
County fairs: How to prepare for 2020 event
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — It was a beautiful day in a sunny, green valley.
And there was no shortage of fun.
But as the sun set and the wind picked up, many of the events at the state fair in Cedar Rapids were cancelled.
The Fairgrounds in Des Moines, Iowa’s largest city, were closed for the day due to weather, with the city’s only public transportation system cancelled.
State Fair Park in Waterloo, Iowa, was also closed.
And Iowa State Fair officials said they were also not sure if the state’s largest annual event, the Iowa State Basketball Tournament, would go on.
It was a bittersweet day for Iowa State University students who were attending the fair in Deseret.
In addition to being told they could not attend, the school was told it could not renew its lease with the Iowa City Marriott.
The school has been in the hotel since June, and has a contract to stay there until 2022.
The university said in a statement that its lease is “non-renewable,” and that it has been asked to meet with the hotel to see if the hotel has been able to negotiate an alternative lease.
University of Iowa spokesman Mike Stadler said he did not know how many students would be affected, but that he believes there are many.
“I don’t know how to quantify how many people that were impacted by that,” Stadlers said.
Students at Iowa State, where the Hawkeyes won the NCAA title in 2019, are not the only ones whose futures were uncertain.
At least seven Iowa City police officers were hurt during a riot that broke out at a Fairgrounds parking lot.
Iowa State students and their families were also told to evacuate the fairgrounds.
The state fair is the largest public event of the Iowa-Nebraska Challenge, which is the NCAA tournament.