Napa Valley Exposition is an oasis of solitude this weekend. Except for a few bingo games, the 31-acre fairgrounds is as quiet as a state park.

No crab feeds. No quinceañeras. No weddings. The aging exhibit halls sit empty.

This quietude pleases some people. At least the Expo hasn’t been turned into a tourist playground like downtown. And when August arrives, the summer fair will roll out as always.

For others, the silence is a sign of decrepitude, of opportunities lost. They see the fairgrounds as stuck in the past, oblivious to new needs of the community.

“There is no vision. There is no plan. There is no energy,” said Nancy Pridmore, a former Expo board member who is now president of the Friends of the Fair Foundation.

“There just doesn’t seem to be any leadership,” said Jack Hussey, another former fair director.

“We have a facility that is falling apart,” said Peter Chiarella, another ex-director. He laments today’s “dumpy look.”

In 1999, Pridmore, Hussey and Chiarella were members of a fair board pursuing a grand plan to make the Expo a centerpiece for downtown’s revitalization.

They hooked up with a national developer who sketched a plan to transform the Expo and adjacent properties with three hotels, a conference center, high-end retail and two parking garages. Animal facilities for fair time were squeezed into a corner.

The Expo would become a major tourist destination, while also providing upgraded meeting facilities that would be used year-round and at fair time by the community.

Before these plans could be tested in public hearings, the incoming administration of Gov. Gray Davis brought the process to a screeching halt. State officials questioned the adequacy of public input and accused fair manager Dorothy Lind of a conflict of interest.

Lind was later cleared of all allegations, but the ambitious redevelopment plan was effectively dead. Davis picked a new fair board that opted to pursue a more modest plant of incremental Expo improvements. Their first project, an upgrade of the RV park, will be done this spring.

“We’re taking small steps,” which is all the Expo can afford, said Joe Anderson, the Expo’s CEO who replaced Lind.

Low finances

The Expo is in financial straits, he said. The fairgrounds ran $75,000 in the red last year. Without a private partner to invest big dollars, there is no money for a major makeover.

“We have an aging facility,” Anderson said. “Many of the buildings are 40, 50, 60 years old. We have massive infrastructure problems creeping up on us.”

The Expo board is proceeding cautiously because the community wants it that way, director John Dickson said. There is no consensus in support of dramatic change, he said.

Napans are polarized, Dickson said. Those who embrace a bold transformation of the Expo are pitted against those who don’t want their Expo and summer fair messed with. The traditionalists want “as little privatization as possible,” he said.

Greg Rodeno, board president, said political inertia is grounded on some hard realities. Sitting in a flood zone, the fairgrounds has major physical constraints, he said.

When fair directors were dreaming big in 1999, the Napa River flood project was to be finished by now. Eight years later, flood protection is still years away.

Drainage from the eastern hills is another flood hazard — little recognized in 1999 — without a solution, Rodeno said. “It remains monumentally unclear where all this internal drainage will go,” he said.

The fact of the matter, Rodeno said, is that the late-’90s plan died a political death, but flooding and other infrastructure issues would have also proved fatal.

City officials aren’t so willing to let the Expo board off the hook. They are frustrated that so little is happening while the city launches a large redevelopment project to promote new uses for adjacent properties.

Given its proximity to downtown, the developing Oxbow District and the river, the fairgrounds is underused, said Cassandra Walker, the city’s economic development manager. Fair directors “are not accepting their responsibility,” she said.

Walker said it doesn’t make sense to devote 31 acres in the heart of town to the Napa Town and Country Fair. “To reserve it for something that takes place one week a year is a luxury we may not have in the future,” she said.

“I still think it’s a great conference center site. I still think it’s a great housing site,” Walker said. The fair could continue, but at other sites and perhaps in a revised form, she said.

On the move?

When directors entertained wholesale changes to the Expo in 1999, there was talk of moving the fair, or possibly the 4-H component, to Skyline Park or open land south of town.

Perhaps the fair could be turned into an urban festival, with events filling the planned Oxbow flood bypass channel that will be dry in the summer months, some said.

Pridmore, who now works part-time in real estate, said Napa might be better off if the Third Street site were sold to a private developer. “Why not get $50 million for the property and go out and do something spectacular?” she said.

“The 4-H people will crucify me for saying this, but I believe in the future we’ll need a real fairgrounds somewhere else,” she said.

Ray Sercu, a former fair director, said private redevelopment of the Expo still makes sense. “The fairgrounds wasn’t going anyplace and isn’t going anyplace,” he said. “Develop that thing.”

Anderson cautions that much more goes on at the Expo than the summer fair. The fair attracts 60,000 visitors — a number that has hardly changed in over a decade — while some 200,000 people attended other Expo events last year, he said.

The Expo has a five-day-a-week bingo program for local nonprofit groups. Nearly every weekend, buildings are rented for community events, including garden shows, political fundraisers and parties, he said.

Anderson conceded that some events, such as the Mustard Festival and the Chamber of Commerce Showcase, have moved to facilities with more modern amenities. The fair’s exhibit halls are behind the times, he said.

While the August fair continues to hold its own, it does not play as central a role in community life as it once did, most directors say. People have more entertainment options these days.

Yet Dickson sees no reason to panic and prematurely put the Expo into play for redevelopment. Downtown is undergoing major changes, with new hotels, commercial developments and the arrival of the flood project. Why not wait until some of this shakes out, then decide what role the Expo should play, he said.

Lame duck season

There is another significant factor to take into account, Dickson said. The Expo board is loaded with lame ducks from the Davis administration who have not been replaced or reappointed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Six of nine directors could be replaced any day by Schwarzenegger. In addition to Rodeno and Dickson, they are Myrna Abramowicz, Don Carr, Paul Dohring and Hope Lugo. Two vacancies also await appointment.

Does the public want a bunch of lame ducks marching in a new direction when they could all be gone tomorrow, Dickson asked.

Schwarzenegger has made only one appointment, Marjorie Preston, suggesting that the state-owned Expo doesn’t sit high on his to-do list, he said.

The fact that the composition of the fair board can change with each new governor was a factor behind the push in 1999 to put the Expo in the hands of a nonprofit group with local directors.

When the Davis administration rebuffed that approach, the Napa City Council asked the Expo board if the city, perhaps in partnership with Napa County, could take over the fairgrounds.

While that effort went nowhere, Napa remains interested in resuming talks, Walker said. “If the Expo needs some help, I think the city and county could be there to help them out,” she said.

Given the property’s flooding problems and the board’s lame duck complexion, Rodeno and Dickson think the Expo won’t be ready to try anything ambitious anytime soon. “I think the next five to eight years will tell the tale,” Dickson said.

Don Carr is a fair director with a private development background who has been a lame duck since his term expired in 2002. He supported the old development effort and now backs the more modest plan. “There is enough to hold my interest,” he said.

“If someone came along and waved a magic wand and the flood problem was solved ... you’d have developers coming up with all kinds of ideas,” he said. Until then, developers are taking a back seat and waiting, he said.

Since her brutal ouster, Lind has remained in Napa, but removed herself from fair politics. She married John Salmon, the Expo’s former development consultant, and became a consultant to the Napa Valley Economic Development Corp.

“The Expo staff has done a quality job of holding things together,” Lind said, but nothing much will change unless a source of money for improvements can be found.

Napans have two choices, she said. They can tax themselves to upgrade the Expo or they can bring in a private investment partner. “People want the Expo to be wonderful, but they don’t want to pay for it,” she said.

Lind said she still goes to the fair every August, taking her grandchildren. “For me it’s a real coming home place,” she said. “I have fun like everybody else.”