State Fair board will allow farmland to remain farmland

The fair board voted unanimously Thursday to offer a new location -- 30 acres on the south side of the fairgrounds -- to Northern Industrial Training so that business can build a major new campus, fair manager Ray Ritari said.

The change allows farm groups to conserve the former Hamilton Dairy property, Ritari said. Details still need to be worked out, parties involved say.

"It's great news," said Steve Gallagher, manager of the Alaska Farmland Trust, a Palmer nonprofit that uses federal money and donations to conserve farms.

Gallagher has meetings scheduled with fair officials and farm groups to start discussing particulars, he said. The trust buys development rights to conserve land but the property involved would stay in fair ownership. Other groups involved include the Palmer Soil and Water Conservation District, Mat-Su Farm Bureau and VanderWeele Farms.

NIT officials said they're still negotiating particulars with the fair, as well as zoning and permitting changes. The Palmer-based business could end up scaling back some plans to fit the smaller site, such as a wastewater treatment training area and power generation facilities, said Joey Crum, NIT's executive vice president.

"The bottom line for us is we needed a site to build our new facility," Crum said.

Fair officials and NIT had negotiated since September to put a $24 million training campus on the old dairy land along Springer Loop. The land, considered some of the most fertile in the state, is the last large piece of farmland in fair ownership. Matanuska Valley colonists founded the fair more than 70 years ago to show off produce and animals.

After a preliminary request from VanderWeele Farms in January to buy the property didn't go anywhere, the issue resurfaced last week. Upwards of 50 people attended a board meeting last Thursday, many urging the fair to conserve the farmland and move NIT to a different site.

Ritari said farmers approached him afterwards to offer help finding a solution. That's when the alternate site surfaced.

The property offered to NIT sits due south of Hermon Brothers Field and runs to the fair's southern boundary, Ritari said. It includes some fair parking that will have to be replaced by making better use of existing space, he said.

The land deals would allow the fair to eventually buy back 40 acres sold to a construction demolition company five years ago in a three-way swap that included the dairy land.

But keeping the Hamilton parcel as farmland would also satisfy the fair's goal to keep a buffer between encroaching homes and the fairgrounds, Ritari said.

"This NIT project was not houses," he said. "But OK, we're moving on. We can keep this in open space."

For more information on the issue and the sides involved, go to www.nitalaska.com, www.akfarmland.com or http://alaskastatefair.org.

Find Zaz Hollander online at adn.com/contact/zhollander or call 907-352-6711.