Construction to start in January

 

ROME TOWNSHIP — A new barn in a new location will greet next summer’s visitors to the Lawrence County Junior 4-H Fair.

Monday night the county fair board accepted the bid from Steel Structure out of Canton for $390,000 to erect a new livestock barn and arena.

A month ago the fair board opened bids from the three out-of-county companies who offered estimates. However, all three were $200,000 more than the amount the fair board had planned on spending.

The board wanted to spend only $400,000 for both structures and had collected pledges to cover that estimate.

“We took off some of the fancy roofline, changed the roofline a little bit,” Freddie Hayes, fair board president, said. “And we cut the building back 20 feet.”

Now the barn and arena together will be 80 by 280 feet with the arena at 40 by 40 feet.

“It will be twice the size of the old barn,” Hayes said. “We will have a lot more room to separate the animals.”

The fair board also voted to move the location of the new structure to the end field, near the site of the former horse barns, closer to Fairland Middle School. The site of the current barn, which was razed last month by Rolo Construction and Excavating, will be part of an expanded location for the amusement park rides.

“We are going to clear it back off and sow it down and hope to turn it into a Kiddyland,” Hayes said. “We have changed the (amusement rides) company and will have all brand new rides. We had a lot of complaints on our rides. We wanted to update our rides. The rides have been a little rough. People didn’t like for the kids to ride.”

The new distributor provides rides for the Scioto County Fair.

“His are all brand new and are state of the art,” he said.

In September the Lawrence County Commissioners agreed to issue a 10-year bond for $400,000, acting as the fiscal agent for the fair board.

Construction is expected to begin by mid to late January with completion date to be this spring, Hayes said.