May 6 Fair Board Meeting Report
Just posting a quick update on the Fair Board meeting that was held earlier today. The main topic was the presentation of the preliminary report by Rod Markin, the consultant hired by the Fair Board to figure out what to do with the fairgrounds.
The report today dealt with the State Fair itself, and the viability of it. In a nutshell, the Fair Board has three options: do nothing, disband the fair, or “reinvent” the fair.
Since this report was about the State Fair itself, and not the future use of the property, the future of the race track didn’t come up. Markin did say that at the May 28 meeting that would be discussed. One item he mentioned was that any future lease would need to exceed the current one. The current lease arrangement only gets the Fair Board $115 a day for the speedway. The new leaseholder (if any) would need to be financially sound and look at options other than NASCAR for a sanctioning body.
The Tennessean apparently got a leaked version of the report and did a story on it.
I hope to have an electronic version of the report sometime soon. When I get that, I’ll post it here.
UPDATE: One thing I forgot to mention when I posted this earlier is that there is still no lease in force for 2009 for the track. Metro’s legal department is still going over the lease extension.
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