By Kiera Morgan

The Lincoln County Fair board met on October 16th and considered a name change for the county fairgrounds. After listening to fair board consultant Don Mann the fair board approved for the name change from the Lincoln County fairgrounds to the Lincoln County Commons. The name change proposal will now be sent to the county commissioners for their approval. Commissioner Hall who is also on the fair board explained “the fair is one tenant and an important tenant at the grounds but we really wanted to hammer the message home to people that the three day fair event is only a small part of what happens at those grounds.”

Hall added “the 4-H group is using the grounds throughout the year along with the winter Farmers Market, the Celtic Festival and all kinds of other activities. And we are hoping that with the new redevelopment plan the place the grounds will become an even more used facility for all of Lincoln County.” The fair board also heard a report from Don Mann who has been hired as a consultant on the effort to redevelop the Lincoln County Fairgrounds. Mann delivered recommendations to the Fair Board with three important issues for them to consider including redevelopment of the grounds, how to pay for that and how to manage and operate it.

The redevelopment plan starts with the building of a 25,000 square foot exhibition hall. Then there would be upgrades to all the facilities at the site. To pay for this the county has about $1million from the room tax measure that passed a few years ago, $3 million from Newport Urban Renewal, and a proposed room tax increase within the county. The fair board will be meeting again next Tuesday to further discuss the plan and vote on weather to send the proposal to the county commissioners. The proposal can be viewed on the Lincoln County website at http://www.co.lincoln.or.us/