LEBANON, OH ‒ At the Warren County Fair, which starts July 20, people will eat funnel cakes, go on rides, enter alpacas and pigs in contests, and cheer on racing horses.
The 94-acre site where these agricultural festivities will take place, though, has been a source of tension and political strife in this GOP-controlled Ohio county for months.
Debate over a possible sale of the fairgrounds made its way into campaign squabbles among Republican commissioner candidates in this suburban Cincinnati county. A local state representative drafted a bill, then withdrew it. The three-person board of commissioners questioned whether it was even legal.
Ultimately, the legal debates and differing visions for the Warren County Fairgrounds thwarted efforts by the city of Lebanon to buy the fairgrounds from Warren County earlier this year.
Terminated talks have left the future of the embattled, county-owned fairgrounds in “flux,” one commissioner said, while the leader of the board that operates the grounds said he is “very hopeful” about its future.
Fight over fairgrounds got political
In 2025, Warren County entered talks to sell the fairgrounds to Lebanon, the county seat of 22,000 people known for its quaint downtown. But negotiations ultimately failed between Lebanon and the Warren County Agricultural Society, which operates the fairgrounds, Lebanon Mayor Mark Messer said. As part of the sale, Lebanon would have had to enter a long-term lease with the society.
The president of the society, county commissioners and the mayor all mentioned the debated legality of the sale ‒ whether it was legal under Ohio law for the county to sell the fairgrounds to the city. Lebanon has no plans to pursue another purchase agreement, Messer said.
Residents were against the sale, especially Lebanon’s proposal to redevelop some of the land for townhomes, Warren County Commissioner Tom Grossmann said.
“I wasn’t necessarily for it or against it,” Messer said about the townhomes, noting that the space could also have been redeveloped for commercial or retail use. “I was primarily for just making sure that there was a sustainable model for the property for the long term ‒ for the next 50 years.”
Grossmann opposed the fairgrounds sale ‒ and Lebanon’s plan to put “high-density housing” there ‒ in a campaign ad when he ran against Messer in the Republican primary for Warren County commissioner.
In the ad, Grossmann accused Lebanon and Messer of launching a “quiet campaign” to buy the fairgrounds. MS Consultants, Inc., a Columbus-based engineering and architectural firm, sent its proposed master plan for the fairgrounds to Lebanon’s city manager in June 2024, an email obtained by The Enquirer shows. The city approached county commissioners about buying the property in March 2025.
Lebanon council member Matt Sellers called Grossmann’s accusations “flat out lies” in a May Facebook post.
Grossmann beat Messer in the primary, which was a sign voters were opposed to the sale, Grossmann told The Enquirer. The $4.25 million sale was a “bad deal financially” for the county, he added. The county’s event center at the fairgrounds was built for $3.4 million.
Beyond the mixed-use district, a master plan Lebanon presented to the public in February also included redeveloped park space, a new horse arena and updated campgrounds.
“The goal primarily was to bring the property up to a standard where it could be used year-round and leased and rented, and benefit everybody in the county and also the city,” Messer said.
A split on the board of commissioners
Commissioner Dave Young said he was open to selling the grounds to Lebanon. He also suggested building new fairgrounds at a more rural county-owned site that could be activated more often throughout the year.
“The 4-H program is like the Minor Leagues of getting people into the agricultural business and making it sustainable,” Young said, adding that agriculture is important to Warren County’s economy. “I think it’s a really, really great program that we should support. But again, do we have to have it at that location? In my opinion, that’s not a definitive yes.”
Shannon Jones, Warren County’s third commissioner, did not respond to The Enquirer’s emailed questions about the purchase negotiations.
The current site has been plagued with problems for years. Some of those issues have included code violations, a horse-boarding program in crisis, and a barn fire in 2009 that killed two employees and dozens of horses.
“I have a long history with that place and, honestly, very little of it has been positive,” said Young, who’s been a commissioner since 2005. “It has not been a smooth relationship over the last few decades.”
A possibly illegal sale
There was also a dispute over the legality of the sale. The fairgrounds are owned by the county but operated by the Warren County Agricultural Society.
“If the county wants to sell that property to someone else, in my opinion, they have that legal right to do it,” Messer said. “But the city of Lebanon I don’t think right now, or in the future, has an appetite for that.”
Grossmann believes the sale would have been illegal.
Under Ohio law, agricultural societies can sell fairgrounds in order to purchase another site or if the land is unfit for use.
The Enquirer asked Lebanon’s city attorney whether it was legal for commissioners to sell the land to Lebanon in this case, but did not receive a reply. Bruce McGary, an assistant with the Warren County Prosecutor’s Office, declined to answer whether the sale would have been legal or not.
Ohio Rep. Adam Mathews, whose district includes Lebanon, drafted a bill to amend the law that would allow agricultural societies to sell fairgrounds for other reasons, too, and require that new fairgrounds owners continue to hold a county fair there.
A Substack article accused the bill of making fairground sales less controlled and accused Mathews of colluding with Messer to help Lebanon purchase Warren County’s fairgrounds.
Mathews said critics misread the bill. He ended up scrapping the legislation after talking with the Ohio Farm Bureau and Ohio Fair Managers Association and realizing the amendments weren’t necessary, he said.
Future in ‘flux.’ New president is ‘hopeful’
The stalled deal means the fairgrounds’ future ownership is now “in flux,” Young said. But the commissioner said the agricultural society’s 11-person board has added several new members in the past year, and those members say they’ll do things differently.
Chris Lutmer, president of the society’s executive committee since August, echoed that pledge. Lutmer said the society is now leaning more heavily on volunteers and has “straightened out” financial bookkeeping, “so we don’t go back to where we were.”
The group raised over $100,000 in sponsorships for this year’s fair, more than triple the typical amount of past years, Lutmer said. Volunteers, like a group put together by the Warren County GOP, has helped paint buildings and clean.
Lutmer said the community support makes him “very hopeful” about the agricultural society’s and the fairgrounds’ future.
“I feel we have the right people to make it happen,” he said. “It’s all about the kids and the education, and making it better for everybody. We really want to make a difference.”
“There is going to have to be community investment at some level because we know what it looks like when there isn’t, and that’s what brought the county and the city and the fair board to the point that it did a year-and-a-half ago,” Mayor Messer said. “We know what it looks like to ignore the space and to ignore what’s going on.”
Going to the fair?
The fair runs July 20 to 25 from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. Tickets are $12 Monday through Wednesday, $15 Thursday through Saturday, and free for children 2 and under. The week is full of events, contests and entertainment. Learn more at warrencountyfairohio.org.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Legal debate, politics put Warren County Fairgrounds in ‘flux’
Reporting by Victoria Moorwood, Cincinnati Enquirer / Cincinnati Enquirer
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Victoria Moorwood, Cincinnati Enquirer | USA TODAY Network
