Photo by Knoxville Raceway

The Marion County Fair Board has been given the go-ahead to install new elevators and a fully handicap bathroom with a cost of $2 million.

Jason Reed, General Manager at the Knoxville Raceway, tells KNIA/KRLS News about the expansion, “We’ve been talking about it for a couple of years, the need for another elevator just with the crowd we have and people needing assistance to get up to the top of the grandstand and it’s always a backlog at the Nationals specifically. But every week we have those issues so we’ve been talking about it and putting together a plan working with the board and just making out a plan. So now we are able to announce we will not be ready in 2023 but we will start construction later this year and be ready for the race season in 2024. We’ll be adding two new elevators and a fully handicapped accessible bathroom on floor two level on the back of the grandstand. We’ll actually be adding a bathroom up there for everyone in the grandstand instead of coming down to ground level.”

The board has been working with Neumann Brothers out of Des Moines on the project. Construction looks to begin after the Late Model Nationals in September.