By Dave Baumeister, County Correspondent
SIOUX FALLS – Clark Meyer, president of Knife River, formerly Concrete Materials of Sioux Falls told Minnehaha County Commissioners that his firm was offering $65 million to buy the Sioux Empire Fairgrounds land.
The offer was made verbally and publicly at the July 5 commission meeting, but it was originally made to commissioners last week through e-mails; however, no formal offer through a lawyer or real estate agent had been made.
According to Commissioner Jeff Barth the offer that came through was for a $15 million payment up front, with the rest to be paid at some undisclosed time in the future.
Knife River/Concrete Materials/Sweetman’s has been eying the fair land for some time, supposedly to expand their current rock quarry in Sioux Falls.
Meyer said that they expected there to be a good deal of rock under the fairgrounds but complained the county wouldn’t let them do any testing.
While it does make a big splash to talk about millions of dollars at a public meeting, Commissioners Jean Bender, Cindy Heiberger and Barth all said that was not the way things worked.
By state law, to sell property, a county must first declare it as surplus and then go through a bidding process to take offers on real estate.
Unlike selling a house, the county cannot pick at random to whom it sells property.
To be legal, a county sale on surplus property would involve a bidding process, and there is nothing to say Knife River would win that.
And with the bidding process, all the money would have to be put down up front, which would eliminate the “contract for deed” offer made by Meyer’s company.
“I disagree with Clark about the ease of this sale,” Bender said. “We do not have a clear legal path to selling the property.”
In 1938, the land was first gifted to the county by the family of William H. Lyon with the codicil that the land would always be used for a regional fair. Should that cease to happen, the land reverts to the Lyon family.
In that case, as soon as the county declared the fairgrounds as surplus land, it would revert to the original family.
There has been some talk in the past about how long a codicil like that can be enforced, but since the family has continually stayed involved in fair operations, it is believed the codicil would still be in full force.
So, while Meyer spoke about the county receiving money from any sale to build a new fairgrounds with much needed improvements, commissioners thought it was likely the county could lose the current fairgrounds, as well as any money for building a future facility if the sale were to proceed.
One of the people who spoke in favor of the sale, Minnehaha County Auditor candidate Leah Anderson, said she represented a non-profit, and that their fees to use the fair facilities for equestrian events had gone from $7,000 to $14,000.
Although if her reason to support a sale was to lower her organization’s fees, there is no way to guarantee anything would change, as the same fair office and board would have already put those fees in place.
Regarding any further action on a sale, Barth said, “We cannot just pick a person to sell it to. This is a very cumbersome procedure.”
Commissioners were looking at signing a $165,000 contract with Charles D. Smith Architecture and Planners about future plans for the fairgrounds, but they decided to defer action on that so Smith could come up with a new proposal that just looked at the economic impact of the fair.
Commissioners said they wanted to rely on their new Fairgrounds Taskforce to look at other options for the fair.
The next meeting is planned for 9 a.m. July 19 in the new commission chambers on the third floor of the Minnehaha County Administration Building at 6th and Minnesota in Sioux Falls.
