New digs offer Fayette more than just a better fair

By DAVE HAMRICK
Staff Writer

A new fair site promises to provide not only a bigger, better Fayette County Fair in 1999, but also more money for local charities and a facility that Fayette organizations can use for a variety of functions.

In fact, members of the Fayette County Kiwanis Club, which has sponsored the fair for 48 years, hope the new facility will help pour a half million dollars a year into Fayette charities and community service.

“It just keeps blossoming into something we never thought it would be,” said Wayne Snead, president of the Kiwanis Club, which is putting on its 48th fair this year on a new 62-acre site on Goza Road at Lisbon Road, just off Ga. Highway 85.

While construction workers are racing to meet a promised Sept. 1 completion date for a 20,000-sq. ft. events building at the new site, members of the civic club are working to plan this year's fair with more events, exhibits and rides, plus three extra days of family-oriented activities.

Once the fair is over, they'll turn their attention to planning future facilities at the fairgrounds so the entire community can benefit, said Snead.

“We can't have a facility like this that's just going to sit down there to have a nine-day fair,” he said. “We want this facility to be something for the whole community to use.”

Meanwhile, Snead said he hopes those who attend this year's fair will understand that the facility is a work in progress. “We're sort of on the fast track to get it up and running for the fair.”

The new fairgrounds won't be completely finished for this year's fair, but the facility will be completely fenced and lighted, and there will be grass parking and security. Indoor bathrooms won't be ready, so portable toilets will have to do.

In future years, Kiwanians hope to double the size of the exhibit hall (it is designed for expansion), and build two or three stock barns, a horse arena for horse shows, concerts and other activities, and possibly a stage or amphitheater.

“We're gathering information from different clubs and interest groups in the county to see which would be most beneficial to the citizens of Fayette County,” said A. J. VanLandingham, assistant chairman for the fair.

“Any building we put in has got to be multi-functional,” said Wayne Snead.

“As soon as the fair is over,” he added, “we go back into the construction phase for awhile and talk about how we want to manage it and who's going to manage it.”

Even though it will have about a million dollars invested in the new fairgrounds by the time the 1999 fair kicks off Sept. 30, VanLandingham said, the club plans to honor all of its current commitments to fund charitable work in Fayette. “We will not take anything from our commitment as far as charity work now,” he said.

“And when we are fully developed,” he added, “there's going to be a lot more money used for charity in Fayette.”

Club members are hoping the facility will eventually help increase funding for Kiwanis beneficiaries like the youth Protection Home, the Council on Battered Women, Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts by more than ten-fold, from the current level of around $35,000 to a half million dollars or more.

Ideas have been coming through club members and the community so fast the 53-member volunteer group can barely assimilate them, VanLandingham said.

“It's almost overwhelming,” he said.

But to make the fairgrounds into the facility it needs to be, this year's fair will have to be bigger, and each year's event will have to grow bigger than the last year's, said Snead.

“We've got to make the fair grow so we'll have the money to take care of the facility... finish it, expand it, make it what this community deserves,” he said.

To reserve booth space for this year's fair, or to offer ideas on the future of the fairground phone 770-719-3530.