By Jeremy Peppas
Stephens Media
NORTH LITTLE ROCK — Arkansas State Fair officials opened 15 proposals representing 19 different sites in four Central Arkansas counties to relocate the annual autumn amusements and livestock show.
Little Rock also offered a plan to keep the State Fair and renovate the site on Roosevelt Road that the fair has occupied for 61 years.
Fair officials say lack of room to grow and poor access to the current site are behind their search for alternatives.
The proposals opened today ranged from a simple binder and map to a box full of thick binders with comprehensive renderings of what the site would look like when complete.
Five of the proposals represent locations south of the Arkansas River in Little Rock and Saline County. The 15 other locations are north of the river, including seven in North Little Rock or in its zoning jurisdiction and one site each in rural Pulaski County near the Lonoke County line, Cabot, Carlisle, Conway, Jacksonville and Lonoke. The remaining two locations are in Maumelle.
Seven of the sites are clustered near the Interstate 40 and I-440 interchange on the eastern edge the North Little Rock city limits.
“I would say it was the flat terrain where you see that grouping is the main thing,” said Basil Shoptaw, a civil engineer with Thomas Engineering who opened the bids. “That and Interstate 40 goes through there.”
Ralph Shoptaw, a distant relative of the civil engineer and general manager of the Arkansas State Fair Association, said a study commissioned by the city of Little Rock that put a $57 million price tag on renovations to the fair’s current location prompted officials to consider options.
He noted that although the current location sits on 149 acres, 52 acres are unusable because of soil conditions and railroad tracks running through the grounds.
“We looked at state fairs around the country,” Ralph Shoptaw said. “The average size of the state fair is 360 acres.”
Of the 19 proposed new sites, the smallest is 300 acres in Saline County and the largest are two 2,000 acre tracts in Carlisle and Saline County.
The goal for a new site, the fair manager said, is to have at least 350 acres within site of an interstate or four-lane highway and be no more than 35 miles from the current location.
Regardless of the association’s decision, modernizing the State Fair is going to be expensive, Ralph Shoptaw said.
“We will have to determine if it is feasible, if we can pay for it, if we can raise the funds to renovate what we have or move,” he said.
He said financing would come from a combination of sources, from government loans to a bond issue to private fundraising.
