FAIRLEA, W.Va. — Now that the State Fair of West Virginia wrapped up its 98th year, CEO Kelly Collins said they’re already looking ahead to the next two years.
“We are starting plans for the 100th anniversary, so really at this point, we’re planning two fairs because it’s going to take a lot of work and we want to debut a lot of that at the 99th annual State Fair,” Collins told MetroNews Monday morning.
The 10-day fair wrapped up Saturday in Greenbrier County.
Attendance numbers have not been finalized yet, but Collins said they are estimating “record” crowds.
“If we look at our preliminary numbers, we were well over 185,000 people at the fair, which in recent history, is definitely a record for us,” she said.
There were a lot of visitors who traveled to West Virginia to attend the fair, Collins said.
“We did an economic impact survey during the fair, so we hope to have those results soon, but we definitely had a lot of out-of-state visitors. Some of the vendors mentioned that several licenses that they checked or people they had talked throughout the week were from out of state and even some out of country,” she said.
Collins said the concerts were a huge draw this year along with rides, livestock shows and the food.
“The concerts were amazing. We had two complete sell outs and probably three or four other shows that were close to a sellout. We had several compliments from the artists themselves that came in and said it looked more like a festival than a state fair,” she said.
Ludacris closed out the fair as the final musical performance Saturday evening.
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The fair sold more than $4 million dollars in food alone, Collins said.
“The economic impact is huge especially when you think of all the small businesses involved,” she said.
More information on the fair’s impact is expected to be released in the coming days.