New roof adorns fair stage

FAIRMONT - For the first time since the new fair stage was put in in 2023, it will feature a large, tall red roof made to resemble the Martin County Fair's recognizable ticket booth.

Adding a roof to the stage was always the plan, with the stage itself being built with the eventual roof in mind. In addition to shielding from the rain and sun, Martin County Fair Board Vice President Steve Pomerenke said it also helps on labor.

"Now we don’t have to set up all the apparatus to hang the lights and the sound on that we have done for 25 years," he said. "It takes quite a bit of labor to do that, and now we don’t need to do that. Obviously it’s nice for the bands, the bands appreciate having a roof."

Initially, Pomerenke said they got inspiration from a roof used at the Elkhart County Fair in Goshen, Indiana.

However, he said the roof also follows the look of several areas of note on the fairgrounds.

"We’ve got food stands or other various things out at the fair that kind of have that same look," Pomerenke said. "The announcer stand for the outside riding arena looks like that too. There are various things if you drive around the fair that have that red with white trim look. We liked that and wanted it to blend in with that."

As for why now, Pomerenke said with the accumulation of donations, and the fair's endowment doing well in the stock market, the fair board was in a position to do it and knew they had to get it done when moving forward with the project was approved at the January fair board meeting.

"We’ve been sitting in limbo with this for the last three years," he said. "There are other projects we would like to work on, but we really couldn’t start anything else until this one got done. We just decided at the January meeting we really need to get this done."

Christensen Construction of Estherville was chosen by the fair board to complete the project. The roof construction and implementation took only around two months, from the beginning of June to Aug.1. By the time the Minnesota Youth Livestock Expo (MYLE) opened, the framework was placed.

"That’s when they had two cranes here, and they put all the framework," Pomerenke said. "All the truss and the framework got lifted in place at that time. It was a couple weeks after that that the crew did all the steel work, putting on all the sheets of steel to finish it off."

Of everyone on the fair board he has talked to, Pomerenke said they are really happy with the final results.

"They think it turned out really well," he said. "I can’t believe that [people] won’t be fairly impressed. I think it’s really a unique structure with the look that it has matching the ticket booths."

There have been some additional improvements to the fairgrounds since last year. One Pomerenke said is lesser-known is the outside riding area for horses.

"Fairmont Saddle Club has done a phenomenal job of redoing the outside riding arena," he said. "That’s definitely something people need to take a look at when they’re here for the fair. The saddle club always has their big horse show the Sunday before the fair starts. They’ve completely redone the outside riding arena, and that looks tremendous."

While this riding arena is generally not used heavily for the fair, Pomerenke said that with the changes and improvements made, it is set up so it can be used more during the fair in the future.

On top of this, smaller changes and improvements have also been made to the sheep and swine barns.

"We repainted the pens we’ve got in the sheep barn and got new fronts on the pens," Pomerenke said. "The sheep barn looks completely different than what it has in the past. Another project that is still being worked on at this point is putting a new scale in for the hogs in the back of the swine barn. We’re still working on the actual structural part of it, but it’ll be done in time for the fair, so the back of the swine barn is going to be new."

For the overall buildings and grounds, Pomerenke said having the MYLE helps to break the standard cleaning and preparation work up.

"A lot of the things that need to get done are done already for the MYLE," he said. "It's basically clean-up work. We’ll definitely be cleaning it up again, but it was done for the MYLE, so it’s not going to take quite as much to clean up now for the fair."

This doesn't take out all the hard work though. Pomerenke said one of the most labor-intensive things that needs to be done is putting the fans back in the cattle and swine barns.

"We always have to take the fans out because the fans hang down low enough that when we get campers, especially in the cattle barn, the fans would be in the way," he said. "We have to put the fans back up, and that takes some labor to get those fans put up."