Changes at Fairplex go beyond the loss of horse racing

A nightclub is being added and The Farm at Fairplex is being enlarged. Also, the racetrack’s infield will be used to accommodate more vendors and rides, a move Fairplex officials hope will bring more people into the park.

Fairplex in Pomona will have a new look when the Los Angeles County Fair starts its one-month run Aug. 30.

By far the biggest changes will be at Fairplex Park, the thoroughbred horse racing venue that will no longer host horse races.

Last month, the California Horse Racing Board approved the transfer of the annual 11-day county fair race meeting from Fairplex Park to Los Alamitos Race Course in Orange County.

That means Fairplex now has space for more rides and vendors, and Fairplex officials intend to use as much of it as they can, said Michael Chee, Fairplex’s director or marketing, community and public relations.

Fairplex Park, with its grandstand that seats 10,000, will still serve as the fair’s primary entertainment venue, but the track and infield – about 19.5 acres – will be filled with more of the attractions found in the Fun Zone and along the fair’s main thoroughfare, Chee said.

In effect, the largest annual county fair in North America – about 1.5 million people pass through its gates ever year – is undergoing an expansion of more than 850,000 square feet, and Fairplex officials have less than 60 days to bring it together.

“We make some changes every year, but not nearly as many as we’re making this year,” Chee said during a walking tour of Fairplex Park, located on the east side of Fairplex. “It’s going to be a very different look, with a lot of reconfiguring, and not only because we won’t have horse racing. It’s going to be a repackaged Los Angeles County Fair in 2014.”

The number of new vendors, rides and other attractions that will be added to this year’s fair has not been determined, and the cost of the changes hasn’t been worked out. Also, there are no plans to get rid of the racetrack, which will still be used to train horses, and grandstand.

“It’s going to stay our main entertainment venue,” Chee said of Fairplex Park. “Among other things we know how to stage shows there.”

To drive home the point that Fairplex Park is no longer a horse racing venue, fair patrons that enter this year through the McKinley Avenue gate will be directed toward the former race track.

Once they arrive there, an old-fashioned, beach-style boardwalk will allow them to cross the infield, where rides and vendors will have replaced horses and jockeys as the main attraction.

“It will be a great entrance, and the boardwalk is going to allow people to move back and forth across the infield,” Chee said.

Horse racing has been part of the county fair since the fair started in 1922, but attendance has dropped in recent years and the races failed to produce enough revenue. Fairplex officials have long believed the race track could be put to better use.

In April Fairplex officials told the horse racing board that Los Alamitos, which has more modern facilities and recently installed a one-mile track, is now better equipped to host the races.

“If you’re going to be in a major league market you have to play at a major league level,” James Henwood, president and chief executive officer of the Los Angeles County Fair Association, told the board. “Fairplex [Park] does not provide all of the things that people want to experience when they go to the race track.”

Moving the races is the best way for Fairplex to help grow thoroughbred horse racing in Southern California, even though it means moving them to Orange County, Henwood told the board.

Henwood said there are no plans to tear down Fairplex Park, and that the 5/8 of a mile racetrack will still be used to train horses. Also, Los Alamitos will hold the 11-day Los Angeles County Fair race meeting during the fair.

There’s been little negative reaction to the decision to drop horse racing, Chee said.

“We’ve gotten a few calls, but it’s been negligible, less than one half one percent,” Chee said. “The story has been all over the regular media, and social media, so people know it’s happened. We don’t expect anyone to find out, when they show up at the fair for the first time this year, that we don’t have horse racing anymore.”

One vendor said he hopes the extra vendors and other attractions will bring more people into this year’s fair.

“About 50 percent of the people who go to the fair say their highest priority is to shop, so that any extra people would be a big help,” said Israel Torres, owner of Ride With Us, a skateboard manufacturing company in Costa Mesa.

Torres, who will have a vendor’s boot at the fair for the first time this year, said he decided to rent the space to get his Orange County business better known in Los Angeles County.

“Since it’s my first fair I can’t say what affect not having horse racing will have,” Torres said. “But I do like the idea of having more vendors.”

The absence of horse racing isn’t the only change at Fairplex this year.

Immediately south of the racetrack, in a former exhibition hall, Fairplex is building Grinding Gears nightclub, which is expected to be ready by the start of the fair. Also, The Farm at Fairplex, a one-acre urban farm next to White Avenue and just north of Fairplex Park, is being expanded to five acres.

The Urban Farm, which hosts outdoor small to medium-sized dinners and other events year-round, was started as an educational enterprise to show people how to grow their own fruits and vegetables.

“This doesn’t have anything to do with horse racing going away,” Chee said. “It’s about the fair getting back to its roots, which is agriculture.”