Usage of the Flathead County fairgrounds is at an all-time high, according to a year-end report compiled by Fairgrounds Manager Mark Campbell.

The fairgrounds logged a total of 571 event days, with 194,623 people using the facilities in 2012. Event days include not only the days events are held but also the set-up days, Campbell said.

“One Saturday we had four events at the fairgrounds, so that’s four event days,” he said. “There weren’t too many quiet days this year.”

Of those 571 event days, 365 were public events and 206 were private events.

The statistics also included this year’s primary and general elections, which added 14,000 to the attendance total on Election Day alone.

With the addition of the Expo Building and Trade Center facilities to the grounds in recent years, usage of the fairgrounds has steadily increased. The number of event days has more than doubled since 2008, when 249 event days were logged.

Campbell and the Fair Board are working on a master plan for the fairgrounds that should be completed within the coming year. Public meetings were held in May and July to get community input, and a display set up during the Northwest Montana Fair in August gathered additional public comment about how people envision the future of the fairgrounds.

“The next step is to work with the stakeholders — those using the facilities — and potential stakeholders,” Campbell said.

Campbell recently asked the county commissioners to use $25,000 from the capital improvements program set-aside for the fairgrounds to hire an outside consultant to complete the master plan.

The commissioners instead directed him to tap existing staff to complete the task.

Using in-house resources will get the job done, Campbell said, but not as quickly.

He estimated an outside consultant could have finished the master plan in about three to four months, while completing it with existing staff will take eight months to a year.

One of the biggest proposed improvements at the fairgrounds is a building to house the Agency on Aging and the county Extension Service that includes the 4-H program. An alternate proposal would also add the Kalispell Senior Center into the proposed new building.

Either option would take the form of a new metal building on the north end of the fairgrounds with a connection to the Trade Center mechanical/storage area and parking. The cost would range from around $1.5 million to $1.8 million, depending on which option is chosen.

During a presentation to the commissioners in October, Campbell, who served as interim Agency on Aging director for several months during the past year, described the need to solve crowding and other concerns at the current leased Agency on Aging facility on Kelly Road.

There are also myriad problems with the Kalispell Senior Center, housed in a county-owned building that’s nearly 100 years old. The county leases the senior center to the city of Kalispell for a dollar a year.

“They’d come in as a program element,” he said about relocating the senior center to the fairgrounds. “It would be a neat attribute to bring in.”

With projections of a 220.5 percent growth in the Flathead Valley’s over-65 population by 2030, he said the former auction house won’t be equipped to handle the coming “silver tsunami.”

The commissioners are expected to discuss the proposed Agency on Aging/Extension building during a retreat session in January.

The proposed building is just one component of an overall master plan for the fairgrounds, Campbell noted.

The plan will outline and prioritize improvements to be completed over the next 20 to 25 years.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.