Jason Peake, right, holds a question and answer group of some government officials during the third of four focus groups conducted at the UK Extension Office concerning the possible benefits of the possible agriculture center. Michael Crimmins/Glasgow News 1.
By MICHAEL CRIMMINS
Glasgow News 1
During the third of four focus groups, several governmental officials, both from Barren and Hart counties and personnel from the Cave City Tourist and Convention Center Commission, met to discuss the positives and negatives of the potential agriculture center in hopes of garnering funds from the state.
The agriculture center has been proposed by Barren County Judge-Executive Jamie Bewley Byrd along with a sportsplex. The approximately 70,000 sq. ft. center is eyed for Cave City and could even be connected to the Cave Area Conference Center.
While the sportsplex already had a feasibility study done last year, this focus group, which was attended by Byrd, Deputy Judge-Executive Garland Gilliam, Magistrate Tim Coomer, Tourist and Convention Center Director Jennifer McNett, Greg Davis, former center director, and Joe Choate, Hart County judge-executive, was an effort to discuss the positives and negatives that will then be summarized and sent to Frankfort.
“I think it’s a great idea,” Choate said. “The problem is just the funding.”
The question and answer “conversation” was lead by Jason Peake, a LaRue County native who is an agriculture professor at the University of Georgia. He had prepared a handful of questions in an attempt to elicit conversation.
According to the discussion the proposed center would enhance Cave City’s tourism, adding another draw to the area — other than Mammoth Cave National Park — which would also increase overnight stays and would increase transient room tax. The tax is used to fund the convention center.
According to McNett, the conference center is fully booked on the weekends, and said it would likely still book up if they had “twice the space.”
“If you were wanting to have something on Saturday night then it’s not going to happen,” McNett said. “We are so booked…I mean we have [reservations] all the way out till 2027.”
Currently, McNett said, there are five staffers at tourism and this addition would likely require at least to more full-time staffers with one having agricultural and/or marketing experience. Coomer said the center would likely have a board and a director overseeing the new building.
They briefly discussed the potential for the space outside of the agricultural realm before also touching on the potential of public-private sponsorships.
In the end, Scott Burks, a farmer involved in cattle and agricultural shows, summed the feelings of the group by quoting the 1989 movie Fields of Dreams.
“If you build it they will come,” Burks said. “If you build it right.”
Read more from the meeting that included farmers and members of the agriculture community here.
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