Seven years of negotiations over the sale of Pioneer Park to the state of California are close to resolution after the Paso Robles City Council’s recent approval of a new agreement between the parties.
The decision met with raucous applause from attendees at the Dec. 20 council meeting.
“It certainly goes a long way to making sure we keep the Mid-State Fair in Paso Robles,” resident Dale Gustin said during the public comment.
The deal involves selling 5.6 acres of the city-owned Pioneer Park to the state so that the Mid-State Fair board—also known as the state’s 16th District Agricultural Association (DAA)—can have additional land for staging and other operations at the Paso Robles Event Center. According to a city staff report, these plans include an expansion and reorientation of the Event Center’s Grandstand Arena and a full demolition and remodel of the Paso Robles Pavilion buildings at the north end of the grounds.
According to previous New Times reporting, issues arose when the state Department of General Services asked for modifications to the original agreement that the city approved. Paso Robles City Manager Ty Lewis told New Times via email that the state still hadn’t approved the agreement despite the city giving it the go-ahead around 2015 and 2016.
“Since many years had passed since the original agreement was authorized by the City Council, the agreement had to be approved by the state of California, which required many levels of review,” Lewis wrote. “Working with the state Department of General Services was challenging, but the city and DAA board worked their way through the process.”
According to City Attorney Elizabeth Hull, the 5.6-acre portion of Pioneer Park property will still be sold for $800,000. She told the City Council that the city still retains the right to reacquire the property for the sales price if the DAA doesn’t adhere to the agreement terms.
“All of the deal terms have stayed the same as when you agreed to them in the 2015-16 timeframe,” Hull said during the Dec. 20 meeting. “They’ve been reworded a little bit, but the bulk of it is basically the exact same deal.”
Previous issues in the lease agreement included whether Paso’s youth teams could continue to use the lighted baseball field until another one would be built. Lewis told New Times that the baseball fields would stay in place, with Hull clarifying at the Dec. 20 meeting that the baseball fields would be usable for the next three years until a new baseball field is constructed.
“The approval finalizes the sale [of] a portion of Pioneer Park to include the baseball field,” Lewis wrote. “This means the city must begin the process of identifying a replacement.”
Although the City Council approved the agreement, Hull said that it still has a ways to go until the 5.6 acres of Pioneer Park can be used for the Mid-State Fair, slated this year for July 19 through 30.
“[The agreement] will sell the land to the state, eventually ending up in the fair’s control,” Hull said. “They have a complicated system but it’s going to go through the [state] Department of Public Works, get approved there, and will be available for the Mid-State Fair for use.”
This article appears in Jan 5-15, 2023.