New grandstand seating will make for better Holmes County Fair experience

When the Holmes County Senior Fair Board installed the Dayton plastic seating at the grandstand arena several years ago, it seemed like a positive addition to the arena.

However, the 16-inch-wide seats were found wanting in one area: They were simply too narrow for comfort.

“I’m not a big guy, but I struggled to sit in those seats,” said Kerry Taylor, fair board member and former president.

Roger Boring, current fair board president, said the board has been discussing other options the past two years, and this offseason they were steadfast in making a major overhaul to improve the seating situation for the good of the fans.

“This was all done for our fans,” Boring said. “One of the biggest complaints we received from people recently was about how cramped the seating was in the grandstands, and we knew we needed to address that situation. When we first installed the (Dayton) seats, we all tried them out, and we all agreed that this was not what we had thought it was going to be. It looked neat, but it wasn’t working. This is going to be so much better.”

This past summer local general contractor Travis Weber and his crew came in and removed all the Dayton seats and replaced them with the newly purchased metal bleacher seats.

“We threw the idea out there to Travis, and he was all for it,” Boring said. “He kind of did the work between jobs when he and his crew could complete it.”

Weber’s crew began working on replacing the seating area in April and made quick work of it, completing the job by mid-June. On Thursday, July 24, fair board members from both the senior and junior fair board and other community volunteers went to work placing numbers on the reserve seating section to complete the work.

“There was definitely an army of us there working on it,” Boring said.

The new metal bleachers provide what should amount to a much more relaxing 22 inches of room per seat, and the reserve seats are adorned with the added pleasure of backs.

“We may have lost a few seats in the reserved seating section, but we definitely made up for it in providing a lot more comfort for everyone,” Boring said.

To make this new addition happen, the fair board secured a grant of $106,000 from the department of development.

Boring said the grant covered the cost of replacing the grandstand seating, and it will create a much more pleasurable viewing experience for fans in the grandstands.

He said without securing that grant, it would have been a very different story, but thanks to the funding, the grandstands will now be a much more inviting place to watch the many shows taking place including this year’s fair lineup, which includes evening shows beginning at 7 p.m. such as Bulls & Barrels Rodeo (Monday), Full Throttle Monster Trucks (Tuesday), motocross (Wednesday), Derby Dog Rough Trucks (Thursday), the Brad Giauque Memorial OSTPA Truck & Tractor Pull (Friday) and the demolition derby (Saturday).