County fair making few changes when opening next week

There will be some changes at the Shawano County Fair in light of the coronavirus pandemic, but officials believe they’ll be subtle enough that the average fair patron shouldn’t notice many of them.

The fair is one of only three in northeast Wisconsin that is still going on, the other two being Brown and Marinette. Brad Luepke, the fair’s marketing coordinator, said about 60% of the people he has communicated with felt it was important that the fair not be delayed or canceled.

“As fairs closed down, we weighed all our options and felt the timeframe was one where we could put it on in a fairly safe manner,” Luepke said about the Shawano County Agricultural Society, which manages the fairgrounds. “For the ag society — we’re not a nonprofit; we’re a company — we have the (Shawano Speedway) races, obviously, but to keep the lights on, so to speak, the fair is key to having success for the year. With that being said, safety was our No. 1 concern.”

The decision was made after multiple conversations with leaders in agriculture, carnivals and the community in general, according to Luepke.

The subtlest difference will be youth presentations and exhibits. Luepke noted that the 4-H has been shut down because the state is not allowing the organizations to participate in large group activities like county fairs. The fair has offered to showcase children’s animals and creative endeavors through a junior fair.

“The biggest thing we had on our mind was these kids work on their projects all year. They work with their animals all year, and we wanted to give them at least an opportunity to show.” Luepke said.

Fair exhibits are being limited to 25, Luepke added, pointing out that some youth enter many more exhibits between animals, crafts and more.

He noted that canceling the fair would have been a life lesson for the children, who have always depended on the fair to sell their animals and make some money from the hours spent feeding, watering and caring for them. They would realize that, like adults, they would have to figure out contingencies to accomplish their goals if the fair was not active in 2020.

All of the auctions — including the main livestock auction held on Friday night, the cake auction and the small animal auction — will be going virtual this year. Television screens will be going up at the Crawford Center, according to Luepke, and the exhibitors will be shown with their animals for bidders to view. The cakes will still appear in person for those wishing to bid.

“It’s a bigger space. We can open up all the garage doors, and we can get everybody all spread out,” Luepke said. “We’re lucky. Not many fairs have a building like the Crawford Center that are available to them. So rain or shine, we’ll have (the auctions).”

A more noticeable difference for the fair will be more than a dozen sanitizing stations at various locations to keep germs at bay, Luepke said. Also, areas like the President’s Park, where polka bands perform, will be opened up instead of enclosed to stave off the spread of the coronavirus, he said. Additionally, there will be fair volunteers whose only job will be to walk through the fairgrounds and sanitize surfaces as often as posible.

“It’s been a process, and I think everybody’s learning every day,” Luepke said. “We’re coming up with different things every day that could arise or that we didn’t think of.”

There will still be plenty of food stands, but some of the stands operated by nonprofits will remain shuttered. Luepke said the Bonduel Fire Department and other groups were concerned about the health of their volunteers working the stand and are opting not to open, even though the fair stands tend to be the biggest annual moneymaker for some of these groups.

The midway will still have rides as always, but there are fewer of them coming this year, according to Luepke, with 20 expected instead of the 29 that filled the fairgrounds in 2019.

One activity that will not be taking place at the fair are the Bingo games, usually held in a tent near the midway. Luepke said there were concerns about cards being passed and being in close proximity for an extended period of time that prompted the fair board to take that out of the lineup.

“By state law, we can only have two Bingo sessions per day,” Luepke said. “We can’t have a Bingo game, close down, sanitize, have another Bingo game, close down, sanitize. That became an issue.”

There was also the concern that many of the volunteers running the Bingo games are older, and with the coronavirus putting older people in a vulnerable state, the risk was too rich for the fair board, according to Luepke.

The old-fashioned mixed drinks contest, which was started recently, will also not be taking place this year, Luepke said. The cornhole tournament is also not taking place, and St. James Lutheran Church will not be holding its regular fair service on Sunday, although the polka Catholic Mass is still on.

“It’s all trying to put safety ahead of everything,” Luepke said regarding the canceled events.

There will be plenty of other things that remain, however. Fireworks will still go off on Thursday night, and the demolition derby will continue to cause destruction during the holiday weekend. The hours will remain the same, although the fair is allowing commercial and individual exhibitors to take down their works and stands earlier on Labor Day in the hopes of preventing crowded exits as participants prepare to depart.

“This is a great year to learn, to maybe find things that we could have done in the past but never done,” Luepke said. “Maybe we’ll think … ‘We need to do this every year, because it went just so much smoother.’”

There have been concerns by local school districts and tribes that holding the fair will result in a flare-up of positive cases in their communities. Luepke pointed out that the fair is being held for those who really want to see it, and those who are worried should not feel obligated to attend.

“To those folks, I say ‘Stay home,’” Luepke said. “I don’t want this to be an uncomfortable experience for anybody.”

lpulaski@newmedia-wi.com