New State Fair Coliseum

[Bill Robertson]

Are horse shows bringing in the revenue expected when all the barns were built? Seems like a few years ago every other weekend the old stadium parking lot was full of trucks hauling horse trailers. Doesn't look like nearly as many now.

[Laramie]

Just looked this up and the fairgrounds get more than half the 5.5% lodging tax.

Good grief, taxpayers are funneling a ton of money into the fairgrounds and we *still* are using MAPS and possibly the general obligation bonds to give them still more, despite all the supposed revenue they are generating?

There's no telling how much money is in the State Fair account. They will continue to hoard funds as long as MAPS, 2004 hotel-motel lodging tax & other funds support their coffers.

Think about it; why should they tap into their account when other fund sources are at their disposal. Hope they are planning to replace some of the iconic structures like the Arrows to Atoms Space Tower, Monorail & the Grand Stands or will we see something iconic & totally different from the past.

In the 50s, State Fair of Oklahoma was relocated to its present 440 acre site (N.W. 10th) from where the present Douglass High School campus sits at 900 N. MLK (formerly a stretch of Eastern Avenue).

[Bill Robertson]

Yes the Arena might be a good place to race but what about an area for the pits that would be inside and not in the weather during the colder months, It looks like to me the New Arena is going to have a New barn attached that might be able to be the Pit area just like the venue in Tulsa that has the pits inside.

I've never been in the new barns but if the stalls are movable/removable that would do fine.

[ljbab728]

Are horse shows bringing in the revenue expected when all the barns were built? Seems like a few years ago every other weekend the old stadium parking lot was full of trucks hauling horse trailers. Doesn't look like nearly as many now.

I find just the opposite. It seems like every time I drive by there on weekends it is full of trailers. The number of horse shows and other activities has not slowed down.

[HangryHippo]

Are horse shows bringing in the revenue expected when all the barns were built? Seems like a few years ago every other weekend the old stadium parking lot was full of trucks hauling horse trailers. Doesn't look like nearly as many now.

I've thought the same thing. The parking lots used to be filled to the brim, but now, I don't see them that full ever. Usually around a 1/4 to 1/2 full.

[traxx]

^ OKC's was first though, known as the big house since the late 1960s, and Michigan's since the the late 1980s.

http://newsok.com/article/5483910
"State Fair Arena got its nickname thanks to a pair of Oklahoma high school coaching legends.... That has remained the same for almost five decades."

http://www.brantfordexpositor.ca/201...and-so-special
"NICKNAME: "The Big House," given by longtime ABC college football announcer Keith Jackson, circa 1988."

I was unaware of this. Thanks for the info.

[Laramie]

I find just the opposite. It seems like every time I drive by there on weekends it is full of trailers. The number of horse shows and other activities has not slowed down.

Same here, I travel I-44/I-40 several times a day and the parking area where All Sports Stadium use to be is usually full whenever they have an event.

[_Kyle]

There's no telling how much money is in the State Fair account. They will continue to hoard funds as long as MAPS, 2004 hotel-motel lodging tax & other funds support their coffers.

Think about it; why should they tap into their account when other fund sources are at their disposal. Hope they are planning to replace some of the iconic structures like the Arrows to Atoms Space Tower, Monorail & the Grand Stands or will we see something iconic & totally different from the past.

In the 50s, State Fair of Oklahoma was relocated to its present 440 acre site (N.W. 10th) from where the present Douglass High School campus sits at 900 N. MLK (formerly a stretch of Eastern Avenue).

I would love to see the monorail up and running again.

[traxx]

I would love to see the monorail up and running again.

Is there a chance the track could bend?

[Pete]

Is there a chance the track could bend?

Not on your life, my Hindu friend!

[Laramie]

OKC will begin to feel the competition in the horse & trade show industry from our neighbor to the south (Fort Worth); the new $540 million Dickies Arena at Will Rogers Memorial will seat roughly 14,000. We don't need a 14,000-seat arena at our Fairgrounds; however the present Norick State Fair Arena (built1963) was our first major accomplishment since the closing of the Stockyards Coliseum and the total renovation & retrofit of the old Municipal Auditorium (Civic Center Music Hall). Recall that the old MA use to be the home of the All College NCAA basketball tournament back when OCU was a D-I collegiate competitor..

Estimated cost to replace the State Fair Arena by Populous is approximately $80 million.

We do need to replace the State Fair Arena. The Fairgrounds complex has received money from several MAPS initiatives; most recently the 279,000-square-foot, $$58.7 million Bennett Events Center.

Our fairgrounds sits on a 435 acre parcel.

The question remains about the State Fair Broad Trust; how much money does the trust hoard?

[bombermwc]

And the next question, which is really the big one, does the larger populous care enough about the already taking over horse crap (pun intended) to even WANT to spend money on a fair grounds arena. Yes, it will be nice and be a better fit for the state basketball tourneys. But reality is that the residents are woefully tired of things being built for the horses and not the people.

I still consider the Bennet Center to be an abject failure because of its use of support columns. And we still need a few smaller buildings for shows that don't need a massive space.

And would the residents see the loss of horse shows as a bad thing? Personally, if we tossed all of the barns/etc, i wouldn't care. The fairgrounds could go back to its core purpose. I'm sure the city wants all the hotel money/etc. Personally, i'm just tired of hearing about horses/cows/pigs/etc with the fairgrounds. It's not a stockyards!

[mugofbeer]

And the next question, which is really the big one, does the larger populous care enough about the already taking over horse crap (pun intended) to even WANT to spend money on a fair grounds arena. Yes, it will be nice and be a better fit for the state basketball tourneys. But reality is that the residents are woefully tired of things being built for the horses and not the people.

I still consider the Bennet Center to be an abject failure because of its use of support columns. And we still need a few smaller buildings for shows that don't need a massive space.

And would the residents see the loss of horse shows as a bad thing? Personally, if we tossed all of the barns/etc, i wouldn't care. The fairgrounds could go back to its core purpose. I'm sure the city wants all the hotel money/etc. Personally, i'm just tired of hearing about horses/cows/pigs/etc with the fairgrounds. It's not a stockyards!

I hate to burst your urbanist bubble but the core purpose of the State Fairgrounds IS to hold agricultural, livestock, and farming and ranching events. The State Fair of Oklahoma only occupies 3 weeks of the year and ties together/introduces people to those events along with arts and crafts, food, cars, farm and ranch implements, etc. To say you don't care about the horse barns is incredibly narrow-minded because those events bring in an estimated $1.25 billion in revenue to the city annually. That's money spent on restaurants, events, shopping, hotels and motels. All that money generates taxes to help fix all the other things you complain about such as street and highway lights.

You have long been a great source of information about the MWC/Del City area. If you don't live in OKC proper, then you don't have a horse in the show (pun intended). None of your taxes will go to the fairgrounds so maybe that is your answer.

You clearly don't have any understanding of farming and ranching and give no thought to how all that food gets to your belly. It doesn't just magically appear there and these shows serve a vital purpose to those who participate to identify superior livestock and breeding stock, spread more efficient techniques for the farming and ranching, techniques to help reduce the use and need for chemicals, pesticides and water. Farming and ranching are some of the riskiest and toughest jobs there are and few put the individual and family in more financial risk on an annual basis.

I saw the new arena in Fort Worth a few weeks ago and it is going to be truly magnificent. OKC stands to lose a huge amount of these shows when Ft. Worth decides to go after them. With all the other advantages the DFW area has, OKC has some significant work ahead of it and a new arena is essential.

That said, I agree that the State Fairgrounds have gone to pot the last 30 years. I grew up next to the fairgrounds and it kills me to see the current operators/board remove anything pertaining to entertainment, sports or recreation in favor of the various shows. If the board needs to be more transparent with the finances, then someone needs to file a lawsuit or determine the legal ways to open the books through city government. I can't believe it could possibly be legal to operate a taxpayer funded entity in an entirely opaque manner. If it is that difficult to do, perhaps the entire thing should be dissolved in favor of a new operating entity or just make it a part of regular city government.

[Pete]

The issue with the fairgrounds is that they keep spending taxpayer money on all these improvements vowing great revenues, then turn around and keep wanting more and more and more from taxpayers.

Even though the property is owned by the city and all their revenues come from city-owned assets, they operate outside of open meeting and records laws. I think that matter would be succesffuly challenged in a court of law but citizens shouldn't have to go that route for more transparency.

The state of the grounds itself is embarassing. Just seas of new parking with zero landscaping and what is already there is not well maintained. When they built the huge new Expo Building with millions from MAPS, they didn't plant one tree or bush and that includes the acres of parking that were added.

They need to invest some of that money they raise from scores of events and make the grounds nice, clean and landscaped. And they need to start being more accountable before they ask for more money from taxpayers.

[mugofbeer]

There will be a constant need for money for the fairgrounds until something major comes in to generate permanent and significant revenues. When there is a large capital improvements project, yes, city help will be needed. For regular maintenance and upkeep, no, revenues generated there should be sufficient. Even the Dallas Fair Park received $50 million from a recent bond issue.

It would be wonderful to have facilities on our fairgrounds like the Dallas Fair Park such as the Music Hall (showing touring plays and concerts), the amphitheater (top quality music concerts) and the Cotton Bowl (holds a few football games annually) - that would generate enough money to make ours self sufficient.

I agree, to open the books shouldn't require a lawsuit - but it seems it may if the Fair Board refuses to cooperate. Lack of openness indicates there is something to hide. I would think a start might be to pressure the new mayor and councilpersons on the subject.

[SoonerDave]

Doesn't the Fair Board operate the fairgrounds under some odd lease agreement for a token amount per year? What we've allowed to happen to the fairgrounds borders on the criminal to me. It's a civic entity, but it isn't being managed that way. They've absolutely destroyed it.

[BDP]

To say you don't care about the horse barns is incredibly narrow-minded because those events bring in an estimated $1.25 billion in revenue to the city annually. That's money spent on restaurants, events, shopping, hotels and motels. All that money generates taxes to help fix all the other things you complain about such as street and highway lights.

Yeah, the dumbest thing would be to turn our backs on one of the biggest economic engines we have in terms of public assets. Given that most of the money comes from outside the state and even outside the country, it's a real net gain, not just a revenue shift from one asset to another. You run the horse shows out of town and that money just disappears.

So, the real focus should be on the issues of transparency that Pete has raised and find out how it can be more self sufficient and make more improvements. It's kind of working now despite its poor management. If we had access to what's really going down, it could be exponentially better.

And, just to be clear, I can't even remember the last time I was on the fairgrounds. Ha

[bombermwc]

mugofbeer - actually i do live in OKC limits, but thanks for making an assumption. You know what that does.....

I dont have to have a deep understanding to know that im tired of spending tax money on barns at the fairgrounds (AND NOTHING ELSE). We used to have other resources for these activities (you know, that the taxpayers didn't subsidize). It's not that i dont appreciate the need for stock activities. My problem is the never-ending river of money that goes ONLY to these activities that ignores the rest of the grounds. But please do educate us on how HORSE activities where ribbons are given out, are part of the food chain in a country that bans eating horses. Yeah a lot of the world eats them, but we don't here.

BTW - i did admit that they bring economic impact to the city (apparently you missed that in your rant). Again, my problem is that the city is paying for this stuff over and over and over to subsidize this stuff. Something we do NOT do for other industries. The ag shows at the fairgrounds are starting to turn into a relationship like professional sports. "Either you build me a new arena or im going to move. And i want the CITY to pay for it all, but i want to get all the benefit from it". Hmmm, i seem to remember that's how the Thunder ended up in OKC.....

As Pete said, one of the problems i have is that they continue to make promises, fail to deliver on them, and operate in a black box that no one can see in.

[hoya]

The issue is there's no oversight. They might be doing an absolutely fantastic job, spending the money wisely and making sound investments with public tax dollars. But we have no way to know.

I'll accept the idea that the horse shows bring in far more money than the State Fair, and for all I know they operate year round instead of the two weeks or whatever that the State Fair does. If somebody says that the money difference is 100 to 1, well then I'll believe them because I really don't know anything about the subject.

I wouldn't even be opposed to a new MAPS program that included a big horse arena thing over there, if the numbers supported it. But we need some transparency so we know how the existing money is spent before we go throwing buckets of cash at it.

[HangryHippo]

I understand the economic impacts of the various agricultural events and I love horses, so it's a win-win for me. However, the lack of accountability/transparency troubles me. As others have noted, the actual grounds of the fair are in horrendous shape. Why the hell can't something be done to improve those? I would like to see where the money is going outside of new stables and RV/trailer hookups.

[borchard]

I saw the new arena in Fort Worth a few weeks ago and it is going to be truly magnificent. OKC stands to lose a huge amount of these shows when Ft. Worth decides to go after them. With all the other advantages the DFW area has, OKC has some significant work ahead of it and a new arena is essential.

I know it isnt an apples-to-apples comparison, but the Dallas Fairgrounds is head and shoulders above ours, IMHO. When we were down there for the OU-TX game we saw tree-lined streets, museums, amphitheaters, etc...
It seems like all we have done at our fairgrounds over the years is tear down/disable things, and not replace them (Grandstands, monorail, space needle, baseball field) The Bennett Events building wasnt an ADDITIONAL building, it just replaced another one.
The fairgrounds look almost abandoned when you drive by. Certain circles are talking about building a soccer/football/concert stadium at some point. I think the PERFECT place for it would be on the eastern side of the fairgrounds where the racetrack used to be.

[HOT ROD]

I have to agree with Bomber here and it is what I have stated over and over since the fairgrounds always seems to show up for MAPs; we allowed them to destroy the grounds in favor of a single source to which they must have significant revenues to not only operate but to grow that said business. MAPS are not intended for operations nor maintenance but capital expenditure. Maps is also not intended for the same venue or site but for ADDITIONAL or additions to.

One might argue that the fairgrounds is a site similar to downtown, but I'd argue that we only built one downtown arena, one streetcar system, one city park (well, two but MGB is a different story) yet the fairgrounds has an Expo Building for horses, Barns for horses, and ect for YOU GUESSED IT horses. Not one additional amenity or venue has been added nor proposed; you know, that could make the fairgrounds more versatile along the lines of MAPS - a METROPOLITAN contributor.

I'd also argue that the downtown projects combine to add to the city's mission and are far more visible and valuable to the city than anything in the fairgrounds. The Fairgrounds board tore out the monorail, removed the space needle, demolished the race track, knocked down the Gateway Arch, plucked out All-Sports stadium . ... those were all venues of entertainment and/or culture that could have been worthy of MAPs for restoration and/or capital expense. I disagree with these monuments being used only during the 17-day which used to be 21-day but now is 14-day or less State Fair; it is the Fair board who chose to have them accessible only during the fair.

My question is why couldn't the fairgrounds continue to exist sprucing up what we had but ADD horse facilities to make the site a dense collection of venues and amenities that could be used by a number of industries/parties. ..

[Rover]

The Bennett Center is not a horse show arena, isn't connected to stalls, etc. If fact, last week it had a CBD Oil expo there....certainly not your horse crowd. It is a large expo area capable of hosting all kinds of events. And the arena hosts lots of non-horse events. If a new arena is built it certainly lets the Cox arena be deconstructed without a hole in our ability to host mid-sized popular events.

My biggest gripe is that there is ZERO landscaping. And, the facilities are big, but basic. Very utilitarian.

[HOT ROD]

Rover, you pointed to two items that folks already have said, many times, were the ONLY improvements to the fair park that would be considered multi-functional. I and others pointed to the countless venues that were destroyed and the only rebuilt with MAPS money have been horse related.

As Trump would note, there is a huge 'trade' imbalance here and it has nothing to do with the lack of demand for non-horse uses at the park but everything to do with a fair board without accountability and an obvious vision for the park to be a mediocre developed trade show site that now has serious competitor likely to kill that mediocrity once and for all. These are facts, that HAVE happened.

I don't disagree with you regarding the arena (greatly aiding deconstruction of COX) and I'd very likely support that as a MAPS function. I also don't disagree with you that the Bennett Center provides great Exhibit space that doesn't otherwise exist in the city; even though as some have argued, we did have that space already; but I agree - maybe it was time for it to be rebuilt, rightfully so.

But why did we get rid of the othery destination-oriented venues at the same time only promoting the horse-show vision? Furthermore, why did we do the horse show vision 2nd class to begin with?

I'm not buying the maintenance $$ argument because most of those venues were long shuttered (to help expedite their decay from lack of operations, despite the demand that did/does exist), so what were they supposedly maintaining? Maintenance $$ goes into something that is in use. .. Im not buying it.

They removed the FAIR out of the fairpark IMO, turning it into a large, mediocre white elephant that's even today still living on OKC's history as a 'horse-show capital'.

[Jersey Boss]

The trend for athletic venues are to move them to downtown areas. Nationally attendance at State Fairs is declining. This country is getting less rural with every passing year and the interest in FFA events just is not what it was 20 years ago. Yeah the monorail was fun the first time, but after that, meh. The cars were incredibly hot and stuffy and for what? Times are a changing and a big chunk of this land could be repurposed for something more beneficial than horse shows. I'm not suggesting eliminating the facilities for the ponies but repurposing the area outside of this. Nostalgia does not cut it.