Los Angeles Daily News
March 19 2005

Fair planners hope Latinos, Armenians attend

By Rachel Uranga, Staff Writer

The San Fernando Valley Fair will add more exhibits and animal shows
and reach out to the Armenian and Latino communities to boost
attendance at this summer’s event, organizers say.
Last year’s attendance of 28,750 was up from 23,000 in 2003, but it
fell far short of the 50,000 peak reached in the 1990s.

“We have to reinvent ourselves,” said David Honda, president of the
San Fernando Fair Board, an appointed state board that runs the
annual event. “We have a huge market for the fair in the San Fernando
Valley but we have not been able to draw from it.”

The 59th annual fair is slated to run June 9-12 at the Hansen Dam
Sports Center.

Honda said there has been no major overhaul in operations. But
organizers are working to expand the number of exhibits and increase
attendance by at least 15 percent.

In 2003, the fair was held at Castaic Lake and attendance slipped.
The board brought it back to Hansen Dam last year and hired a
full-time executive director. In January, it secured a $10,000 lease
from the city to run the four-day fair at Hansen Dam through 2007.

But still, there is no permanent home, one reason fair board members
said it’s difficult to draw sponsorship and develop a following.

“We are really making a concentrated effort to bring in the whole
community,” said Catherine Garcia, the fair’s executive director.

This year, officials plan to advertise in Armenian newspapers and add
more Spanish-language radio stations spots to their marketing
campaign. Officials contacted dozens of schools and boys and girls
clubs left out in previous years.

Even local equestrian groups opposed to the fair board’s proposal to
permanently locate the fair at the Equestrian Center on the east side
of Hansen Dam are joining the fair for the first time with a vaquero
show.

“We wanted to bring horses and that part of our rural heritage to the
fair,” said Debra Baumann, executive director of the Tujunga
Watershed Council and Stakeholder who is organizing the vaquero show.

The board has also added more animal-themed exhibits such as a sea
lion splash show and “Tigers of India.”