Kane fair has fresh look, but retains vintage feel

It has a cleaner look and feel these days, but how much can you tidy up pens holding cows, rabbits, sheep and goats? This is a county fair, after all.

There is no doubt that the Kane County Fair of 2010 is taking full advantage of the new exhibit halls, paved walkways and brick concourse that dominate the fairgrounds landscape.

But the sights, sounds and smells - and the gravel and hay near the 4-H animal exhibits - remain vintage county fair, possibly no different from when a quiet country road in St. Charles called Randall Road became the home base for the county fair a few years after the fair board bought that land in 1952.

The 142nd version of the Kane County Fair kicked off Wednesday with fair board members and community dignitaries gathering for the traditional opening ceremony.

The ceremony took place in front of the 36,000-square-foot Prairie Events Center, a setting that illustrated how much this historic county event has grown and how, through a few twists of local politics, it was able to stay in its St. Charles home.

Current fair board members weren't involved in yesteryear's fairs, though most know where its roots were set - starting in open park land in 1868 in Elgin, moving to the Aurora Downs racetrack site in the early 1900s and then finding a home in Elgin's Wing Park through the mid 1900s before taking up shop in St. Charles.

"Randall Road was a very bad two-lane country road, mostly gravel," said fair board President Larry Breon, whose first year with the fair as a 4-H member was when it debuted in St. Charles in the late 1950s. "There was nothing around us but cornfields; it was not the end of the world, but you could see it from here."

What most fair board members and St. Charles city officials did see in the years to come was a new world, one of heavy retail development and a need for a west gateway to the city that equated to tax dollars.

And the Kane County Fairgrounds was right in the way of that progress.

Fairgrounds politics

Breon said when the county forest preserve got into the act by introducing the possibility of a minor-league baseball team to be called the Kane County Cougars could find its home on land just to the north of the fairgrounds, his board members began looking for a new home.

Thus began a period in the mid- to late-1980s in which the politics of the fairgrounds manifested itself in various layers - the negotiations for other nearby land parcels held by owner Ray Miller, whose land the fair board originally purchased for the St. Charles site; bickering with the city and the nearby then-Montgomery Ward store over parking space for fairgoers; the cost of moving the fairgrounds west; and the potential for the fairgrounds and county fair to eventually be a moneymaker for St. Charles.

Chris Unger, executive manager of the fairgrounds, started his first year on the job in 1984 by showing area community groups and civic leaders an artist's rendition of a potential new fairgrounds to be located on Route 47 and Beith Road in the Elburn/Lily Lake area.

The fair board purchased nearly 500 acres on that property with the intent of possibly moving the fairgrounds.

"By 1989 or so, we had decided we were not going to do that, and other things started to fall into place," Unger said.

Some of those other things came in the form of then-St. Charles Mayor Fred Norris proposing a 10 percent sales tax on admission tickets at all fairgrounds events as a way to silence city council opposition to the fairgrounds.

"I went to Great America in Gurnee one day, and saw on my ticket that there was a 10 percent admissions tax that went to the city of Gurnee, and I figured why couldn't we do that at the fairgrounds?" Norris said.

Fair board member Bob Hoge felt it was an excellent trade-off.

"I wasn't a proponent of the move anyway once we realized how much it was going to cost us to put in traffic lights, entryways and other infrastructure out west," Hoge said. "In return for the tax, we got the police and fire support we needed."

When the tax issue was resolved and the Cougars found a home in Geneva, the fair board approached Miller about his extra land, which had become restrictive for retail or commercial developers because of fees and infrastructure costs. For the fair board, however, it represented land that would be used only for parking cars, which had been a major stickling point in previous talks with the city.

The fair board owned the land currently occupied by Meijer at the corner of Route 38 and Randall Road and left it open for parking for the fair and flea markets, using a pedestrian walkway across Route 38.

"When Miller's land became available to us, we were able to sell our other land directly to Meijer for development," Breon said.

The extra 100 acres purchased from Miller before his death now serves as the fairgrounds' main parking area, with access off Route 38, Route 64 or Oak Street. Fair or flea market patrons no longer enter off Randall Road. It allowed the fair board to keep its purchased land in the Elburn area, which is now rented to farmers and used for Illinois Extension services work and the Corn Growers Association.

An updated look

It has all resulted in a modern setting at the fairgrounds with new buildings sitting amid the original fairground structures and pole buildings for animal and 4-H exhibits.

That setting was part of a vision that also helped the fair board lean toward staying in St. Charles.

"You have to remember," Norris said, "that the fairgrounds was becoming a place for events 52 weeks of the year, and I think there was a fear that if they moved west, some of those events wouldn't go with them."

Breon echoes the same feeling.

"The city realized that the fairgrounds could be an economic presence," said Breon, who has been on the board 35 years, the past 15 as president. "As it grew, it has become even more significant in that role."

Though it has a different feel than the past county fairs, there is no denying the key things - like the smell of onion rings, Elephant Ears, corn dogs and Italian sausage; the major events at the spacious grandstand; and sounds of kids in sheer joy on the Midway rides - may never change.