Fair Directors Undaunted by Losses, Plunge in Attendance

Directors of the San Fernando Valley Fair, which suffered an estimated $150,000 loss and a dramatic drop in attendance this year, said they do not know where the event will be held next year but vowed that it will continue with or without a midway.

“I certainly never thought when I was a kid going to the San Fernando Valley Fair over 30 years ago that we would be approaching the year 1990 and still not be sitting on a permanent site,” said state Sen. Alan Robbins (D-Tarzana), whose legislation resurrected the event in 1975 after a 16-year hiatus.

Attendance plummeted from about 70,000 during the five-day festival in 1988 to roughly 29,000 at this year’s three-day fair last weekend at Hansen Dam Park.

Remaining Hopeful

But the numbers haven’t discouraged the fair’s directors, who remain optimistic about the event’s future despite more than a decade of setbacks and disappointments. Because they didn’t know until May whether they would find a site for the 1989 fair, the board members said they were happy that the annual event was held at all.

“You have to feel good about what happened this time,” said Dallas Boardman, a longtime board member of the 51st Agricultural Assn., sponsor of the fair. Looking ahead to next year’s fair, he added: “We aren’t going into it as a whipped dog.”

Fair officials blame the low attendance on several factors. The fair was hastily put together after Los Angeles Community College District trustees rejected offering Pierce College in Woodland Hills for use as a fair site. It was shortened from five days to three and did not have alcoholic beverage sales, concerts or a midway--conditions imposed by the city of Los Angeles and endorsed by neighborhood activists before the park site was offered.

What was held was an old-fashioned fair, which seemed to please many fair-goers.

“The surroundings made you feel you were in the country. You weren’t looking at condominiums and asphalt,” said Steve Pietrolungo, an agriculture teacher at Canoga Park High School.

Event Praised

“It was a very big hit,” said Eileen Barry, an officer of the Lake View Terrace Improvement Assn., who raved about the pig races, petting zoo and other attractions for children. “We hope they come back and set this up as their permanent headquarters.”

Board members said they were grateful to secure the Hansen Dam site after being ousted from Cal State Northridge, the fair’s home for 14 years, to make way for campus expansion.

The eviction, however, was not a last-minute surprise. The fair board knew years in advance that it would have to secure a new site when CSUN began developing the land. But the board members are no closer to finding a site today than they were several years ago.

The fair faces several obstacles in finding a permanent home.

Since the 1970s, open space in the Valley has shrunk considerably and real estate prices have escalated dramatically. At the same time, Valley homeowner groups--which have protested all sorts of proposed developments from Olympic venues to a monastery to upscale restaurants--have grown more vocal and more powerful.

It was a homeowner group that vigorously opposed the fair’s move to Pierce, while neighborhood activists also decried the fair’s previous ill-fated attempt to find a niche in the Sepulveda Basin.

Plan Crushed by Opponents

Three years ago, the board spent about a year seeking a permanent home for the fair in the Sepulveda Basin, even though the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers warned that the process could take six years and then end in failure. Overwhelming opposition from the corps and homeowners crushed the plan.

Salvatore A. Buccieri, the fair board’s president, said the board’s real estate committee will meet soon to renew talks about potential fair sites. Also up for discussion will be the fair’s future direction.

Board members said they are delighted that the fair was a big hit with many of those who attended this year. They said they will explore whether the event should remain a family affair or whether attempts should be made to lure back teen-agers and young adults with Ferris wheels, beer, wine and rock ‘n’ roll music.

The Woodland Hills Homeowners Organization, which battled the fair earlier this year, thinks that the board should stick with an agricultural event.

Otherwise, said Robert Gross, vice president of the group, “I think they should be asked to justify . . . their existence.”

A few people suggest that the fair, which was created to celebrate the Valley’s agricultural heritage, just isn’t relevant anymore and should fold up its tents.

“The Valley has evolved underneath these people,” said an aide to a Valley politician. “For all those who want to talk about the days of orchards and walnut trees, it’s not that way. It’s not something that has value or interest for the majority of people in the area.”

In fact, many people may not know that the fair exists. A $30,500 survey commissioned by the fair board and completed in 1986 showed that 45% of Valley residents had never heard of the annual event.

But fair officials have always bristled at any suggestion that the fair doesn’t draw enough people to justify its existence.

“I don’t think we can dwell on the negative,” said Mel Simas, the fair’s manager. “I don’t think it’s appropriate.”