Grand Island eager to land State Fair

Grand Island is moving toward an agreement to host the Nebraska State Fair, but that movement could stall without a little more monetary grease, a leader in the effort says. Cindy Johnson, president of the Grand Island Chamber of Commerce, said the State Fair Board has asked her and other Grand Island officials to reduce the estimated $45 million cost of relocating the fair from Lincoln.

The Grand Island group hopes to present a lower cost estimate to the Legislature’s Agriculture Committee this week, Johnson said Wednesday. She and others involved in the negotiations also said that increased private donations could smooth the path for moving the State Fair. Meanwhile, Tonn Ostergard, one of the leaders of the Lincoln business organization called the 2015 Vision group, said it seems possible that Lincoln may get one victory — UNL’s proposed Innovation Campus, which university leaders say will eventually hold 17 research buildings, solve the university’s space crunch and help rev up Nebraska’s economy. “It’s really important that everybody know we have worked very, very hard to present a viable option for the fair (in Lincoln),”

Ostergard said. “But at some point it gets difficult to fit a square peg into a round hole.” Sen. Phil Erdman of Bayard, chairman of the Agriculture Committee, said no decisions on the fair’s future had been made. All three of the remaining options — move the State Fair to Grand Island, move it elsewhere in Lincoln, or leave the fair where it now is — are still possible. “No option is dead,” he said.