The Madison County Fairgrounds will be moving in a few years after new property purchased
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REXBURG — The Madison County Fairgrounds will have a different home after new property was recently purchased.
“For the last ten years, the fair board has been exploring options and in the last year, we were able to make a deal on this,” Madison County Fair Board Chairman Chris Johnson told EastIdahoNews.com.
Earlier this week, the Madison County Fairgrounds Facebook page posted it will be moving.
“We are excited for what this means for Rexburg. Bigger events, better events, and most of all, better seating for our Famous Whoopee Days Rodeo!” the post said.
According to a map online, the new property is located on part of South 3300 West and is on the west side of U.S. Highway 20 near the gravel pit and close to the Thornton exit.
The property is about 80 acres. The current Madison County Fairgrounds is 30 acres.
“It is county owned already and the new place is still going to be county owned,” Johnson said.
The new location was needed because Johnson said they were “bursting at the seams.”
“From the public perspective, the current fairgrounds look huge. When there is nightly events going on, we are out of parking spots for mainly horse trailers or when we have a grandstand event, there is not adequate parking and people are parking on city streets and neighbors are not happy,” he explained.
The new property will give the opportunity to build bigger.
“Right now, we have about 50 horse stalls. The new place is going to have 300. Right now, we don’t have any RV spots, the new place is going to have 200 RV spots,” Johnson said. “Our indoor (arena) right now is 150 by 300. The new one is going to be 200 by 400.”
Johnson said the other goal is to make it a multi-use facility.
“This is not just a fair and rodeo facility. We are going to incorporate a walking path, playground, a grassy area for people to be able to use the facility outside of fair and rodeo events,” he said.
Madison County Commissioner Chairman Todd Smith said the current fairgrounds have been around for decades, and the population has grown significantly.
“You think about the current fairgrounds…it was rebuilt after the flood in 1976/1977 and at the time, we were a community of about 10,000 people. Now we are bordering close to 60,000,” Smith said. “The current fairgrounds are used everyday. It’s time to get on a bigger piece of ground that we can have a bigger facility and serve more people.”
The property was bought from the Bowen family in Madison County. Smith declined to disclose how much the property cost and explained he wanted to respect the privacy of the seller. EastIdahoNews.com submitted a public records request on Friday to Madison County for the purchase amount. We learned on Aug. 6 that it cost over $3.8 million.
Smith said the county was able to use some ARPA funds received from the federal government a few years ago due to COVID-19 to purchase the new property.
“We received about seven and a half million dollars of ARPA funds from the federal government. We used it for a couple of things like new ambulances and we were able to buy this ground with those funds as well,” he said.
Smith said the location will be great for the fairgrounds.
“There are roads on three sides of that property that are within a mile of the Thornton exit and close to the University exit. The new frontage road that we are building is within a quarter of a mile of this property,” Smith said.
Smith and Johnson also said there have been public meetings throughout the years discussing the Madison County Fairgrounds. They added that for the purchase of this property, there did not need to be a public hearing due to it already being zoned.
“Moving forward, the plan is to sell the existing fairgrounds and use those funds to help build (the new fairgrounds),” Smith said. “At this point, we have not used any local property tax dollars on this project.”
Johnson told EastIdahoNews.com that they are in the design phase.
“I have formed outside of my fair board (a) new fairgrounds committee. None of my fair board members are on it. We are in the design phase. That committee brings stuff back to the fair board for approval,” he said.
So when will the new property be used for the fairgrounds? It could take a few years. In the meantime, the current one will still hold events.
“We are hoping to be breaking ground in the next two years. It is my goal in five years — it is our 100th anniversary (at the Madison County Fairgrounds) and I would love to have the fair and rodeo there for that,” Johnson said.
Johnson explained the fairgrounds would still have the same hometown feel and looks forward to the change while acknowledging the community might have questions.
“We are more than happy to discuss this with the public. It’s a huge project. We’re excited,” he said.