The Lebanon Valley Exposition Center and Fairgrounds is Lebanon County’s premier destination for the Lebanon Area Fair and other events throughout the year.
As such, the center receives plenty of TLC, and new projects on the fair’s and the expo center’s wishlist are checked off as funds are available to further improve the 75-acre site, located along Rocherty Road in North Cornwall Township.
“When you look at what the facility’s grown into, I mean, there’s always something to be done, there’s always something next on the list,” said Dan Siegel, Lebanon Area Fair president. “And that’s just maintenance and improvement level, not major expansion projects. The expo board has been very good about looking at what the fair needs because their mission is to provide a fairgrounds, so they’ve been very good about listening to that and just chipping away. But then also working to have a very marketable facility.”
“The county is very fortunate to have this facility,” said Pat Kerwin, executive director of the Expo Center. “That has nothing to do with me or the people who run it, but the people who created it.”
Several new infrastructure improvements have been made or are in the works since LebTown profiled several major site revisions last year.
Read More: Lebanon fairgrounds, gem of the county, undergoes renovations
These latest improvements will enhance the overall experience for fairgoers during the 2024 edition of the Lebanon Area Fair, which runs July 20-27, and others well into the future.
One work in progress will be one of the most noticeable newer improvements to the site.
The fairground’s track is in the process of receiving a new sound system and a new announcer booth/press box. It’s unlikely the sound system will be completed by Saturday and the announcer booth, which is being moved to the south side of the track from the north, is expected to be operational this fall.
“Each (light) pole will have a speaker that’s (affixed and) directed downward instead of outward, more downward, so sound goes into the stands instead of to Rexmont,” said Siegel. “It’s something that, as we’re going along ticking off things on our wish list and to-do list, the sound, for sure, is something that we should be improving. Replacing the announcer’s stand is just a simple matter of age.”
The new announcer booth/press box was part of a broader improvement plan of which a portion was completed last year with the installation of new bleachers and a lighting system at the track. The new bleachers added capacity and both installations improved safety.
“When we put in the bleachers, the new bleachers, provisions were already in place to accommodate the new announcer stand,” said Siegel. “It was part of a long-term plan.”
The two-story press box will house the new sound system with the lower backside of the structure serving as the registration area for individuals participating in track events. Additionally, wi-fi capabilities will be enhanced and connectivity between the booth and the rest of the grounds’ speaker system will be improved.
A portion of the latest track upgrades, which is expected to cost over $100,000 when completed, is being funded by remaining monies from the American Rescue Plan Act grant, expo and fair dollars, and a donation from a now-defunct organization. (That same ARPA grant also paid for the track’s new lighting system and bleachers.)
“We were the beneficiaries of a nice gift from the Lebanon Valley Tractor Pullers,” said Kerwin. “They discontinued their organization and with the monies that they had in their account they gifted the Expo Center and the fair to go towards this new building. It’s a significant portion.”
That’s not all the pullers did for the two organizations.
“They had a couple of pieces of equipment too that they owned, the tractor pullers, that were kept here and they donated that equipment to the expo center and fair,” said Siegel. “It would be a roller, scraper and a scale. All the equipment necessary to put on a pull that’s used behind the scenes. That equipment will get loaned to other organizations that are having tractor pulls.”
Of the total $100,000-plus price tag for the latest track improvements, about $35,000 is for the replacement of the more than 30-year-old sound system. Officials have applied for a matching (50-50) state capital improvement grant, which hasn’t been awarded yet, to hopefully fund half of that project cost.
“The grant actually lags your improvement, which is sort of bizarre. But you have to make the improvement and we might not know if we were approved for the grant until next year, but we applied for it,” said Siegel. “The grant application specifically says that you need to be able to pay for the work if you don’t get the grant, which we obviously are prepared to do. I think their position is you have to be willing to do the project, and it has to be meaningful enough to you to do it and show that you’re willing to pay for it. And then if you do get a grant, it’s a pleasant surprise.”
The largest improvement in this construction phase is the installation of a new 60’ x 80’ storage facility located at the southeast corner of the fairgrounds near the track.
“The current storage shed that we had just was not able to hold everything and there’s a lot of stuff that is stored at various places. It’s farms, people’s barns, and it’s just a matter of bringing it all together so it’s here rather than having to haul it back and forth,” said Siegel. “It was one of those things that was necessary for many, many, many years, and it just was the next thing on the to-do list, so to speak. But that’s the goal. Just to be able to have everything stored here.”
That building, which is nearly completed, will begin to house all fair assets and those owned by expo officials once the fair ends on July 27.
“On the second Saturday we have a cleanup in the morning and we’ll be cleaning out all the pens, all the displays and everything, and we will pack the barn with that gear,” said Siegel, noting the facility has three garage bays, two entrance doors and a concrete floor. “Those items will be in the rear and property owned by the expo will be stored to the front for easy access.”
As soon as that building project is completed, another of equal size will be built adjacent to that structure. By the time the 2025 Lebanon Area Fair begins, the facility will have a manure storage facility to house animal waste until it can be fertilized on farmer’s fields once the growing season is over.
“It gets stored on site now and then it’s hauled off in the fall,” said Siegel. “But in the future we’ll actually have a building to store it in. I think from the outside it’s going to look identical to the new storage shed.”
During a visit earlier this week to the fairgrounds by LebTown, a jackhammer on a backhoe near the main entrance loudly let its presence be felt and known that another improvement project was underway. This project is slated to be finished before the fair begins on Saturday.
“I don’t know if you noticed but we’re putting in a new septic tank out there,” said Siegel. “It’s a pretreatment septic tank. After it goes through that tank, then there’s a grinder pump that sends it into the sewer system. It’s kind of an interesting arrangement. Our sewer line doesn’t flow downhill, it has to have a boost.”
Some other infrastructure enhancements inside the complex will be recognizable to astute fair attendees and other guests.
Doors at the center’s main entrance, West and Southeast halls, new carpeting in the waiting area near the expo offices, and a new air conditioning system that has three massive units to cool the North Hall have all been installed since last year’s fair.
“The Lancaster Lebanon Quilt Show, which we had here just recently, told me they had 6,000 guests over four days,” said Kerwin. “Now think how many times those doors have opened and closed. That’s a lot of opening and closing.”
“Those are very large units, which are necessary to cool buildings that are this large,” added Siegel.
Siegel noted the fair is just one event at a center that’s occupied nearly year-round and serves as a tourism destination in the Lebanon Valley. It’s also viewed as an asset that’s among the very best in Pennsylvania and the United States.
“Not all of them have the ability to rent their facilities out or have so much demand for their facilities,” said Siegel. “The genesis of the expo was formed by farmers who put their money on the line to have a facility that would be a fairgrounds and as part of that process they have a facility that’s economically viable year-round.”
Read More: For 60+ years, the Lebanon Area Fair has been one of county’s biggest attractions
That original vision, formed so many years ago, lives on today.
“You can’t forget that it’s turned into a huge asset for the county during other parts of the year, in terms of bringing in people, bringing in other events,” said Siegel. “People come to events, they stay in hotels, they eat at restaurants.”
The annual fair is, however, and will continue to be the main event, the star of the county’s Expo Center.
“Despite all those other things going on for 51 weeks of the year, the fair is the main event and is why every square inch of the buildings needs to be used by the fair,” added Siegel.
As current infrastructure projects are completed, others on the wish and to-do lists await in the wings with other necessary renovations cropping up all the time.
“The expo basically serves the function of what a buildings and grounds committee of an organization does,” said Siegel. “But there’s always dialogue between the fair and the expo board. ‘What do we need to improve? What do we need to be even better than the year before?’ They’ve been very receptive to our requests, and it doesn’t hurt that there are many members that serve on both boards.”
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