The difference in cost between building an "ideal" Fair somewhere else and sprucing up the existing facilities is about $144 million, according to the latest consultant report. I suspect the $175 million figure for a new Fairgrounds and the $31 million figure for a refurbished Fairgrounds are too high and too low, respectively. Even still, there's every reason to believe the gap is at least, say, $80 million, and quite likely more.
I'm not surprised that the 2015 Vision folks aren't phased by any of this. They're thinking about benefits to the state far exceeding any of these costs. And good for them. They're thinking big. But how in the world are they going to convince the public to support their ideas to enough of a degree that key decision-makers who oppose their ideas change their minds? Selling their vision to Lincolnites isn't too big of a challenging. Selling it to folks in McCook, Chadron, and Norfolk, on the other hand, was just made much, much more difficult.
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Moving the State Fair and building a small research park would be a very expensive venture for something we’d soon outgrow. 251 acres isn’t big enough to fit the University’s needs for the next 15 or 20 years even. Then what happens?
I tell ya, they aren’t thinking big enough. The research park in NC that they were looking at is 1300 acres - way more than the fairgrounds. We should be looking for something at least half that size, say, 700 acres.
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