Fairgrounds Risks Losing Ag Shows Farm Groups Say Maintenance Declines As Rates Increase

Growing pains at Spokane’s fairgrounds could force some longtime users to move their nonprofit events to other arenas.

For more than 50 years, even as the fairgrounds was swallowed by urban sprawl, agriculture was its top priority.

On any given summer weekend, the fairgrounds might have been busy with a horse show. If the sponsor was a youth group such as 4-H, it paid little or nothing to lease space, while taxpayers subsidized the events.

Changes began in 1992, when taxpayers rejected an $18 million bond issue for fairgrounds improvements. Since then, county commissioners have set the fairgrounds on a course of eventually paying its own way.

That means marketing for a variety of events, such as car shows, senior proms and family reunions. It means filling the buildings 12 months of the year rather than just three.

“We could never make it just on agriculture,” said Fran Boxer, the county’s assistant chief administrative officer whose duties include running the fairgrounds.

Last year, the county raised fair admission $1 to help pay for a new exhibit hall that’s attracting new and bigger shows. This year, formerly free parking may cost $2 to help pay for pavement on a parking lot where farmers never complained about the dust.

The county has hired graphic designers to draw a new logo. Even the name is changing, from Spokane Interstate Fairgrounds to Spokane Interstate Fair and Exhibition Center, a name county officials hope sounds more cosmopolitan.

“People are not going to go to dumpy fairgrounds anymore,” said county Commissioner Phil Harris, adding that he receives far fewer complaints than in years past about electrical outages and other problems.

But if commercial exhibitors are happy, many nonprofit groups are not.

The Spokane 4-H club is looking for new places to hold horse shows and other events. The group paid $677 last year to host its spring horse clinic; this year, the bill was $1,211. The cost to lease space for its tack sale - the group’s only fund-raiser - increased from $457 to $1,004.

The Inland Empire Quarter Horse Association lost $500 on its March show for young riders and also is looking to move its five or six annual shows to other arenas.

“It’s either that or just not have (shows),” said board member Jim Lewis.

The horse clubs complain that the arena and stalls have been poorly maintained.

There are holes in the stall floors that could trip a horse, said Karen Hammock, a 4-H leader. During a recent show, the arena’s dirt floor was rock-hard, instead of softly tilled. Plastic over an open window flapped so loudly that one horse spooked, throwing its young rider, she said.

Lewis’ group withheld $180 earmarked for cleanup before and after its spring show. The county worker who was supposed to smooth the arena floor between events couldn’t do her job because she didn’t have the keys to the tractor, he said.

The show areas and stalls are “a major source of embarrassment for the fairgrounds,” Boxer wrote in a recent memo to county commissioners.

Boxer proposed using up to $300,000 of the county’s real estate excise tax to improve the arena and stalls, and make some other improvements at the fairgrounds. Commissioners didn’t approve her plan, but told Boxer to come back with more exact figures on what’s needed and what it would cost.

Horse groups aren’t the only ones stunned by changes.

In the past, nonprofit groups such as the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary and Mothers Against Drunk Driving paid nothing for a fair booth. This year, they’ll pay $350; next year, it will increase to $700, the same as for commercial exhibitors.

This year’s rate increase will mean an extra $27,000 that the fairgrounds can use for maintenance or improvements, Boxer said. But $350 is too much to ask from groups whose goal is helping people, rather than making a profit, John Ernsdorff, local Coast Guard Auxiliary commander wrote in a recent letter to Harris.

Commissioner Kate McCaslin, a horse owner who often hears complaints from other riders, said the county eventually may have to decide between having a fairgrounds that makes a profit and one that’s accessible to a variety of groups.

“We’ll lose these people,” she said. “They’ll go to Deer Park, they’ll go to Kootenai County, because they can’t afford to come here.”

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