LITTLE ROCK — Talk of relocating the State Fair from its Little Rock home has cooled as the Arkansas Livestock Show Association board awaits the results of a Nov. 8 North Little Rock tax election that would result in a chunk of free land for a new home.
“There’s nothing new to report,” the fair’s general manager Ralph Shoptaw told the board during its regularly scheduled quarterly meeting Thursday afternoon. “We’re just waiting to see what happens with the North Little Rock election and at that point we’ll have to decide how to move forward.”
North Little Rock Mayor Patrick Hays is asking voters for two sales taxes: a half percent to expire March 31, 2017, to be used for capital improvements; and a permanent half-percent to be divided evenly between capital improvements and general operations.
Among the proposed expenditures, Hays said, would be the purchase of 2,000 acres just east of the city for a “jobs and business park” that could include a relocated State Fairgrounds.
In Little Rock, a sales-tax increase that passed Sept. 13 included $3 million for keeping the fairgrounds where it’s been for the past six decades.
Shoptaw said he has not had a conversation with Little Rock about that money, but he said $3 million would make a difference, though not a noticeable one, at the fairgrounds.
“We have a lot of needs that are unseen,” Shoptaw said. “It wouldn’t take long to spend $3 million on repairs and people would never see it.”
Shoptaw said such repairs would include work on the aging sewer system and fixing or replacing a chilling system for the horse barn.
“We could also make cosmetic changes at the Hall of Industry or possibly expand it,” he said. “Of course, expanding it would take up space and we already don’t have enough.”
Jacksonville has offered to give the fair about 445 acres.
The association requested proposals in November 2009 to either relocate the State Fair or improve the existing, 148-acre fairgrounds in central Little Rock.
In June, association members commissioned Rod Markin of Rod Markin Consulting in Maple Grove, Minn., to study what they call “The Box” - thousands of undeveloped acres in the eastern reaches of central Arkansas - as a new location for the fair.
The Jacksonville site and the North Little Rock site are in The Box, which is identified as the general area “situated north of Interstate 40 and east of Interstate 440 ... accessed via one of two existing exits along Interstate 40 - Exit 161 at I-40 and [Arkansas] Highway 391 and then via E. Valentine Road or Exit 165 at I-40 and Kerr Road and then via Wayne Lane.”
Arkansas, Pages 10 on 10/21/2011