No fair is no fair for local economy

Pete Poe is pragmatic.

"It's time to move on, I guess," Pete told me as he discussed the decision last week to cancel the 2020 SEMO District Fair due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Pete has been the "face" of the fair for about 40 years. He is a past president of the SEMO District Fair Association and now volunteers as the fair's director of publicity and promotions.

"The health and safety of our workers and volunteers played a big factor," he said, not to mention the thousands of people who would have attended the fair, which was slated for the second week of September.

Held almost every year since 1853, the SEMO District Fair has been around longer than just about every other weeklong fair in the nation, and draws upward of 100,000 people to the Arena Park fairgrounds for fun, food and entertainment.

The fair typically generates hundreds of thousands of dollars thorough admissions, sponsorships, vendor fees and other revenue sources.

"Depending on the year, it's been somewhere around $750,000," Pete told me the other day. "A portion of that leaves town when the carnival leaves, a portion of it leaves when the entertainers leave, but a good portion of it stays here and turns over within the community."

The fair association helps support a dozen or so local organizations and not-for-profit groups, which, in turn, supply the fair with volunteer labor. Among them, Pete said, are organizations such as the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Adult & Teen Challenge, the Optimists, the Eagles, the American Legion and several schools.

"The cancellation impacts not just the fair, but the whole community," Pete said.

So what does the fair's cancellation mean to the local economy?

"It's difficult to calculate, but obviously it brings a lot of people here," said John Mehner, president of the Cape Girardeau Area Chamber of Commerce. "And some of those people go spend money other places, there's no doubt."

In most years, the fair association uses some of the fair revenue to maintain and upgrade the Arena Park fairgrounds.

"But this year we don't have any improvement projects scheduled," Pete said, "and that's because of the uncertainty of the times. We didn't know what our attendance would have been and what the revenue might have been, so we hesitated to commit money we didn't have."

For now, Pete says the fair board is looking ahead to 2021.

"We have some loose ends this year that need to be finalized, but we're starting to work on next year," he said.

And, if you want to mark your calendars now, the next SEMO District Fair is set for Sept. 11 to 18, 2021.

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Rob Rueseler & Associates' annual customer appreciation gathering at Cape Splash Family Aquatic Center, which was scheduled for Thursday this week, has been canceled due to COVID-19.

The event will be rescheduled, according to a note I received last week.

For more information, call (573) 334-5086.

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Although the Cape Girardeau County Public Health Center issued an emergency order last week requiring most people to wear face masks in "public spaces" throughout the county, several regional and national retail chains have recently followed suit and are also mandating face coverings for employees and customers at all their locations.

Among the businesses with locations in the Cape Girardeau area requiring face masks are American Eagle, Best Buy, CVS Pharmacy, Dollar Tree, Kohl's, Panera Bread, Sam's Club, Schnucks, Starbucks, Target, Verizon and Walmart.

Other national retailers that have instituted mandatory face mask rules include Apple stores, Costco, IKEA, Publix, Trader Joe's and Whole Foods.

The list will likely grow until the nation curbs the coronavirus infection rate.

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Sides Metal Products, headquartered on North Broadview Street in Cape Girardeau, is closing, according to the company's website.Jay Wolz

I learned late last week that after more than 30 years in business, Sides Metal Products Inc. is closing its doors.

According to a post on the company's website, www.sidesmetalproducts.com, the last day to bring in recyclables will be July 31 and all existing steel inventory will be "clearanced priced until all is sold."

The company, which has locations in Cape Girardeau and Perryville, Missouri, has been around since 1989, when William and Karen Sides purchased Pollack Hide and Fur Co. and Pollack Steel Supply Inc., renaming it Sides Steel Supply and Metal Recycling.

Initially, the business was near the intersection of Independence and Kingshighway, now the location of Southeast HealthPoint. In the mid-1990s, the business had relocated to North Broadview Street and a second location near the intersection of Giboney and Elm streets across from the former Leming Lumber Co.

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