(Spencer)– Clay County Fair General Manager and CEO Jeremy Parsons says trying to come up with options to still hold the Clay County Fair during a pandemic were constantly being discussed all the way up until Thursday’s formal announcement this year’s event won’t be held. He says what the fair would have looked like is something that would have spooked a lot of people…
“It just would not have been the same. It would have been a fair without many of your favorites. It would have been half capacity at the free entertainment tents and you guys know those are always stage, you know, standing room only. It would have been half empty exhibit buildings to spread out, you know, for social distancing. It would have been moving some grandstand ticket buyers. It would have been restricting people going into the indoor arena to watch the 4-H Steer Show. All of those things would have just created an event that would not be the world’s greatest county fair. And when you can’t keep people safe and when you can’t live up to your reputation, you really have to think hard about why are we doing this. I mean that’s really what it boils down to.”
Parsons says it also would have posed some real challenges for the grandstand concerts…
“If you follow the world a little bigger you know there were a couple of country concerts throughout the United States recently and there was a huge backlash because of lots of people standing together, stage front standing. Those were some of the modifications we looked at. In order to property social distance the grandstand, 477 of our grandstand ticket buyers who had purchased reserved seats that they wanted, we were going to have to move to some other seat to socially distance.”
Parsons says that would have resulted in a public relations nightmare…
“Obviously, you know, there’s a P R concern with that, you bought the seat but sorry we’re going to move you, somewhere else to keep everybody separated, so. We had pretty, we had a plan in place. We had great conversations through the whole process with Clay County Public Health and our local authorities. But again what it came down to is the plan we would have to put on the Fair would be an event that none of you would recognize.”
Parsons says all of the grandstand acts were still on to perform yet as of Thursday but he says they were starting to hear some concerns.
