The Brown County 4-H Fairgrounds will soon transform from a quiet, grassy green into a carnival full of rides, food booths, and people catching up with their neighbors.

The biggest change visitors will notice this year will be at the pavilion. Over the winter, the Brown County 4-H Fair Board spent about $15,000 to insulate the walls, put up siding, and add ceiling fans and more speakers, fair board President Mark Stargell said. Heaters also were installed to make the building more usable year-round.

New bleachers have been ordered for the fairgrounds grandstand, but they won’t be installed until after the fair, because the company also installs bleachers at schools during summer breaks, Stargell said. The cost, estimated at $100,000, will be covered by a $2 million capital improvement bond that the county is taking out.

Stargell said one of the complaints he received about the fair is a lack of seating, so the fair board is building benches to will be placed throughout the general carnival area, where “everybody congregates to eat and talk.”

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“We’re building so many, then we’ll see what happens and build more after that,” he said.

The fair’s demolition derby is not happening during carnival week this year, but on the Saturday before the midway opens, July 28. Last year, a rodeo happened the Saturday before. “The rodeo really wasn’t making us any money at all,” Stargell said.

“We’ve always had our demo derby during the week. People were saying they cannot get there. It’s hard for them to get off work, go home, get their stuff and basically make a round-trip to get there. I started exploring other avenues,” Stargell said.

“Our thoughts were if we do it on a Saturday night, that gives more people the chance to come from farther away and hopefully to bring in more of a crowd and more cars.”

For the first time in years, the derby’s last heat will be for women only, in a “powder puff” class. He said he hopes Brown County women show up to compete.

“The good ol’ Brown County girls, they like smashing them up. … I hope they show up and don’t let me down,” he said.

The demolition derby will have a class for the kids, too, with a Power Wheels demo before the big cars get out in the ring.

The Morgan County demolition derby will take place the following weekend, so Stargell said that would give drivers a week to get their cars going again to compete in that derby.

Since Monroe County has had its fair already this year, Morgan County will be the only nearby competitor during Brown County’s fair week.

Stargell hopes that means more people will visit the Brown County fair, but even then, it’s difficult to say for sure if more money will be coming in.

“You don’t know if it’s going to be hot, 100-degree weather, or rainy weather or cold weather. That has a lot to do with it, too,” he said.

Last year, the fair broke even. “We kind of held our own. We didn’t make money, but we didn’t lose money,” Stargell said.

“I always judge the (parking) field,” he continued. “We’d be slow in the grandstand, but the field would be full. It’s like everybody drove separate to eat at one of the stands or something. We had a field full of cars, but we didn’t have nobody in the grandstand. They would all be around the food booths.”

Even with lower attendance at the grandstand than what organizers would have wished to see, those events broke even, he said. “I mean, everything was about the same. We didn’t get rich, but we didn’t lose money either,” he said about grandstand events, like mud bogs and motocross.

Since the Indiana State Fair begins during Brown County’s fair week, Stargell said people may want to get there early in the week to see some of the award-winning 4-H exhibits that will be loaded up and taken to the state fair later in the week.

A new addition to the grandstand schedule this year is a concert with Indiana country musician Cody Ikerd. This is the first time a concert has taken place in the grandstand in at least 18 years, Stargell said.

Other counties, like Morgan and Monroe, hire a production company to book musical acts for their fairs, but that is not an option for Brown County, Stargell said.

“We can’t afford that. I’ve talked to them, looked into it, we do not have the seating capacity to be able to pay for that and make money. Even with the new bleachers, we can’t afford that unless we can figure out some way to put bleachers in the arena,” he said.

Stargell met Ikerd’s father and manager at an Indiana State Fair Convention in Indianapolis at the beginning of the year. “I was kind of looking for an act to put out in the arena and try to have a concert out there,” he said, adding that he had been talking about having a concert in the grandstand for four or five years.

Tickets for the Ikerd show are $6 for adults and $4 for ages 4 to 11. Children 3 and younger get in for free. “We adjusted our pricing to try to get people to come in,” Stargell said.

Ikerd won’t be the only musician performing at the fair this year, though. Live music will also be happening in the pavilion on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday nights.

Local musician Don Ford will perform Wednesday, rock ‘n’ roll band Chain Reaction will play on Thursday evening, and an open mic night is scheduled for Friday. All shows will go from 7 to 10 p.m.

To park at the fair will cost $2 each night of fair week July 30 to Aug. 5, and Saturday, July 28 for the demolition derby. Parking will be free on Sunday, July 29 for the Brown County Fair Queen/Princess Pageant.

Money collected from parking will go to Brown County Memorial Park Cemetery, which owns the land. Any extra money might to a local club or nonprofit organization. “We’re going to see what we take in and then probably make a donation to a club or local nonprofit, I’m not real sure yet. We’re going to see how the parking goes,” Stargell said.