<html> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"> </head> <body text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"> For those of you who missed the business meeting, let me fill in the gaps in what I mentioned Thursday. <ol> <li>Jerome liked everything about our proposal except the requested guaranteed time in the building.</li> <li>He proceeded to say there is no rush to tear down our building or the one to the west of us. The reason would be because they are old. </li> <li>He and the BOD love the trains.</li> <li>I asked how long he thought it would be until the wrecking ball hit our building. He sort of shrugged and said 5 years. </li> <li>They will be putting part of the antique equipment in the north section of our building for display during the Fair which means no tents in front of that part of the building.</li> <li>Nothing was said about needing our "foot print" to rent more space.</li> <li>The back area which has been used by the Good Guys for storage during their shows may soon be located elsewhere and all of that area between the buildings will be opened up for traffic. So, the Good Guys shows will be in our future at least by August.</li> <li>He will write us a letter listing the points we discussed and it will be forwarded to the membership when we receive it.</li> <li>In reality, we have been on a one year contract with them for quite awhile. The last one we got was in 2016 and continues from year to year unless they issue a new one. That contract indicates they can give us as little as a 30 day notice to vacate. With his estimate of 5 years, we aren't really in a much different situation than before all this started a year ago. </li> <li>He would like to see us incorporate the improvements in our proposal. He put some emphasis on increasing our membership and visibility in addition to sprucing up the place. He really likes the idea of building an entry structure to set us apart from the "tent city" in front of us during the Fair. Basically, he wants us to up our game and be the best we can. He didn't say it, but we think by doing that, we may have a stronger position when time comes for our building to come down. Last spring we were told the horse shoe group was being kicked off the grounds. Not anymore and they (the horse shoe folks) are improving their facilities. Hmm? Maybe there's a message there for us. </li> <li>Bottom line is that we need to get to work and up our game, thus the work party info Phil has been sending out. The Great Train Show is March 23-24 and we're all set for that. Let's pull together and run trains!!!</li> </ol> Gary <div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 1/31/2019 7:44 PM, Gary Lewis wrote: </div> <blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:04b8add9-e15f-e3f5-b7d7-b441bca32343@comcast.net">All, Just a reminder that we have a business meeting tomorrow night, rain or shine. There are no expected access issues, so please come down and join us. We had a meeting with Jerome (Fair CEO) and Angel (Fair staff) on Monday and will report how that went. I won't go into details in this e-mail since it's far easier to do it tomorrow. However, we heard some very positive words about our organization and agreement with what was in the proposal which was submitted in November. However, the Fair will not agree to any guarantee of time in our building which is really no different than what we've had for several years. Jerome's predecessor, Rick Pickering, had the same position. Jerome indicated no organizations have long term agreements with the Fair. There is no hurry to remove our building or the adjacent maintenance building. More on that subject tomorrow night. From what we heard, they want us to up our game as outlined in our proposal and increase membership. More about that tomorrow night. Gary </blockquote> </body> </html>