Fairgrounds menagerie attracting more visitors

George Harris, manager of the Boone County Fairgrounds, left his pet Airedale terrier back at the office so he could take a visitor on a driving tour of the sprawling complex that he believes is underappreciated for the money it brings into the community.

“We haven’t been recognized for this in the past,” Harris said from behind the wheel of his red pickup truck as he puffed his pipe and pointed out various points of pride.

The Boone County Fair, for example, drew nearly 160,000 visitors during its six-day run in July, way up from last year when fewer than 100,000 people attended. They’ve decided to expand the 2010 County Fair to 10 days to build on that success, according to organizers.

And then there’s the new Sapp Building, a covered arena where riders can warm up their horses before shows and competitions, such as the Cowgirl Tuff Barrel Bash that’s being held at the fairgrounds this weekend. More than 300 riders from 12 states are participating.

“This show has been here in the past, but they (organizers) were starting to look for another venue that had a covered warm-up arena,” Harris said in a news release about the recently completed, 22,000-square-foot building donated by Billy and Glenda Sapp.

In 2008, about 310,000 people attended 76 events at the fairgrounds. (For comparison, a little more than 387,000 people attended MU’s six home football games last year; the attendance for the first five games this year was 329,146.) Considering the huge jump in fair attendance, that figure is likely to be higher by the end of this year. And 75 events are already booked for 2010.

Still, Harris told CBT that the fairgrounds complex is misunderstood in the community. “So many people think it’s the State Fair grounds,” said Harris, who’s managed the Boone County Fairgrounds since it moved 17 years ago to the city’s northern border along U.S. Highway 63.

The complex, with about 10 buildings covering 200 acres, can host as many as five events per week. That translates into a boost for the local economy because many of the people attending events at the fairgrounds spend money to stay in local hotels, shop in local stores and eat at local restaurants.

“Absolutely, the fair is a good thing economically,” Boone County Northern District Commissioner Skip Elkin said.

However, Harris said he doesn’t have a way to calculate how much revenue different events bring into the local economy. It’s difficult to compile numbers about how much money comes into the community because there are so many events, and the Fair Board and the Boone County Commission rely on vendors and other businesses in the community to report those numbers, Elkin said. (The Boone County Fair and the Fairgrounds are separate entities.)

There are dog shows, cat shows, gun shows, farm shows and even a monster truck show, but other than the Boone County Fair, the biggest draws at the county fairgrounds are the horse shows. Horse shows and equestrian events attracted more than 54,000 people to the fairgrounds in 2008.

The 2008 attendance for the Barrel Bash, the event being held this weekend in the Sapp Building, was 3,626. Fairgrounds organizers had the building moved to the grounds from Old Hawthorne after a consultant recommended a equine warm-up building as a way for the Fairgrounds to remain competitive.

The Boone County Fairgrounds were created in 1820. There have been at least five different locations for the fair, which moved to its current location at Oakland Gravel Road in 1992. The site used to serve as the Cotton Woods Airport, and it’s easy to tell that the main road of the fairgrounds was once the expansive main runway.

Harris pointed out that the main building on the fairgrounds, the Coliseum, houses both the main office and an arena where horse shows are held. The front area of the Coliseum is heated and air conditioned and can be used to host various sales and auctions — books, guns, fur pelts, electric tractors and, for some reason, rocks.

The Coliseum often pulls double duty on the fairgrounds. There can be a tractor pull in the arena and an electric tractor sale in the front room, Harris said. Tractor pulls attracted nearly 3,000 visitors in 2008, and at least one tractor pull is scheduled for 2010.

The Fairgrounds also houses concession stands and open-air livestock barns. Livestock can be found there year-round. Horses were actually in the stalls during the tour. There is also a grandstand area that’s used for tractor pulls and monster truck shows.

One new draw for the fairgrounds comes from the new Thomas E. Atkins baseball fields across the street. The ball fields are used for the Show-Me State Games, which coincided with the 2009 Boone County Fair. Some of the players came to the fair, and Elkin said they loved the experience, spent some of their money and added to the local tax revenues.