The long-running tug of war over the 55-acre fairgrounds property in central Petaluma has finally ended. In December, Petaluma city leaders and the state appointees who manage the Sonoma-Marin Fair signed a new lease allowing the annual fair to continue operating while inviting the property’s owners — Petaluma residents — to participate in a master planning process to redesign the property for more optimal public use.
The deal was concluded just before the city’s lease was set to expire with the California 4th District Agricultural Association, which for 87 years had paid just $1 a year for total control of Petaluma’s largest parkland.
Leasing the land to the state fair agency made perfect sense in 1936. But as Petaluma’s population grew sevenfold in the decades since, it became obvious that the community’s single largest public park was badly underutilized 360 days of the year.
Following two decades of contentious and unproductive attempts to negotiate a new lease arrangement, the city in 2022 contracted with a consulting firm that led a public process whereby dozens of stakeholders — including state fair officials, local government representatives, business and civic leaders, farmers, 4-H organizers and fairgrounds tenants — were interviewed about the property’s future.
After receiving extensive public feedback, a lottery-selected advisory committee produced a comprehensive report containing a host of sensible recommendations that included continuing the annual fair, adding a year-round farmers market, increasing public access to the property and securing its status as an evacuation center during emergencies.
The Petaluma City Council subsequently voted unanimously to adopt the committee’s recommendations and directed City Manager Peggy Flynn to negotiate an interim lease so the fair could operate for three years with minimal disruption while a plan was developed for the property’s long-term disposition.
After some foot-dragging by the fair board, negotiations finally got underway in earnest last spring, and by early November the two parties agreed in principle to the terms of a new lease agreement under which the fair would operate rent free for three years with the city assuming all costs for maintaining the property, paying utility bills and making capital improvements which, according to Flynn, are estimated at more than $13 million.
Under a separate “professional services” agreement, fair officials were offered the lucrative opportunity to continue booking and managing all events on the site, for which the fair would receive the bulk of revenues with the remainder deposited in a fund for capital improvements.
It seemed like a good deal, potentially worth many hundreds of thousands of dollars annually. But at a meeting in mid-November to finalize details of both agreements, fair officials belatedly raised multiple new issues. As a result, the offer of events management revenue sharing was withdrawn, and the focus shifted to finalizing a new lease agreement.
At the same time, Flynn and other city officials became aware that fair officials were quietly working on a separate track, conducting a public opinion poll to gauge Petaluma voters’ sentiment for a prospective ballot measure that would revoke existing city policy by prohibiting greater public access to the fairgrounds property.
At this point, whatever small amount of trust that had begun to grow between the agencies collapsed. When it came time to finalize the new lease with the fair association at a City Council meeting in December, the city attorney inserted a termination clause allowing the council to cancel the fair’s lease if a ballot measure were filed restricting fairgrounds uses.
So where do things stand for the fair’s future?
According to Sonoma-Marin Fair board president Michael Parks, this year’s event will occur June 20-23 because the organization is utilizing reserve funds to help finance its production.
But without the ability to earn revenue from events and short-term facility rentals, the outlook for next year and beyond is cloudy, he said.
“We need that revenue,” Parks told me. “It would help us remain viable.”
Parks and Flynn say they are open to resuming negotiations on an events management contract, but that’s unlikely to occur if fair board members are concurrently pursuing a ballot measure aimed at restoring their control of the city’s largest public parkland.
Business deals, especially those involving government agencies, require trust. At the moment there is very little trust.
John Burns is a former publisher of the Petaluma Argus-Courier.