The structure at the Teton County Fairgrounds that was remodeled as the temporary Station One for Jackson Hole Fire/EMS is currently used for storage. The fair board anticipates it will be the new home for 4-H activities and act as the Exhibit Hall year-round.
The interior of the Exhibit Hall was hand-built by volunteers, fairgrounds manager Rachel Grimes said. For many, the walls hold a lot of nostalgia.
Fairground manager Rachel Grimes points to the layout of a future partition in the new community center kitchen.
The Exhibit Hall is one of the only affordable public rental centers in town and essential for the 4-H program. 4-H will have room to expand in the new facility. The fee structure for the newer, bigger community center is not set, but the public can comment before it's set.
The Exhibit Hall is set to be torn down in the fall to make way for 48 affordable apartments for people who earn between 30% and 60% of area median income.
A mother of two teenagers participating in 4-H, Stephanie Abbey, thinks it’s high time for the corroded, corrugated metal of the old Exhibit Hall to be torn down.
“That thing is terrible,” Abbey said.
The fairground’s most popular event space, which even the county facilities manager said isn’t in great shape, will be demolished after this year’s county fair to make way for 48 low-income apartments for people earning between 30% and 60% of the typical income in this area. (See page 29 for details on the Flat Creek Apartments, which are slated for the land where the Exhibit Hall stands and the lawn to its east, where fairgoers have watched fiddle contests under a tent and eaten from the fair’s food court in the past.)
To those involved in Jackson’s affordable housing department or fair operations, the Exhibit Hall’s relocation across the street is not news. The 1-acre lot was included in the housing supply plan in 2018, and the Fair Board agreed before that to relocate the community event space.
The interior of the Exhibit Hall was hand-built by volunteers, fairgrounds manager Rachel Grimes said. For many, the walls hold a lot of nostalgia.
Everything that used to happen in the Exhibit Hall — like birthday parties, fair booths and year-round 4-H space — is slated to move to the community center across Snow King Avenue near the rodeo arena. That space is about five times bigger, has a bigger kitchen, higher ceilings, and will be further remodeled.
But the fate of the dated and dented metal green building has come to encapsulate an increasingly fierce fight over whether to someday move the fairgrounds and the use of public resources for housing.
For Abbey the bigger, better exhibit hall, now informally called the Fair Community Center, is an improvement for her two daughters.
Ginny Mahood, who has three kids in 4-H, is looking forward to using the new community center, though she said her kids hadn’t seen it yet, and she hopes 4-H can continue to use it free.
Still, Mahood is concerned that the housing development across the street will cramp the 10-day Teton County Fair.
That’s a valid concern, Fair Manager Rachel Grimes said. Parking is already “challenging,” especially for events like the fair rodeo, where large horse trailers have to play Tetris.
It’s quite possible, Grimes said, that the county fair that the “community has come to know and love” will stop offering all its usual events.
The fair is making do with what it has, but it needs a plan for the future, board member Marybeth Hansen said.
The Teton County Fair Board voted unanimously at its May 9 meeting to sign onto a $40-million specific purpose excise tax proposal to relocate the fairgrounds, although elected officials cut the proposal from the list of projects (see related article on page 2) that will appear on the ballot for the upcoming years’ projects.
Fairground manager Rachel Grimes points to the layout of a future partition in the new community center kitchen.
That application speaks to a long-term vision, Hansen said at a Shelter JH event, because it’s “incredibly difficult” to operate a county fair and support 4-H on 12.35 acres.
Clare Stumpf, coordinator with Shelter JH, wants town councilors to “free up” the fairgrounds to provide walkable, affordable housing.
Stumpf said a win-win solution is possible, with affordable housing in downtown and the type of fairgrounds that Hansen dreams of, with proper RV hookups, an outdoor amphitheater, a dog park and a community center, located outside of town limits.
Stumpf and Hansen know it’s an uphill battle, and they don’t want something to replace the fairgrounds at the cost of the fair.
With a recent lease extension, Teton County will run the fair in the middle of town for at least another eight years. That’s still practically “the day after tomorrow,” Hansen said.
“In my opinion, if we go for one minute without a fairgrounds, 4-H will go away,” Hansen said. “It absolutely, 100%, has to be a linear move.”
Town councilors, county commissioners and fair board members have repeatedly said there’s no plan in the works to relocate the fairgrounds.
For now, it’s just a hope.
For that reason, the fairground relocation SPET proposal was first to be cut from the town and county list.
Hansen and Stumpf said they would continue to lobby county commissioners for a bigger, better spot for the fairgrounds and rodeo. Abbey said she still thought someone might donate the land.
But distant community hopes of getting a better fairgrounds and providing more housing are colliding with the current project to demolish the Exhibit Hall.
The housing department is entering the first steps to rezone the Exhibit Hall and grassy area to high density this summer. For the super-charged groups opposed to moving the fairgrounds, these applications are fuel to the fire.
Rebecca Bextel is the energetic real estate agent at the helm of two new groups, Save the Jackson Hole Rodeo LLC and Eyes on Teton County LLC. Since last year 2,230 people have put their name on a petition to “Save the Jackson Hole Rodeo.”
Eyes on Teton County LLC has placed four full-page ads in the Jackson Hole News&Guide criticizing the county housing department and calling out county commissioners and town councilors as they proceed with hearings for the 48-unit affordable housing complex.
The structure at the Teton County Fairgrounds that was remodeled as the temporary Station One for Jackson Hole Fire/EMS is currently used for storage. The fair board anticipates it will be the new home for 4-H activities and act as the Exhibit Hall year-round.
Bextel said she’s received at least 25 encouraging emails and has mobilized many more locals since running the ads.
Cammy Lawson, a local bookkeeper, was one of those people who learned from Bextel’s ads that the Exhibit Hall would be demolished. Lawson said she immediately decided to become more involved and plans to help coordinate sources for Bextel’s upcoming documentary film.
A handful of people have also criticized Bextel for misspelling the names of elected officials in the ads, printing misinformation that the housing department is “taking fairgrounds land” and suggesting that the units would be occupied by second home-owners, interns and new residents.
The fairgrounds are publicly owned, and the units will be deed-restricted for low-income workers, according to housing officials.
The way she sees it, Bextel is fighting local government to preserve Jackson Hole for future generations.
The way many electeds see it, Bextel is connecting nonexistent dots.
The planned 48-unit housing project has nothing to do with the Parks and Rec housing project she has compared it to, which is used to house seasonal workers, Vice Mayor Arne Jorgensen said Monday.
In the same meeting, Councilor Jim Rooks said there was no “existential threat” to the fair and rodeo grounds.
“It may be that certain individuals think that,” Rooks said, “but I don’t think that either the Town Council or the county have acted in any way to justify that.”
The Exhibit Hall is one of the only affordable public rental centers in town and essential for the 4-H program. 4-H will have room to expand in the new facility. The fee structure for the newer, bigger community center is not set, but the public can comment before it's set.
County Commissioner Luther Propst, one of the targets of Bextel’s ads, told the News&Guide he thought the remodel of the new community center was an indication that the fairgrounds will be there for a while.
Propst said he just “doesn’t see” a piece of property in the county that could work without a massive land donation, which clearly cannot be forced.
Bextel and Blair Maus sent out offers last week offering to endorse county commissioner and Town Council candidates running in the 2022 election. All they have to do to earn an endorsement from the new Save the Fairgrounds PAC is pledge their “full support of saving and preserving our historic rodeo and fairgrounds where they are currently located.”
Bextel told the News&Guide they’ll endorse candidates of any political affiliation. People should get ready, she said, for a ramp-up of full-page advertisements in the paper and flyers. The ads will also be “going after” officeholders “making mistakes,” she said.
Endorsements and attack ads aren’t all Bextel said her group has “up our sleeve.”
A documentary film, which doesn’t yet have a name, and for which Bextel has interviewed about a dozen kids to speak about why they love their local 4-H chapter, will premiere at 6 p.m. Aug. 4 at the Exhibit Hall.
Bextel refused to give details but said that’s when “everybody will learn” about her group’s plans to once and for all stop the 48-unit housing project at 400 W. Snow King Ave.
April Norton said she didn’t have enough information to comment on Bextel’s plan to halt the housing project.
Contact Sophia Boyd-Fliegel at county@jhnewsandguide or 307-732-7063.
Sophia covers county politics, housing, and workforce issues. A Pacific Coast devotee, she grew up in Washington, studied in California and has worked in Oregon and Alaska.
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