Next Year’s Fair to Be 2 Days Shorter

Organizers of the Ventura County Fair have shortened next summer’s fair to 10 days, citing scheduling conflicts with other big events around the state.

The 2000 fair will be held Aug. 4-13, two days shy of the traditional 12-day schedule.

Organizers have not determined whether 10 days will become the standard length for future fairs.

The annual event is customarily sandwiched between two fairs that share many of the same concessionaires: the Orange County Fair and Cal Expo in Sacramento.

But because of the way the 2000 calendar shapes up, vendors would be too inconvenienced if Ventura County’s fair held its traditional opener on the first Wednesday in August, organizers said.

Vendors generally need about five days between events to travel and set up at the next location.

With the significantly larger Orange County Fair ending the previous Sunday, some concessionaires would have skipped the Ventura County Fair had it not been pushed back to Friday, said Ed Barlow, deputy general manager of Seaside Park, site of the fairgrounds.

Orange County typically draws more than 700,000 people to its 18-day event, while Ventura County averages about 300,000 visitors.

Organizers of the local event could not make it up on the other end, because the expo in Sacramento, which attracts about 1.6 million people, is scheduled to start Aug. 18.

“The calendar preempted our flexibility with our concessionaires,” Barlow said.

Fair organizers are not anticipating an overall drop in attendance, because for several years the number of visitors on the first Wednesday and Thursday of the fair has been declining.

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Attendance figures for each of the last two years were more than 30% lower than in 1997, Barlow said.

Members of the military and their families were traditionally offered free admission on the first Thursday, but Barlow anticipates that organizers will reschedule Military Appreciation Day for the following week.

“I imagine we’ll do it,” he said. “It would be kind of silly to not do it.”