Fairgrounds reality check.

Byline: The Register-Guard

The Lane County fairgrounds is always invited to play when developers of big projects in the Eugene-Springfield area begin one of their games of musical chairs. The fairgrounds' 55-acre site west of downtown Eugene looks like a perfect spot for a hospital, an urban village, a hotel and conference complex - just about anything besides the county fair. The latest idea would have the fairgrounds move to northwest Eugene as part of a city plan to enlarge Golden Gardens Park.

The Lane County Board of Commissioners will discuss the fairgrounds' future in the fall, when results of a survey of fairgoers and a consultants' findings will be available. The commissioners will quickly discover that the fairgrounds is not easily portable. A move would require a substantial investment that could be only partially offset by proceeds from the sale of the current site. A move also would invite sharp conflicts. The commissioners would be well advised to ensure a high degree of public involvement from the very start.

It's easy to understand why the idea of moving the fairgrounds keeps coming up. Not only is the current site a desirable piece of real estate, its urban location is increasingly unsuited to traditional fairgrounds activities - meaning agriculture and animal husbandry. Livestock has been largely banished from the fairgrounds because of the need to protect the Amazon Channel from pollution by runoff from manure. For the past 30 years the fairgrounds' primary use has been as space for trade shows, exhibitions and other events having little to do with Lane County's agricultural roots. The buildings that house these events are aging and require a steadily rising subsidy. Whether the fairgrounds is seen as a venue for horses or home shows, promoters of both have reason to dream of greener pastures.

It's widely assumed that a move would be greased by buckets of money from the sale of the current site. That assumption would need to be examined if a sale became a live possibility. For any use other than its current ones, the fairgrounds property would need to be rezoned. The type of zoning would bear heavily on the sale price. A zone change resulting in the most intensive use, such as commercial and office development, could meet resistance in surrounding neighborhoods and beyond. Zoning for less intensive use would reduce the proceeds from a sale. The value of the property is almost entirely in the land - most or all of the buildings would be tear-downs. Even at top dollar, the fairgrounds could be expected to fetch a price in the $30 million to $40 million range.

That's a lot of money, but far from enough to replicate existing fairgrounds facilities at another site. Those facilities would have to be built from the ground up - including streets, sewers and other infrastructure at an undeveloped site like the one at Golden Gardens. Land acquisition, site preparation and the construction of buildings to replace the ones at the current site would combine to push the price tag for a new fairgrounds above $100 million, and perhaps half again that much. Any doubts that a new fairgrounds would be expensive can be answered by looking at the combined $200 million cost of a new Eugene Water & Electric Board operations building and a new Eugene City Hall.

Of course, Lane County would not wish to build a replica of the existing fairgrounds - and that's another problem. Lane County hasn't decided whether it wants its fairgrounds to be a place for livestock events, indoor exhibitions or both. Those two types of uses need different types of facilities, and the interests of one might be met only at the expense of the other. The county can't settle on a location for the fairgrounds, much less begin to design new facilities, without a consensus on what the fairgrounds is for.

Even if such a consensus were to emerge, any plan that asked taxpayers to fill the gap between the proceeds from the sale of the old site and the cost of a new fairgrounds would be a tough sell. Lane County already has trouble supporting its essential services, all of which are threatened if federal payments to timber-dependent counties are discontinued. Voters would have legitimate doubts about paying for a new fairgrounds at a time when the county can't afford to keep criminals behind bars.

All of these difficulties are likely to raise the question of whether Lane County ought to be in the fairgrounds business at all. Few events at the fairgrounds can be considered a central responsibility of county government. Commercial events and trade shows, being more urban in nature, might fit better under the sponsorship of Eugene and Springfield. Livestock events already have migrated largely to private sponsorship.

Selling the fairgrounds and using the proceeds to fill gaps in the county budget would be a pivotal step in the life of the community, one that would be difficult to reverse and might soon be regretted. But that's at least as likely to occur as the full-scale relocation that many envision. Any development plans that depend on changes in the location and use of the fairgrounds are depending on something that sounds simple but would in fact be extremely difficult. All that is certain is that whatever happens, the public should be involved from the start.