Delays make time tight for new fairgrounds being ready for 2025 Jacksonville Fair

The relocation of the Jacksonville Fair to the Westside from its longtime home in downtown is facing delays that are making it a tight squeeze for the new fairgrounds to be ready for the November 2025 edition of the fair, which could force a tough decision on whether or not the fair will go on that year.

The Greater Jacksonville Fair Association still sees a path for it and the city to finish the Westside fairgrounds on a schedule that enables the annual fair to kick off its next chapter in brand-new facilities in late 2025. But with time slipping away for starting construction, association officials also have discussed a scenario that would skip the fair in 2025.

"It's been a little frustrating just waiting, you know, because we want to get this thing going," fair association CEO Bill Olson said. "But it is what it is. We can't really control a lot of it."

Even thinking about the possibility of skipping the fair for a year would have been farfetched when City Council approved a lease in April 2023 for the fair association to use 82 acres of city-owned land at a regional park off Normandy Boulevard that already is home to Cecil Equestrian Center.

The fair association, a non-profit entity that been staging the annual fair for almost 70 years, had expected the fairgrounds would be under construction by now and on track to be finished by spring 2025.

After City Council approved the lease, the city's plans went through a lengthy review by the National Park Service because the new fairgrounds will be built on former Navy land the federal government donated to Jacksonville when Cecil Field Naval Air Station closed in 1999.

City Council will vote Tuesday on approving an amended lease that came out of the National Park Service's scrutiny. Even then, the city and the fair association still face a final obstacle because an unrelated lawsuit filed against the state Department of Environmental Protection put a hold on the city getting a final environmental permit for the site.

Fair association will sell downtown site to Jaguars owner Shad Khan

Whatever the timetable is for the Westside site, the upcoming Jacksonville Fair in November will be the last one in the sports complex. The fair association has been hosting the Jacksonville Fair at that site every year since 1955 except for 2020 when the global COVID-19 pandemic forced the association to cancel it.

The fair association has a Jan. 31, 2025, closing date to sell its land in the sports complex to Jaguars owner Shad Khan and his Iguana Investments. The current fairgrounds is one of the potential sites for a University of Florida graduate campus in the downtown area. Iguana Investments would be willing to donate that land to the University of Florida.

The fair association will use the sales proceeds to help pay for a new exhibition hall on the Westside where the association would have much more space for growth and attract people year-round for events and activities such as concerts and 4-H youth events.

The new fairground site will have a midway, exposition hall, office space, amphitheater, concession areas, 32 recreational vehicle sites, parking lots, and water, sewer and electric utilities. Finger Lakes Drive will be extended to provide another access point in addition to the main entrance from Normandy Boulevard.

The city budgeted $27 million for its share of the cost and the fair association expected its portion of the work would cost $15 million. The cost of construction has risen over the past year. City Council committees last week supported providing a $1.5 million loan, payable over 10 years, and a $1.5 million completion grant to the fair association to cover its additional costs.

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City Council committee also agreed last week to alter the length of the lease of city-owned land to the fair association. A year ago, City Council voted to lease the 82-acre tract to the fair association for 40 years with three 10-year extensions and an option to lease another 60 acres next to it. After the National Park Service, acting on behalf of the U.S. Department of the Interior, determined the lease should be shorter, the amended lease will be for 30 years with two 10-year extensions.

The U.S. Department of the Interior must approve the city's ground lease with the fair association because the site is within 2,000 acres the city received in 2002 from the U.S. Navy through the Federal Lands to Parks program. The federal government turned over the land on the condition it be used forever for public parks and public recreation, a standard the National Park Service examined in its review.

The approval of the revised lease terms leaves just one other box to check for the federal government to give its go-ahead because the development still needs to get a wetlands permit. The city had been working through the state Department of Environmental Protection to get that permit, but a federal judge ruled in February that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency lacked authority to transfer those permitting decisions in 2020 to the state from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Legal battle over wetlands permitting affects new fairgrounds site

The state appealed the ruling but as it stands, a large number of permits including the one for the Westside fairgrounds site are in limbo. While that legal battle continues, the city filed the wetlands permit application directly with the Army Corps of Engineers.

Steve Long, operations director for the city Public Works Department, told the council's Neighborhoods Committee if the legal battle restores the state's wetland permitting system, "our permit will be issued very quickly."

"If we go through the Corps of Engineers, it may be a little bit longer," Long said.

The city has done some work to set the stage for construction by clearing the trees from a large tract that borders Normandy Boulevard and grading the site. The city also dismantled a softball complex with three fields that had stood next to the Cecil Aquatics Center in Taye Brown Regional Park. Part of the new fairgrounds will be on the former softball complex, which the city will rebuild elsewhere in the regional park.

But that still leaves a lot of construction work to be done. Olson said the association hopes construction will get underway next month so work can be finished by mid- to late summer 2025.

"We're still hopeful, but these delays are getting longer and longer," Olson said. "If it gets pushed a couple more months, it's probably going to be risking that fair (in 2025) because honestly, it's our position that we would rather not have the fair (that year) than to have it and not be 100% ready."

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Wait for permits delays building Jacksonville fairgrounds