It may be the next chapter in the Orange County Fairgrounds’ years-long teeter between an agricultural town square and commercial event center.
While OC Fair officials look to boost parking lot revenue — along with other revenue sources — to help fund a $25 million expansion of their administration building, local horse riders boarded at the fairgrounds equestrian center wonder whether their facility might be sacrificed for car space.
Fairgrounds officials have been running the stables at a net revenue loss since taking over its operations from an outside contractor at the start of this year, saying it’s cost them more to run the place than it makes them money – something critics and fair officials warn could be an improper gift of state funds.
While organizations like OC Vaulting run low-cost programs out of the facility, which is open to the public for visits, it exists for private horse boarders and trainers.
Equestrians say the facility was doing better, financially, under the old contractor. Now OC Fair Board Directors are looking for a new contractor to take the facility’s operational reins and bridge the revenue gap.
But in their public messaging, fair officials are already planning for the scenario that they don’t find a good fit – a scenario which they say will shutter the facility by March 31, 2024.
Another Battle for Equestrian Center
The prospect has local equestrians – who were part of the landmark effort to stop the fairgrounds’ attempted sale and privatization in 2010 – questioning, at times through tears, whether fairgrounds staff have a predetermined goal to push them out.
And whether fairgrounds staff are trying to shut them out of the conversation.
A Nov. 16 Fair Board meeting put the tension on full display.
“We email board members, and we don’t get a reply. We get promises of workshops. Doesn’t happen,” said Gibran Stout, of the Equestrian Coalition of Orange County. She is also the founder of OC Vaulting, which runs $55 classes out of the facility for youth with no prior experience required. “We ask to come to committee meetings. And we’re told ‘No.’”
Their concerns are now being amplified by an Orange County Supervisor.
“I fear this item is simply the latest effort to strip away a critical public amenity of the fairgrounds,” wrote Supervisor Katrina Foley in a letter to board members, which a staff member at her office read aloud at the Nov. 16 meeting.
In a phone interview later that day, Foley said the fairgrounds property in general isn’t all that accessible for gatherings and events among community groups and local schools, “because it’s so cost prohibitive – the more it gets privatized, the less the general OC community can afford to use it.”
“Believe me, we don’t need more parking lots,” Foley said.
That was an idea in 2009, when fair officials supported a study on turning the site into parking space.
Fair officials, however, are publicly rejecting the idea that their minds are set on scrapping the place.
In a recent update to their request for proposals, staff are now looking for a 10-year contract term with an independent operator – instead of five years, as originally laid out – and likewise, a 10-year option to renew.
At the Nov. 16 meeting, Fairgrounds CEO Michele Richards said “potential bidders would have 77 days to respond to submit their proposals.”
Yet fairgrounds staff have refused to disclose the contents of the request for proposals – even to the entire fair board – arguing the competitive nature of such contract bids puts a high level of scrutiny over who has access to the information and when.
They’re even refusing to disclose the name of a consultant they’re working with to envision the deliverables of the equestrian center’s next contract.
“Everything this board and staff has done is to avoid any accusation or claim that somehow documents are being drafted to benefit a particular operator or vendor,” said Josh Caplan, the fairgrounds’ legal counsel from the Office of the Attorney General, at this month’s meeting.
He also told board members that as stewards of the fairgrounds, “you’re effectively prohibited from giving anything out – giving out public dollars for this facility, for free.”
Grappling With Revenue Loss
As of Oct. 31, the fairgrounds saw year-to-date losses from running the center totaling $838,476, said fairgrounds spokesperson Terry Moore in an emailed response to questions on Nov. 15.
The projected year-end deficit, Moore added, was approximately $1 million.
Historically, boarding rates at the equestrian center have been raised annually, Moore said. Most recently, they were raised 10% in June.
One fairgrounds watchdog who also fought the property’s privatization more than a decade ago, Reggie Mundeckis, and other board members have questioned whether the fairgrounds’ support of the equestrian center is a gift of public funds.
“We are dealing with a business segment which is stagnant at best and most likely in decline,” Mundeckis said in public comments.
Ultimately, Caplan told board members that it’s up to them to determine “what is the value that’s being received if they are giving out public money.”
Namely, he said, whether the equestrian center provides the fairgrounds with a nonmonetary value – a “goodwill” toward or “benefit” for members of the community.
Equestrians that morning acknowledged that people can’t simply walk in and hop on a horse.
“The same way you can’t jump in a pool without swimming lessons,” Stout later said in a phone interview – but argued that there are still ideas out there for enhancing public programming, like a partnership with the fairgrounds’ Heroes Hall for equine therapy for veterans, which could be helped along by government grants.
They also argued that fairgrounds staff share responsibility for making the facility a greater public asset, as directed by the fairgrounds’ own 2022 strategic plan, which envisioned the facility to “to ensure greater [equestrian center] access to a broader group of constituents throughout Orange County.”
In response to questions about this, OC Fairgrounds spokesperson Terry Moore said, “The Strategic Plan was developed prior to [the fairgrounds] taking over operations of the Equestrian Center and understanding what the capabilities are for public programming.”
“The [Equestrian Center] section of the Strategic Plan includes many initiatives from the Board that have been completed, including … [determining] a true operational performance,” Moore said. “Staff has completed that assessment but cannot move forward with public programming until the Board makes a final determination on the path forward for the EQC.”
Board Director Doug LaBelle said he and his colleagues “want this process to be successful.”
“We’re going through it to resolve some significant concerns we have and we want it to work,” he added.
Board Director Nick Kovacevich rejected the notion that board members’ minds are already set on the facility’s fate.
“Along the way, obviously, we realized that we weren’t going to be able to get profitability. And we were coming up against this gift of public funds issue. And so, at that point, did we just scrap everything? No, we pivoted again to try to find a solution. So I think we’ve been consistently showing that,” he said.
Kovacevich added:
“Nobody’s forgotten about the Equestrian Center. If anything, it has been the one thing we’ve been addressing most here.”
In response to equestrians’ comments that morning, Board Director Tanya Bilezikjian asked whether it was possible to hold another public workshop ahead of releasing the request for proposals.
“I do think it’s interesting that there hasn’t been a lot of open public discussion,” she said.
It was an idea that Kovacevich and CEO Richards shot down, saying they already held two “listening sessions” with equestrians over the summer and that some comments they heard came from equestrians outside of Orange County.
In response, Stout told Voice of OC that equestrians were limited in what they could talk about at those meetings – and that they were told there would be more.
“We all want the same thing, don’t we?” Stout said during public comments. “Why can’t we have a conversation?