MYRTLE POINT — Coos County fairgoers will notice a difference at the fairgrounds this summer.

The 57-year-old events center is gone and in its place, a flat stretch of gravel.

Knocking down and removing the deteriorated building may have been the easy part of what is in store for the fairgrounds. A three-phase plan to replace the building and other facilities on the fairgrounds will take about five years to complete, at a cost of $3.5 million to $4 million, Fair Manager Cindy Bedingfield said.

Bedingfield said she didn’t know such a project would be dropped on her plate when she took the position last November.

“I hadn’t planned on this at all,” she said while looking over the flat expanse of land.

An inspection of the old center just after the fair last year found it beyond repair, Bedingfield said. By October, the building had been torn down and most of it hauled away. Remnants of the old building remain in large chunks of concrete and pieces of twisted metal dotted around the gravel-covered area.

Bedingfield said the grounds are much more organized than a few months ago, during the destruction of the old building.

“It looked like Hurricane Katrina down here for a while,” she said

Her office window offers a panoramic view of the grounds. For a time, it was hard to imagine anything other than chaos in the space the building once stood, she said.

Fair Board member Earl Byers said it was no surprise the center had seen better days.

“The building had been in bad repair for a long time,” Byers said, noting some of the ceiling trusses had rotted through. “You could stand inside, look up and see holes.”

The first phase of the plan — hauling in thousands of pounds of fill dirt and gravel to lift the site out of the flood plain — has just barely begun. Almost 2,000 cubic yards of fill dirt and gravel were delivered and graded over two days last month. The fill material delivered last month was donated. The only expense was the fuel for the 70 truckloads hauled in, Bedingfield said.     

Another 30,000 cubic yards will be needed to finish the job. The rest of the required fill material has been donated as well, but it will cost about $4 a yard to haul in, Byers, who also manages the site work for the project, said. In addition to fill material, electrical, water and sewer system work will need to be done before construction can start.

The second phase is building the new center. Bedingfield said a design hasn’t been nailed down yet, but said a conceptual drawing will be on display at the fair this summer. It will be an approximately 70,000-square-foot steel building, which will seat up to 3,000 people.

 The ground layout will change, too. Instead of having the events center running east to west as the old building was, it will be positioned north to south. That change will allow more room to move vehicles and trailers in and out and shield the rest of the fair from carnival noise, Byers said.

New horse barns and a covered corral are planned for the final phase of the project.

The new facility will not be finished for two to three years, so fairgoers will have to be content with tents instead of a building for a while.

Once completed, Bedingfield said the center will be a resource for the entire county, year-round. She would like to attract horse shows and competitions to the fairgrounds, which in turn, could help promote other businesses and attractions in the region. She said the fairgrounds would be the only facility on the South Coast that could accommodate a large horse show.

“It will be more than just for the fair.” Byers said. “It will be a year-round event center for the county.”

The amount of local support to this point has been encouraging to Bedingfield.

Several local businesses and the county have donated fill material, employee time and equipment time in dismantling the old center and preparing the site for construction. Some cash donations have come in as well. Fundraising to this point totals approximately $300,000 in cash donations and in-kind donations, Bedingfield said. The big fundraising push will begin after fair this year, when the fair board will start seeking grants.

“It’s a very doable project,” Bedingfield said. “It has enough support and momentum behind it.”