Fair Is Ready for ’87 but May Be Homeless in ’88

The San Fernando Valley Fair officially begins Wednesday on the football field of California State University, Northridge. But it is anyone’s guess where the fair will be next year.

Development of CSUN’s North Campus will force the fair to move from the Devonshire Downs fairground after this year. Fair organizers earlier this month asked the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for permission to use the Sepulveda Basin, including land occupied by the Air National Guard, as a temporary site for next year’s event.

But the Corps of Engineers, which owns the basin, plans to respond with a firm “no” to using the military facility even temporarily, an official said late last week. The corps will suggest that the fair negotiate with the City of Los Angeles about using non-military land in the Sepulveda Basin, such as nearby Woodley Park, that the city leases from the U.S. government and maintains as parks, he said.

“We’re very concerned right now,” the fair’s program coordinator, Mel Simas, said of the uncertainty surrounding the future location of the event. “You know, when the question gets asked, ‘Where are we going to be next year?’ we can’t give a definite answer.”

Board OKd Move to Basin

Last December, the fair’s nine-member governing board approved a plan to move permanently to the Sepulveda Basin, on land occupied by the Air National Guard’s 261st Combat Communications Squadron. The squadron would then have to move from the basin to Hansen Dam to make room for the fair.

But the proposal since has stirred a storm of opposition from the corps, federal lawmakers and homeowner groups. The fair board, which is appointed by Gov. George Deukmejian, was dealt a further setback last week when the governor vetoed a $1.95-million budget appropriation earmarked for construction of a permanent exhibition building for the fair. The governor termed the appropriation “premature” because the fair has not secured a permanent site yet.

Yet fair organizers and their leading supporter, state Sen. Alan Robbins (D-Van Nuys), remain optimistic about the fair’s future. The governor left intact a budget provision--inserted by Robbins--directing the state Military Department to complete plans to move the Air National Guard to Hansen Dam, although such a move is considered a complex, uphill process because of federal land-use requirements and opposition from the corps.

Moreover, fair backers seem to have their hearts set on the Sepulveda Basin as a permanent site, despite the obstacles.

Simas, the fair’s program coordinator, said that, wherever the fair ends up next year, “that may be the direction we want to go for a permanent site.”

Although the Corps of Engineers is preparing its formal response to the fair’s request for a temporary home on the 25.7-acre Guard site, it already has concluded that it cannot accommodate the fair there, said corps realty specialist Lewis Trout. The Guard site is licensed under federal law only for military, not recreational, use, he said.

“I’ll have to see how their response reads,” Simas said. “If it is a ‘no’ without consideration, I’d be disappointed.”

Sandy Miller, an aide to Robbins, said Friday, “We’re still negotiating to get the Guard site.”

Trout recommended negotiating with the city Department of Recreation and Parks, which leases much of the basin, about using open space on that land, which he said is available for recreational use, for the fair.

“There’s a very real likelihood that the fair will be at the Sepulveda Basin next year,” Trout said. “It just won’t be on the Guard site.”

Availability Uncertain

A parks department spokesman said the city has not yet responded to the fair’s request to use city-leased land in the basin’s Woodley Park, in conjunction with the Guard property, next year. He would not comment on how much of the parkland, some of which is occupied by picnic and children’s play areas, archery and cricket fields and a golf course, could be made available to the fair and whether it would contain enough open space for the fair.

A consultant to the fair board has said the fair needs at least 60 acres. Its existing site at CSUN encompasses 51 acres, plus adjacent parking. Simas said the Guard site plus the surrounding park area would provide enough space for the fair. But the park area alone, he said, “probably would be too minimal.”

The fair has also considered Los Angeles Pierce College in Woodland Hills and Hansen Dam in Sun Valley as places where the fair could move. But the Sepulveda Basin has been the fair’s preferred site because of its central location, low rent and accessibility to freeways.

Simas, the fair’s program coordinator, said, “We need to explore and will explore all the possibilities . . . . The fair must go on.”

First Held in 1946

The first San Fernando Valley Fair was held at the Devonshire Downs fairgrounds in 1946, Simas said. It was dissolved in 1959 when the state gave the property to CSUN. In 1975, the fair was resurrected at the CSUN North Campus, and it has been held there since.

The fair’s eviction from Devonshire Downs stems from a planned expansion by CSUN, in conjunction with a private developer, to include a hotel, restaurants, other commercial facilities and student housing.

This year’s fair will include concerts, agricultural and horticultural exhibits, and contests ranging from a paper airplane race to a “razorback” race, in which pigs from Arkansas chase a bowl of cookies, fair spokesman Ted Nauman said.

About 80,000 visitors are expected, Nauman said. Admission is $4 for adults and teen-agers, $1.50 for children and $2 for senior citizens 55 and older. Parking is $1.

On Thursday, senior citizens will be allowed in free until 6 p.m.; the same applies to those 18 and younger on Friday. A chili cook-off is scheduled for Sunday.

The fair will be open from 5 p.m. to midnight Wednesday, noon to midnight Thursday and Friday, and 10 a.m. to midnight Saturday and Sunday.