By DOUG GRAVES
Ohio Correspondent

CINCINNATI, Ohio — Mention Hamilton County in Ohio and most think of metropolitan Cincinnati, with its urban sprawl. All 88 counties still boast green space, but each year Hamilton County is losing its pastureland to development of all kinds.

The Hamilton County Fair is alive and well. In fact, it just celebrated its 154th anniversary earlier this month. But this fair is no longer looked at in an agricultural kind of way and attendance has declined in recent years. A record low of 9,000 attended last year’s fair.

“People said they wanted something different. We’re changing everything,” said Dick Ingle, fair manager. “This year we had better rides, new events and a focus on urban gardening. We’re trying to change things. We’ve pushed real hard for the urban gardener and now our vegetable show has doubled in size since last year. We’re going green.”

Using urban gardeners with backyard gardens, that is. But there are fewer fields in this county that contain corn, soybeans or wheat. On the upside, there are now 17 garden clubs in the county; on the downside, there are just seven 4-H clubs.

Betsy Dematteo, program assistant with Hamilton County 4-H Family and Consumer Sciences, is spearheading the effort to get residents involved in 4-H in all parts of the county, to include those involving farm animals.

“Our goal is to double the number of clubs we now have and we’re attempting to recruit parents to help with various clubs,” Dematteo said.

Hamilton County Fair Board members want to keep theirs an agricultural fair and they’re hoping to make it more appealing to the masses. Fair attendance has fallen 61 percent since 2004, to 9,000 last year.

By contrast, the Butler County Fair attracted 91,000 patrons last season, the Clermont County Fair drew 70,000 and the Boone County Fair in northern Kentucky attracted about 35,000.

Talk has been to move the fair to a more rural part of the county, but those talks have been ongoing the past five years.

“The western part of Hamilton County is still green, especially the area near Harrison,” Ingle said, “but things aren’t like they used to be.”

Hamilton County includes 407 squares miles of land, with just 10 percent in crops. Forty-one percent of the land is residential or commercial. There are just 390 farms in the county, on 30,000 acres. By comparison, in adjacent Butler County to the north, there are 1,010 farms on 145,000 acres.

Hamilton County commissioners have created a task force to revive the fair and thus far there have been many changes, like a first-ever opening day parade, the return of a tractor pull, bigger and better rides, more games and food vendors and a free day for daycare centers and church groups.

One of the objectives of the task force is to highlight its county as a green and urban gardening county with many backyard gardens. The group is hoping that rebranding the county could help change public perception about what the fair is and can provide.

“When you think of this fair you certainly don’t think of agriculture any more,” said Tina Arnold, who has attended this fair the past 25 years. “It’s embedded in the heart of Cincinnati, it’s not in a very safe neighborhood and the buildings are old and falling apart. Moving it to a more rural part of the county might help, but still wouldn’t attract any more farm animals to this county.”