The Montgomery County Fair was awarded a donation of more than $1 million from Amazon for construction of a new food stand and open-air pavilion at the Montgomery County Fairgrounds.

The announcement was made on June 15 during a press conference at the fairgrounds. Amazon plans to invest $10 billion to build a state-of-the-art data project in Montgomery County that will create hundreds of full-time jobs, thousands of new construction jobs and millions of dollars of tax revenue.

The 150’x150’ open-air pavilion and food stand will serve as a community gathering and event space for the fairgrounds. It will accommodate fair activities, community events, fundraisers and educational programs.

Shannon Kellogg, Vice President of Public Policy for Amazon, said fair officials talked with Amazon representatives to share a vision of a new food stand facility that could serve as a long-lasting venue for the fair and community organizations.

“We learned a lot about how much the fairgrounds mean to Montgomery County,” Kellogg said. “We heard that loud and clear and repeatedly.”

Fair Secretary Chasity Lichtenberg said without the donation, it would have taken several more years of fundraising to get a brand new food stand.

“Over the past few years, we’ve held several fundraising efforts specifically to help fund a new food stand,” Lichtenberg said. “Two of our larger fundraisers included raffles for a Kawasaki Mule, and each year we’ve been intentional about budgeting and saving whenever possible. It’s difficult to put an exact fundraising total on it because the project has been funded through a combination of fundraisers, operational revenue and money the Board has set aside over several years. We had been making steady progress toward funding the project, but this donation allows us to complete it much sooner.”

Lichtenberg said the current food stand was last renovated in 1984.

“Prior to that it was just a screened-in area for the food stand,” she said. “We believe the Family Fun Center, formerly the Beer Garden, is at least that old, if not older and it will also be replaced as a part of this project.”

Lichtenberg said Amazon’s donation will allow fair officials to redirect funds that have been raised in the past years towards other fairgrounds projects that need repaired or improved.

“Some of those include replacing and upgrading fencing, improvements to the grandstands and constructing an entertainment pavilion where the beer tent currently resides,” Lichtenberg said. “The donation allows us to continue planning for those projects instead of using nearly all of our available funds on the new food stand. That said, our future priorities will ultimately depend on the final cost of the food stand. While we currently estimate the project will cost around $1 million, construction costs continue to fluctuate, so we’ll have a much clearer picture once the project is completed.”