Blue Hill Fair a hit despite cool nights

BLUE HILL – The remnants of Hurricane Frances dumped rain on the Blue Hill Fair grounds Thursday, but Rob Eaton didn’t care.

He won’t worry about the weather until Labor Day weekend next year.

With the 2004 fair ended, Eaton is winding up the details and already beginning to think about next year’s fair.

Attendance at the fair was off a bit from previous years, Eaton said, but he still considers this year’s effort a success.

“I think we were down a little from last year,” he said. “We had a good fair, but we were down a little bit.”

Initial figures showed attendance was down about 700 or 800 people. That puts the total figure for the five days of the fair at between 29,000 and 30,000 people.

“That’s about where we always are,” he said.

The good weather throughout the run of the fair helped to attract visitors, and traffic lined the road to the fairgrounds throughout the weekend.

At one point Sunday, the traffic was backed up more than a mile on Route 172 toward Ellsworth.

Cool weather in the evenings kept attendance down as well, Eaton said, and probably sent people home early.

That didn’t seem to affect the vendors much, however. Eaton said most food vendors seemed pleased with their sales during the fair.

Hot food vendors did better than the cold food sellers, he said, and the cool nights may have hurt revenue from the rides.

The weather is not the only factor that attracts fair-goers, and Eaton said the fair provides folks with a lot of choices throughout the weekend.

“We have a pretty fair amount of attractions, events and entertainment,” he said. “There’s not a lot of times when there wasn’t something going on on the fairgrounds. For a $6 ticket, that’s pretty good value.”

The fair is a big operation for the area and requires “a tremendous amount of money to put this on,” Eaton said.

“Between premiums, labor and outside expenses, it all adds up quickly,” he said.

The Hancock County Agricultural Society spends about a quarter-million dollars to put on the fair, Eaton said, and probably will take in a little more than that. The final figures on the fair receipts won’t be ready for several months, he said.

“The cost of doing business keeps going up,” he said. “It costs us more because the costs for everybody else are increasing.”

At the same time, he said, the fair tries to keep the admission price affordable while bringing in the quality events and entertainment that people have come to expect. The $6 admission to the fair has not increased in three or four years, he said.

Profits go into maintaining and improving the fairgrounds and facilities, he said.

While Eaton is focused now on cleaning up the grounds, he’s already thinking about next year’s fair. His preparation usually includes visits to other fairs around the state and the country looking for good ideas.

“As soon as we get things put away, we’ll start planning,” he said. “We may mix things up a little for next year, change things around a little.”