The current fair board office space at the Clark County Fairgrounds in Champions Park, at 4401 South Charleston Pike in Springfield, is found to the right as drivers come through the main gates.
The 1,750-square-foot office space will be torn down to create space for upcoming updates that are a part of a $3 million makeover for the fairgrounds. Three spaces will be created in the first 300 feet of the fairgrounds for to-be-determined businesses and a hotel, according to Clark County Fairgrounds Executive Director Dean Blair.
A new 2,890 square-foot structure office space will be placed to the left of the driveway, further into the park. Bids for the more than $900,000 project will be opened in November, with a hopeful construction end date of June in time for the 2023 Clark County Fair, Blair said.
“It’s really just looking magnificent and becoming the true diamond that it is for the county,” Blair said. “It’s just nice to see this kind of addition.”
The new building will include a larger board room and more modern amenities.
The Clark County Agricultural Society will fund new furnishings to the office and will cover separate projects, including asphalt work and interior additions.
Project funding for the new office space specifically comes from Clark County’s standard allowance, which is the $10 million portion of ARPA funds that can be used for the reimbursement of revenue lost due to the pandemic.
The amount of revenue lost by a county to the pandemic was originally determined by a formula created for the ARPA that compares revenues from pre-pandemic years to revenue earned during the pandemic, according to the U.S. Department of Treasury.
The commission in April opted to allocate the $10 million back to the county for lost revenue.
Standard allowance money can be used toward the provision of government services, including building and upgrading administrative facilities, according to the commission.
Overall, the Clark County Commission has allocated roughly $20 million in ARPA funding to multiple construction projects and other programs and purchases.
Last year, ARPA dollars were allocated toward a $2 million project to replace storm sewers in the Enon-Xenia Road area in an effort to alleviate flooding. Another $1 million was allocated to also address flooding through a safety project for Spangler Road.
Up to $800,000 in federal relief through the standard allowance was also allocated to a waterline extension project from Ohio 235 to U.S. Route 40.
A total of $26 million was allocated to Clark County from the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act that President Joe Biden signed into law in March 2021. A total of $350 billion was allocated to help local governments across the country reeling from the pandemic.
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