it will make the Grand County Fair and Moses Lake Roundup Rodeo experience better for everyone.
“It’s definitely a big step forward,” Grant County Event Coordinator Spencer Biallas said. “It will keep us from getting our septic pumped every week. The current restrooms are in pretty bad condition with years of use. It started out as two projects, but we rolled it onto one.”
The Fair Board received a $90,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to upgrade its facilities. The fairgrounds has been hooked up to septic since its inception and hooking up into the city sewer system is long overdue.
“We were going to try and do this last year,” Gaines said. “We actually had some department of agriculture grant funds. Even though it was a fairly nice grant, we were able to double it this year. So that’s paying for a good portion of this.”
The fairgrounds is operating at 60 percent capacity, but camping is limited to non-event camping until the construction is completed.
“I’m sure there’s some complaints, but this project is really going to improve the facility,” Gaines said.