July 22, 2009

Ballpark bleachers head to the fair
Board needs cash to finish work

By Sam Craig
of The Chronicle

     The fair board was able to spruce up the arena at the fairgrounds and help take a load off the school district’s sports program with one action this week.
     When the bleachers at Quinton Street Ballpark were condemned last year, there wasn’t a whole lot to like about the situation. It would have cost the North Wasco County School District thousands of dollars to repair them, it would cost thousands to store them and thousands to have them torn down and hauled off to the dump.
     The Wasco County Fair Board was also in a quandary. Their bleachers had been condemned as well and the rodeo arena needed new seating. Buying them new would mean plunking down a huge chunk of change for a place where visitors could sit during events and fixing them would be pointless, as the arena has outgrown its own seating capacity.
     That’s when the two joined forces. They both had a need — the district to offload their condemned bleachers and the fair board for grandstands — and when they found out about one another, they got to work.
     The North Wasco County School Board voted to declare the bleachers surplus back in May, so the fair board could swoop in and grab them. Work began on Tuesday for the bleachers to change hands.
     “We’re tearing down the Quinton Street bleachers and hauling them out to the Tygh Valley Fairground to set them up out there eventually,” said Ken Polehn of the fair board. “They were condemned, so there are some things they need added to them, so we’ve got to raise some funds.”
     Dealing with condemned bleachers isn’t as easy as just slapping on a fresh coat of paint and calling it a day. The fair board will need metal, lumber and labor to get the bleachers set up.
     “We’ll need more planking and we’ve got to close in the gaps so that nothing’s more than three or four inches apart, so no one can trip in the cracks,” Polehn said. “So we’re going to be having fundraisers over the next period of time. We need to raise at least between $8,000 and $10,000 to even make these work. It may take more than that by the time we do it. But buying new ones would be about $40,000 or so. We figure we’ve got a head start with these.”
     The fair board and other volunteers will be demolishing the bleachers through Wednesday evening and transporting them out to Tygh Valley. They won’t be ready for cowboy boots and Wranglers in time for this year’s fair, but they are hoping it will be all done in the near future.
     There’s only one problem with getting the pieces down south, and it’s a problem that only exists during this time of year.
     “I’ve got a couple of farm trucks to get them loaded up on,” Polehn said, “as long as everybody’s not picking cherries still.”