Swami Bill's Flea Circus at Denver County Fair
The National Western Stock Show has purchased the Denver County Fair, adding more clout to the long list of fun and entertainment being produced in the Mile High City.
The Denver County Fair has operated on the stock show grounds since it started six years ago, and selling the fair to National Western made financial sense, said Dana Cain, co-owner of the fair.
For years, she and business partner Tracy Weil poured their hearts, souls and money into the Denver County Fair, and it’s time for them to move on.
“It’s kind of bittersweet. There were so many years when it was one of my favorite things in the universe,” Cain said. “Tracy and I created a pretty quirky fair.”
The setback was that Cain and Weil were the sole producers of the event, and selling it to National Western made good financial and production sense, considering the number of people employed by the stock show.
“We just can’t afford to keep paying for the fair. We’re not a big operation. The National Western Stock Show is a big operation and they know what they’re doing,” Cain said.
National Western Stock Show & Complex President and CEO Paul Andrews feels his staff is in a perfect position to take over the fair.
“It’s an event, so we really purchased the property rights, the website, the trademark and all of the things that come with operating an event,” he said.
National Western now will have three big annual events with the new transaction — the National Western Stock Show in January, the Rodeo All Stars in April and the Denver County Fair in July.
“Those are three events that my staff can do at a very high level, and they’re spread out for sponsorships,” Andrews said. The financials of the deal are not being released, he noted.
The stock show complex has been a staple venue in Denver since 1908 and continues to expand. The complex is growing from 15 to 20 acres of land, and will have a new livestock center, a new equestrian center with 1,000 permanent stalls, a new 46,000-sq.-ft. expo hall and a new arena that will have 10,000 seats with 40 suites.
The construction will be done in phases, and the complex will be under construction during the 2018 National Western Stock Show, Andrews said. “We will not have to pause the show,” he said, noting that they’re not about to miss a year, especially since the stock show has been around for so long without ever canceling. The hope is to break ground early next year, Andrews said earlier this year.
The expansion includes 1,800,000 sq. ft. of improvements, with Phase 1 scheduled for completion in 2017. The New National Western site is part of the old site. Some buildings will be retained, but the stockyards will be taken out, new livestock facilities will be built, and the replacement stockyards will be removable to become an entertainment zone for concerts the rest of the year. The venues are multipurpose and will be converted for the Denver County Fair.
Most fairs have a huge livestock portion, and the National Western Stock Show already caters to livestock. Andrews said the fair will accommodate animals that can be raised in the Denver Metro Area such as chickens and rabbits.
“A county fair is really a celebration of the county in which you reside,” he said, adding that the Denver County Fair in July will have pie-cooking competitions and more. “We’re also looking at bringing an amusement park.”
Andrews is hoping that he and his team can help bring fair attendance numbers up. In its peak years — 2011 and 2014 — roughly 20,000 people attended the Denver County Fair. That number dropped significantly in 2016, Cain said.
In 2014, recreational marijuana became legal in Colorado, so Cain and Weil opted to have a cannabis pavilion at the fair. It was wildly popular that year, but did not do as well the following years as cannabis events continued to grow throughout the state.
Andrews said he will not be doing the cannabis pavilion at all under the new ownership.