Fair board plans infrastructure improvements, upgrades

GRUNDY CENTER – Even with several days still left of this year’s Grundy County Fair Week, fair board members are already busy planning future improvements and upgrades at the fairgrounds – including one project they hope to start as early as this year.
“We’ve spent the last 10 years or so trying to make improvements out here to get more community involvement,” said fair board president Kyle Dudden. “We’ve had a lot of long-range, optimistic brain-storming for what we’d like to see in the future, and we’d like to go forward with some of these ideas.”
A few of the changes the group has talked about include: building a camping area at the fairgrounds, making changes and improvements to the grandstand area (which include adding a permanent concession area and upgrading the bleachers and restrooms), as well as adding a conference building that could be used by members of the community all year round.
“It’s great we can have this area one week of the year, but we want to get it so these grounds are used more than that. They’re just too nice to sit empty,” Dudden said.
Dudden says many of the possible improvements are still preliminary, and much of it will be dependent upon what funding the fair board can secure, but they hope to break ground on the campground project as soon as this year.
“We’ve talked about adding a campground out here for the past few years, and we would like to break ground on that soon, even within this calendar year so we have some changes for next year,” he said.
Dudden said there are two possible locations for the 40 to 50 spot campground: either south of the sheep barn, or east of the grandstand area, with the grandstand area being the preferred spot.
For the full story, see this week's Grundy Register.