Fair Brightens City’s Image--and Doesn’t Harm Its Wallet, Either : Attractions: For a brief period every year, a community down on its luck economically and beset by crime becomes the place to go to have fun and spend money.

While a caged baby goat keeps her two young daughters amused, Melody Bias takes a break from her whirlwind day at the Los Angeles County Fair to explain how its sights, sounds and smells cast her back to her youth.

Back then her hometown was a place to be proud of. But Pomona has changed since she was a girl, Bias says, its reputation tarnished by racial tensions, violent crime and pockets of blight.

The fair--now that hasn’t changed, says the 39-year-old Fontana resident, except that every year “it gets better and better. I’ll always come back.

“It’s the best thing going for Pomona.”

Pomona officials wouldn’t disagree. Like those before it, the 66th annual fair has been Pomona’s chance to shine as host of what has arguably been Southern California’s main attraction over the last few weeks and undeniably the nation’s largest county fair.

The fair, which ends today, is Pomona’s best shot at proving to well over a million outsiders that there is more to the city of 136,000 residents than the crime that dominates news coverage. Instead of drive-bys and decay, the fair conjures up images of whirling carnival rides, galloping racehorses, butter-soaked corn on the cob and potbelly pig races.

“We are damaged by the negative press we often get regarding gangs and criminal activity, which is a true and serious problem. We also have a great city with great people,” Councilman Marco Robles said.

“Without activities like the fair, we might only be remembered for the negative things that come out of our city. So we’re not only looked at as the capital of crime.”

Last year Pomona had the San Gabriel Valley’s most dramatic increase in homicides, 56%. Pomona’s 39 killings were more than twice as many as in Pasadena, a city of the same size.

What may be the worst mass shooting in Pomona’s history, in which four people died, occurred while the fair was in full swing. On Sept. 24, a young man burst into his estranged girlfriend’s home and opened fire on her and her family, killing three people and injuring two others before committing suicide.

Some fair visitors said they were uneasy about visiting Pomona because they had heard about gangs and crime.

One Santa Clarita couple, Lance and Allyson Vaughn, said they thought the fair was well worth the admission price of $8, but said they wouldn’t be staying at the fairgrounds past dark: “We’re not in the best area,” Allyson said.

Pomona’s image is blemished by more than crime. There is no escaping the town’s gloomy economic picture.

Past the soon-to-shut-down Hughes Missile System Co. and dozens of vacant and graffiti-marred storefronts and trash-strewn lots along several major thoroughfares, parts of Pomona look like a dying town. As employers have left over the past three years, more than $1 million in taxable sales in the city has disappeared.

And the town has never recovered from the blow of the Montclair Plaza, which in the 1970s began to steal away or put out of business scores of Pomona retail shops, leaving a withered downtown. The city is plagued with one of the highest unemployment rates in the county--11.6% in July, the most recent month for which statistics are available.

But the fair puts Pomona on the map and dollars in local businesses’ cash registers and city coffers--as it was meant to since its beginning.

Last year the city collected about $850,000--roughly 10% of the city’s general fund--in sales taxes and fees from the nonprofit Los Angeles County Fair Assn. The association manages the county fair and other activities at the 500-acre Fairplex.

This year the fair had already drawn more than 1 million visitors midway through last week. Fair officials expected attendance to exceed last year’s total of 1.2 million.

The Fair Assn. employs 150 people year-round and 3,500 during the fair. In addition, exhibitors and concessionaires employ thousands more.

Back in 1921, when the county didn’t have a fair, Pomona fathers and businessmen got together to throw one to put the city in the spotlight. A year later the city purchased a 43-acre beet and barley field for the event. It was a success, drawing about 50,000 visitors and packing hotels in downtown Pomona.

Pomona long ago gave up its financial stake in the fairgrounds, now owned by the county and leased by the Los Angeles County Fair Assn. But the city depends on the fair to provide a monthlong shot in the arm to the local economy.

“It’s something on everybody’s calendar,” said fair vendor O’Neil Leon, a Pomona resident who owns Mamadou’s Village, a Rasta apparel shop in the city.

In an effort to bring more people and tax revenue into the city, Pomona contributed $2.5 million to the cost of the new 247-room Sheraton Suites Fairplex Hotel, which is owned by the fair association and opened last summer. The city has pledged the occupancy tax generated by the hotel to the fair association for up to 10 years to help the group repay $17 million in construction debt.

The average occupancy rate through August was running about 45%--far less than the roughly 65% that hotel managers say will put them in the black. But the hotel was packed on weekends during the fair and within a couple of years the city hopes to be able to keep the occupancy tax, which amounted to about $235,000 during the hotel’s first year of operation.

Fair officials say the hotel has helped draw more convention- and trade show-goers to Fairplex. Such non-fair, year-round events have been growing steadily over the past 10 years at the Fairplex, situated right off the San Bernardino Freeway (10) in the northern portion of the city. In turn, the annual influx of Fairplex visitors supports local businesses, from restaurants to service stations.

But more than the money, Pomona is counting on the fair’s positive image to rub off on the city.

“The county fair is probably one of the most important things for identifying Pomona. The first thing that comes to mind for people when they hear ‘Pomona’ is, ‘Hey, that’s where the Los Angeles County Fair is,’ ” said Mayor Eddie Cortez.

“No other single event has this kind of positive impact on Pomona,” said Councilman Willie E. White. “That one-month event determines how people see Pomona and brings us statewide attention. You can’t put a financial value on that.”