What's happenings at the Fair? by Sarah Lawrence

What's happenings at the Fair?

The recent snow damage and flooding at the fairgrounds has really tested the community in their support of the fair, so I was delighted so many people attended our public meeting on Monday. It was an excellent session of brainstorming, allowing many ideas to be discussed. As a group we agreed the following items were to be our top five ‘must haves.’ This includes:

• Increasing the showing area for Western Games – allowing the arena to be used for many animal themed functions.

• Ensuring the building can be used year round and not just during fair time.

• Improving the pedestrian circulation of the fairgrounds, drawing people to all corners of the grounds.

• Enclosure of the arena/exercise area, again ensuring the facilities can be used no matter what the weather.

• Improve the seating within the arena, creating more flexible solutions.

As you can imagine there were many other items on the list but the group voted these five as the priority. Other suggestions included creating two separate structures, one for the animals and the other as a main arena.

The next stage will be to develop the ideas further and see how they can be applied to a new structure within our budget. Once we have progressed to the next stage a public meeting will be called.

Many local businesses have showed their support, asking what they can do to help bring this year’s fair together. The fair board and I are ecstatic that the community has become so involved and wish to say a special thanks to Kristi Ward and the Georgia Pacific Foundation who donated cases of paper towels and toilet paper to assist in the clean up process.

If you’d like to volunteer, become involved with the fair or have a question about the fairgrounds you can always send an email to wahkiakumfair@centurytel.net or call 360 795-3480.