Missoula County Fairgrounds Update

As you may have seen, the Board of County Commissioners recently wrote a guest column in the Missoulian, outlining the steps we have made, and are currently making, towards enhancing the fairgrounds. We are proud of the work our Fairgrounds and Facilities Management staff have been doing and are constantly humbled by their dedication to this valuable community asset. 

Much of their work is not always public-facing. As such, we have created this document to share what we have been working on and will keep you updated with the progress we make. We look forward to presenting an implementation plan later this year!

We receive many inquiries about the Missoula County Fairgrounds. In our discussions, the ground’s most valuable asset always comes to the forefront; the diverse and caring community of people who work and play at the center of our city. Because their investment in the Missoula County Fairgrounds is so strong, we've been asking them for their input throughout the last few years.

We recently affirmed that the Missoula County fairgrounds has tremendous potential to benefit our community and the region. We’re nearing the end of the planning process to determine how we develop the grounds for the community’s benefit.

We heard the initial report from our market analyst that, when complete, will inform the implementation plan. The implementation plan will provide a map for the grounds. It will show the layout of the grounds; it will show the old and new buildings needed to support the operations deemed sustainable by the market analysis; it will affirm the importance of partnerships with the Glacier Ice Rink and with the Missoula County Weed and Extension Office. The implementation plan is the culmination of work from a variety of groups and is years in the making.

The Missoula County Fairgrounds Advisory Committee has been working hard over the last several years, gathering information from the public, working with A&E Architects to develop an inventory of the buildings on the fairgrounds and create an Enhancement and Development Plan that helps us prioritize funding for current projects on the grounds. Our design team of architects, fairgrounds planners, fairgrounds staff, a market analyst and county leaders will pull this information together to present to the public.

These efforts will allow us to present a comprehensive assessment where we can then ask for help to determine the appropriate funding mechanisms to make this plan a reality. The implementation plan will be generated from all of this work and the information from the Master Plan, as developed by Crandall & Arambula in 2011.

While the recent preliminary Markin presentation allows us to look to the future, investments and efforts to improve the grounds have been ongoing. We increased the mill levy in fiscal year 2012 to further support planning efforts for future use, while investing in the grounds in the meantime. We increased that mill levy again this fiscal year. In the past few years alone, the county’s Facilities Management Department has completed more than 70 maintenance and infrastructure improvements on the grounds.

These projects range from seven weeks’ worth of labor rewiring the electrical components to meet code for the food row concession building, two new ADA-compliant restrooms for building 15, a new roof and water line for the culinary building, repair and installation of 40 new toilets in the main restrooms, renovated offices for the fairgrounds staff, a new fire alarm system which will cover building 12, the commercial building and building 15, and new cabling for data and phones (largely to support the critical work of the elections staff at the elections center).

In FY 2013 we approved a $220,000 budget for rehabilitation of the parking lots and new wiring and conduit for the new parking lot lights and signage. We also approved the hiring of an additional employee, managed by our hardworking Facilities Management Department, to be solely dedicated to upkeep and improvements at the fairgrounds.

Despite the selfless efforts of volunteers and staff over the years, the fairgrounds has endured a long period of deferred maintenance and neglect. The record shows we've made good progress to change course and transform the fairgrounds into the valuable community asset it deserves to be. But we’re just getting started. We are excited to demonstrate our continued commitment to the grounds and to the community when we present the implementation plan later this year.