Valley Fair to Be Held at CSUN; Move to Pierce College Delayed

The San Fernando Valley Fair will remain for another year at fairgrounds in Northridge, delaying plans to move to the Pierce College campus until 1989, it was announced Wednesday.

The decision came just two weeks after fair operators and campus officials had agreed that the event could be held at Pierce. But, during negotiations, college officials required organizers to scale down the fair and its usually large and noisy midway.

Waiting until next year will allow fair operators to work out a better compromise with Pierce officials, said Sal Buccieri, a member of the board of directors of the 51st Agricultural Assn., the state agency that operates the fair.

The fair has been at California State University, Northridge on the Devonshire Downs fairgrounds since 1975. But university officials announced last year that fair organizers would have to look elsewhere because the university plans to begin building a $200-million academic and commercial development on the 30-acre site.

However, the beginning of construction has been postponed until after the fair, which runs from July 13 to July 17, at the urging of Los Angeles City Councilman Hal Bernson, said Elliot Mininberg, administrative vice president at CSUN.

Margaree Klein, Bernson’s press secretary, said the councilman’s intervention was prompted by constituents’ requests.

Klein said the councilman contacted university officials and the developer, Watt Investment Properties, and construction was postponed until late July.

This year’s fair will have to make do with less space than in previous years, Mininberg said. A campus stadium and practice field cannot be used this year, reducing the fair site by as much as 40%, Mininberg said.

“It will be something modest compared to what they were used to in the past,” he said.

Pierce hopes to be the future home of the fair, not only in 1989, but permanently, said David Wolf, president of the college. He said the agricultural theme of the fair is in keeping with the school’s agriculturally oriented curriculum.

Pierce offered the campus as a site when officials learned that the fair was seeking a new location, Wolfe said.

Officials are still in negotiations about holding the fair’s equestrian events on the Pierce campus.

A longstanding frustration for fair organizers has been a restriction against holding equestrian activities on the Northridge campus, they said. Wolf said fair organizers and Pierce officials have discussed building an equestrian center on the Woodland Hills campus, which could also be used by Pierce students.