World-Herald editorial: Celebrating State Fair's success

The Nebraska State Fair: Problems were few, successes were many and the event went smoothly, delighting many thousands of visitors and sending them home happy.

Some critics of the plan to move the Fair from Lincoln to Grand Island had predicted fewer attendees; they couldn’t have been more wrong. Planners had set the attendance goal at 200,000 in order to make a profit. The number of people who walked through the gates and into Nebraska’s annual agriculture-fest was half again that high — 309,400.

That’s hundreds more than attended the 2008 Fair in Lincoln. It was an amazing performance for a new and untested facility.

Not that “untested” mattered. The can-do spirit of Grand Island’s community leaders, the State Fair Board staff and its executive director, Joseph McDermott, and the thousands of volunteers from Grand Island and the entire three-city area, including Kearney and Hastings, undergirded and motivated and swept the event along from start to finish.

And let’s not forget the invaluable contributions of 4-H and FFA members from across Nebraska. These young people turned out in enormous numbers and were key to helping make the Fair the success it was.

It was the efforts of all these individuals — so remarkable in their selflessness and energy — that made the Fair’s first year in its new location so appealing to so many Nebraskans, rural and urban.

And what those can-doers did! The Fair was truly top-flight, its barns, arenas and other venues comfortable and welcoming to visitors as well as exhibitors. The facilities at the Lincoln fairgrounds had grown inadequate over the years, a fact that many Nebraskans rightly lamented. But the new operation is truly first-class, and it sets up Grand Island as a significant location for attracting and hosting major livestock shows and events. This is how a national reputation for excellence is built.

Those sparkling attendance figures offer another encouraging outcome: It’s likely they will generate revenues to enable city leaders and the Fair Board to provide even greater facilities. They’re already talking about an outdoor arena. And they want to adjust the traffic patterns and access, which needs work because no one had anticipated so many fairgoers.

The aquarium showcasing Nebraska fish, which was demolished on the Lincoln site, could be rebuilt. The popular pie shack, run in Lincoln by a women’s church group, could return. The possibilities are many and exciting.

All of Nebraska can take pride in the achievements of the new State Fair. The tremendous success of the Fair in Grand Island illustrates what Nebraskans can do with determination, hard work, sound planning and solidarity. This year was the first of many; may they all be as successful.

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