County Fair Isn’t, Food Vendors Say

A longtime concessionaire at the Los Angeles County Fair claims his family was ousted from the grounds this year and seven of their food stands were bulldozed by fair personnel in a dispute related to plans for a new $100-million shopping and entertainment center at the fairgrounds in Pomona.

Mitchell Fuerst, whose family operated food concessions at the fair for 18 years, claims the family has lost millions of dollars’ worth of property and business. Fuerst’s lawyer, Mitchell Shapiro of Foley & Lardner, said he will file suit this week seeking damages from the fair.

The dispute centers on the ownership of seven food stands that fair officials ordered razed in August after Fuerst’s family and fair officials could not agree on who owned them. The stands included Marsha’s Chicken, the Spaghetti Pot and the Lucky Cuss Saloon, which Fuerst described as among the most popular of the perennial food booths at the fair.

This year’s fair is now open, running through Sept. 26

Fuerst said that as a condition of being allowed to operate the food booths this year, he and his family were told they were told to sign an agreement stating that the booths were owned by the Los Angeles County Fair Assn., which owns and operates the 487-acre Fairplex complex where the fair is held.

No such agreement had been required in years past, Fuerst said, but fair officials want to clear off many of the old booths after this year’s event to make way for the Fairplex Village development.

Fair spokesman Sid Robinson said the Fuersts’ food stands were not removed with the intention of ousting the family from the fair.

” There’s no question we’re contemplating a development that could cause those stands to come down anyway in the future, but we’re not certain when that time is going to come, and that project has not been approved,” Robinson said.

He added that many vendor stands have been torn down over the years as the fair has evolved. In this case, he said, fair officials disagreed with vendors about the ownership of the food booths and contend that the Fuersts “decided not to be a part of the fair” when they refused to sign the agreement.

Fair officials believe the fair owned the buildings, Robinson said, but Fuerst says his family, which operated the stands through a West Covina-based company called Meet Me at the Fair, has bills of sale showing it owned the stands, which he says the family bought from previous fair vendors.

Fuerst and fair officials also differ on some of the circumstances surrounding the razing of the structures.

Robinson said officials ordered the booths razed because they were old and needed renovations and new equipment because the Fuersts had removed their equipment from the stands.

“After they removed their equipment, it was more cost-effective for us to take those stands down than to replace all of the equipment and refurbish those outdated buildings,” Robinson said.

Fuerst, however, said demolition of the stands was already underway before he and his family rushed in to save most of their equipment from the wrecking crews.

The family has invested heavily in stoves, refrigerators and other food-preparation equipment that remained at the stands throughout the year to be used during the 18 days of the fair, he said.

Besides destroying the food booths, Fuerst said, the fair’s actions ended a business of nearly 20 years in which 11 members of the Fuerst family have worked. The business, which employed about 200 temporary workers during the fair, was started by his parents, Mike and Marsha Fuerst.

Although it was a seasonal business, “the fair stands have a tremendous following” from fairgoers spanning generations, Fuerst said. He said the Marsha’s Chicken stand had operated for 40 years, long before his family purchased it.

The Fuersts’ concession company was the second-largest food provider at the fairgrounds, according to a 1996 Times article, selling tens of thousands of pounds of chicken and so many funnel cakes each year that it used 17,000 pounds of cake mix. The business generated about $1 million in revenue for the 18-day run of the fair, according to Fuerst, who said the fair received 24% of the family’s gross food sales and 34% of beer sales.

The Fuerst family started 19 years ago with one stand and had expanded to 14 booths by last year, Fuerst said. He said the seven stands that were not demolished include some permanent structures and mobile trailers that the Fuersts do not own.

Fuerst said the family was under the impression that the stands it claimed to own would be fenced off until the dispute was settled, and it had hoped to be allowed to operate the seven booths it did not own. But “the fair said it was all or nothing,” according to Fuerst.

Fairplex spokesman Robinson said officials “have enjoyed having vendors like” the Fuersts but believe the Fuersts did have a chance to operate at this year’s fair if they had signed the proposed agreement. Robinson said he did not know if the Fuersts would be invited back to future fairs.

Fuerst said the area where the structures were razed is destined to be part of Fairplex Village, the shopping and entertainment center for which the Los Angeles County Fair Assn. and Upland-based Lewis Retail Centers unveiled a proposed design in May.

The center was originally designed under the name Paradise Park but was redesigned extensively “to better meet the needs and tastes of the local community” as reflected in public hearings and community meetings, the developers said in the May announcement.

It described Fairplex Village as “a contemporary entertainment and retail center with the charm of a small-town village,” including a multiplex theater, restaurants, a 76,000-square-foot ice-skating rink and other entertainment space, and 227,000 square feet of retail space.

The project is undergoing an environmental impact review and permit-approval process with the city of Pomona. Developers hope to begin construction by June and complete the project by August 2001.