| Date set for final State Fair at current site |
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Posted: Tuesday, March 9, 2010 4:27 pm
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The Staff and Metropolitan Board of Fair Commissioners announced today that Rockhouse Partners of Nashville, Tenn. and North American Midway Entertainment (NAME) of Ridgeland, Miss. have been selected to produce a 2010 Tennessee State Fair.
The Tennessee State Fair will occur Sept. 10 - 19, 2010. The 2010 State Fair will be the last one held at the Nashville fairgrounds. The Fair Board voted in December 2008 to end its operations at the fairgrounds based on the rapid depletion of its reserve funds and an extensive study that concluded the fairgrounds is the wrong long-term location for a State Fair and related events.
“We could not be more pleased to offer Rockhouse/NAME the use of the fairgrounds in September for a 2010 State Fair. NAME was our 2009 Midway vendor and we couldn’t be more excited to be working with them again. It is our hope that by offering this one year lease to Rockhouse it will give us and organizations like the Tennessee Farm Bureau Federation the time needed to transition the State Fair to a private entity/non-profit state fair business model for 2011 and beyond,” said Fair Board Chairman James Weaver.
Nashville Mayor Karl Dean said: “We are going to spend this year gathering community input on the future use of the fairgrounds. Having a private entity continue the State Fair for one more year at no cost to the city is a good use of the site while we take this time to consider the long-term options that will best serve the surrounding community and our city as a whole.”
On March 1, 2010 the Metropolitan Board of Fair Commissioners reviewed and discussed three proposals for producing a final Tennessee State Fair at the Metro Nashville owned fairgrounds property. The Board asked that its executive staff evaluate the proposals based on three specific criteria:
• Ability of the proposer to permanently transition the annual State Fair to a non Metro supported on-going event at another location;
• Ability of the proposer to produce an event that focused on agriculture, commerce industry, the arts and technology.
• Ability of the proposer to guarantee the facility sufficient rent to cover the out of pocket expense and the lost opportunity cost associated with a 3 week rental of the entire facility.
The Fair Board and staff also announced today that there will not be a traditional weekly racing series at the fairgrounds track for 2010.
It was determined that the traditional 5 or 6 month long weekly race season was simply not financially feasible, said Buck Dozier, Executive Director of the Fairgrounds.
However, the 14,000-seat grandstand and the ancillary areas, including the track, can and should be utilized for other events for the remainder of 2010. We will work with the ABC Corporation, and Fastrax Entertainment, as well as, with other interested promoters to book events utilizing the grandstands and likely the racetrack throughout 2010.
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