An auctioneer takes bids for a pig during the 2016 Sale of Champions, an annual youth livestock auction reinstated in 2015. (Photo by Carrie B. Joines Photography)
Marlene Pierson-Jolliffe knows state fairs — the fun, the finances,the fickleness.
She’s been working at them since she was 18, first as a high school student earning money for college and later, for graduate school. After that, she only missed one year, when she took off from work as she and her husband, a now-retired circuit court judge, adopted two children.
Now 51, she says she is working to build “the state fair of the future” at Meadow Event Park in Caroline County.
“We’re listening to what our customers want,” Pierson-Jolliffe says.
As a result, when the State Fair of Virginia opens on Sept. 29 for a 10-day run, visitors will notice some changes.
To start with, the carnival midway will be moved to a spot along state Route 30 for easier access. Virginia-based musicians will perform throughout the fairgrounds, to give the fair a stronger state flavor and to make music an audible presence everywhere. A craft-beer competition will be inaugurated, drawing on brews statewide. Children’s venues such as Young McDonald’s Farm, where hatching ducks and a dairy cow birthing center are among the highlights, will be moved to reduce walking, and the Kidway, for children’s rides and amusements, will be relocated to improve accessibility. In addition, a premium paid parking program, for those who are willing to pay to park closer, is moving off grass to asphalt in a better location, in response to a successful test of paid parking last year.
This will be Pierson-Jolliffe’s third year as executive director of the State Fair of Virginia and vice president of operations at Meadow Event Park. Previously, she headed the West Virginia State Fair, and in 2013, she served as chairwoman for the International Association of Fairs and Expositions.
Her first year, 2015, was baptism by fire. Remnants of Hurricane Joaquin swept into Virginia in late 2015, threatening both coastal and inland communities. Gov. Terry McAuliffe subsequently declared a state of emergency.
In response, Pierson-Jolliffe closed the fair for its final three days — the first time in memory that the fair had closed early. The move released scores of emergency workers and State Police troopers on duty at the fairgrounds to go to endangered areas of the state.
The State Fair took a bath, financially and otherwise. Besides the loss of customers, Pierson-Jolliffe says she refunded money to concessionaires and others who had rented space at the fair, but couldn’t operate when it was closed.
“They were blown away,” she says of having some of their money returned. “It was the right thing to do.”
As the State Fair moves forward, Pierson-Jolliffe says it’s critical to build partnerships with community and corporate organizations. She has been hitting the circuit in the Richmond region and elsewhere, promoting the fair’s facilities for retreats, meetings and other events. In a 2015 article in Governing magazine about state fairs, she said, “Our greatest challenge is to be relevant. Our [agriculture] education piece sets us apart from just going to a carnival in a parking lot.”
Less than 2 percent of Americans are involved in farming, and state fairs have long had a mission of educating fairgoers about where their food comes from.
Prior to Pierson-Jolliffe’s arrival, the Virginia Farm Bureau, which took over full ownership of the State Fair in 2013, had been running the attraction in-house.
The fair moved to the former Meadow Farm, birthplace of racing legend Secretariat, in 2009 after the nonprofit Atlantic Rural Exposition sold its Strawberry Hill Complex in Henrico County to the Richmond Raceway for $47 million. Within two years of the move to Caroline County, the fair filed for bankruptcy, citing stock market losses and debts of about $75 million. A Tennessee fair owner, wearing flip-flops and a Harley-Davidson T-shirt, bought the fair property at a foreclosure sale for $5.3 million.
In 2012, the Virginia Farm Bureau purchased a 50 percent interest in the fair, and bought all of it the following year for an undisclosed price. A 2014 lawsuit alleging a conspiracy between the Virginia Farm Bureau Federation and the Williams Mullins law firm to prevent Mini-USA, a company run by local concert promoter Gratton Stephens, from acquiring the State Fair and the Meadow Event Park was settled out of court in 2016. The terms were not disclosed.
Through its purchase, the Virginia Farm Bureau became the only farm bureau in America to own a state fair.
“It was an investment in our brand, and provided an outlet and showcase of what we’re all about. Now we cannot only talk about agriculture and its importance, we can show people,” says bureau spokesman Greg Hicks.
Michael Broaddus, an agricultural extension agent in Caroline County, says farmers have long had “a sense of belonging” with the Virginia Farm Bureau and that has carried over to the bureau’s stewardship of the State Fair.
“The agricultural community seems very happy … because the State Fair of Virginia has maintained its agricultural heritage,” Broaddus says.
Likewise, Scott Greiner of Virginia Tech, who works with 4-H statewide in the youth livestock area, praised the Farm Bureau’s efforts in working with 4-H.
Although State Fair revenues are largely weather-dependent, Farm Bureau leaders have said they will stay with it through good years and lean.
“We’re in it for the long haul,” Hicks says.
