Marty Svrcek, executive director of the Montgomery County Agricultural Center Inc., which operates the county fair, told The Examiner on Tuesday that the fair is being hit with steeper prices from all sides.
“We are trying to ensure the long-term future of the fair,” Svrcek said. “Water prices are going up, gas and sewer prices are going up and it all trickles back to make it tough to maintain a balanced budget.”
Fair coordinators, who announced in March they are considering selling the fairgrounds, say a potential move is still five to eight years away and their hope is to keep the fair at its current Gaithersburg location, but financial pressures are mounting.
So far the only potential new location Svrcek acknowledges is the roughly 80-acre Linthicum Farm in Boyds. The current fairgrounds are only about 60 acres, and Svrcek says the relatively small size has affected the Agricultural Center’s ability to attract some events.
“We are the Agricultural Center, and our objective is to focus more on agriculture,” Svrcek said. “We want a world-class venue. We were a candidate to have the National Dairy Goat Show in 2006, but we weren’t big enough and it went elsewhere.”
The aging facilities all need repairs, Svrcek said, but it is tough to find the money to do so because the fair itself has only been profitable in four of its past 11 years.
The tight economy has fair vendors nervous about the future as well.
Lawrence Wensil and his wife own three funnel cake stands that they tow to fairs from Mississippi to New York.
He says the prices of the diesel fuel they use to tow their stands and the flour they use to make the cakes have both nearly doubled.
“You try to drive less, use smaller trucks to haul,” Wensil said.
Both Svrcek and Wensil say there is a silver lining to the country’s economic woes: People are less likely to travel and more inclined to seek cheap, close fun at their local fair.
“When they’ve got nothing to do it makes them more likely to head on down to the fair,” Wensil said.
