As another major Butler County summer event is sunk by the coronavirus pandemic, the Big Butler Fair and Butler Farm Show are still holding firm.

“If we go July 3 and everyone else wusses out, this will be our best fair yet,” said Big Butler Fair vice president Ben Roenigk.

On Friday, the cancellation of the Moraine State Park Regatta, scheduled Aug. 1 and 2, was announced by the event's board of directors. It was the biggest event planned to mark the park's 50th anniversary celebration.

“We don't have the money to pull it off,” said Michael Hall, president of the regatta's board. “The government is telling us we can have an event with 25 people, and the regatta is over 25,000 (attendees).”

Big Butler Fair

The Big Butler Fair is slated a month before the regatta — July 3 to 9 — and Roenigk is expecting it to be the biggest yet.

Roenigk believes that the 100,000 to 130,000 people expected to attend the fair over the course of the weeklong event will have enough room to spread out over the 150-acre fairgrounds. There are no plans to change the vendor layout, which allocates 20-square-foot spots to each vender with electricity and water hookups.

“People don't think of everything,” Roenigk said. “We can't put food vendors in the middle of the parking lot because there's no water, no electric, no sewage. It's gotta stay the way it is.”

Butler Farm Show

Organizers of the 72nd Butler Farm Show are also keeping their scheduled dates — Aug. 10 to 15, according to Ken Laughlin, farm show board president.

However, organizers need the county to enter the green phase of the state's COVID-19 recovery plan to fully prepare for the show.

“We would have to know by mid-July at the very latest,” said Laughlin.

Laughlin estimates that the farm show takes about $300,000 to put on every year and will usually just break even, with any extra money funneling back into the show for the next year.

This year, the farm show is facing additional expenses connected with virus precautions.

“We are looking just at $5,000 to $6,000 in hand sanitizer to make it all work,” said Laughlin, stating that the cost of bulk hand sanitizer was $32 a gallon.

And that's not including organizers efforts to purchase bulk masks and bulk sanitizer for the grounds.

Regatta docked

This year the COVID-19 is playing havoc with event finances: sponsorship and fundraising issues are one of the main reasons for many event cancellations.

The regatta was one of the most recent casualties of lack of funding along with the Rodfather's Cruise-A-Palooza, Butler Fall Festival, East Brady Area Riverfest and the North Washington Rodeo, just to name a few.

“We were watching what other big events were doing for the summer. It's not a pretty picture what's out there,” said Hall, who has been on the board for the past 18 years and is very passionate about the regatta.

Hall said the regatta costs about $80,000 to $100,000 to stage. The rise of panic over the coronavirus that hit in February and March coincided with the regatta's usual timeline to begin fundraising efforts.

In addition, it lost most of its funding, which was provided by the Butler County Tourism & Convention Bureau, an organization struggling with its own economic repercussions as a result of COVID-19.

With tourism plummeting, funds generated through a tax on hotel stays have dried up. Jack Cohen, tourism bureau president, said the bureau has cut much of its staff.

“The impact tourism has had these past eight weeks is way over $10 million lost,” said Cohen.

If tourist travel stays depressed for the next year, Cohen believes the county will loses hundreds of millions of dollars of economic impact that comes from people traveling, stating in 2018 that tourism provided just under $600 million dollars of economic impact to the county.

“I don't know how a county could make up over $600 million in economic impact without tourism,” Cohen said.

Hall also sited lack of guidance for large events as another reason for the regatta's cancellation. The board spent months discussing the options.

“This is not a decision that came easily,” Hall said. The board eventually decided to go with a 50+1 anniversary regatta event in 2021.