News Alert: Fairgrounds sale price is $2 million

In a big win for Calistoga, the Napa County Board of
Supervisors has agreed to sell the Fairgrounds to the city
for $2 million, a fraction of the $16 million the City
Council agreed to pay in 2020.

The purchase contract has yet to be approved by either
agency, although supervisors are expected to take up the
issue at their Jan. 23 meeting.

According to sources close to the negotiations who were
not authorized to speak publicly about the transaction,
there is just one condition to the agreement: Should the
city later decide to sell off a piece of the 71-acre property
to a private developer, the county would have the first
right to acquire that land.

“That’s it,” one of the sources said. “Otherwise, it’s a
straightforward agreement.”

The council also has apparently privately agreed to
revitalize the three main historic uses at the Fairgrounds –
the RV park, the golf course and the racetrack.
Expectations are that if the deal is adopted by supervisors,
the City Council will quickly follow suit.

The pending agreement represents a significant political
win for Calistoga Mayor Donald Williams, who led the
city’s negotiation team, as well as first-term Supervisor
Anne Cottrell, whose district includes Calistoga.

The $2 million sale price is one that many Calistoga
residents have argued was fair because it represents the
amount the county originally paid for the property in the
1930s, adjusted for inflation. Advocates of that price
argued that one arm of government shouldn’t profit from
the sale of land to another government entity.

If finalized as described, the deal would bring an end to a
decades-long dilemma over the future of the Fairgrounds,
which began to fall into financial hardships in 2010 when
the Legislature pulled some $220,000 in annual funding
for its operations.

The Calistoga property served for more than 80 years as
the official host of the Napa County Fair, with its last
event coming in 2019.