Orange County and Costa Mesa city officials have placed a joint bid on the Orange County Fairgrounds.
The deadline for submitting bids to the state has been extended to 5 p.m. Monday. Officials wouldn’t reveal a dollar amount on the joint offer.
People will find that out only when bids on the state-owned property are opened at a live auction at the fairgrounds. As of last week, according to city and state officials, that event was to happen at 10 a.m. Thursday, at 88 Fair Drive.
The joint bid, which was submitted to the state Tuesday, is just one of many moves in an ongoing saga of the city and county’s efforts to preserve those 150 acres in Costa Mesa for use as a fair and exposition center.
“No one understands yet the enormity of this undertaking,” said City Manager Allan Roeder.
California’s Department of General Services put the fairgrounds up for sale in October, after the state Assembly authorized its sale in July as part of a plan to liquidate high-valued state owned properties to help close the state’s budget deficit. On Friday, which was the original deadline for submitting initial bids, the department’s offices were closed because of state-mandated furloughs.
Although several state-owned properties were proposed for the auction block by Schwarzenegger, the Orange County fairgrounds was the only one put up for sale. State officials hope to bring in between $90 million and $180 million.
There’s no guarantee that the county and city together will place a winning bid. Although the state will not announce who put in offers on the fairgrounds until the day of the auction, at least two other parties have made their intentions known.
The Orange County Fair and Exhibit Center Foundation, formed by directors of the OC Fair & Event Center, the fair’s governing board, has indicated that it would bid for it and run the property as a nonprofit organization, much like the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds in Pomona. And Richard Julian, one of two partners at Lake Forest-based Advanced Real Estate Services, has also expressed his intention to bid.
But even if the county and city come out as the highest bidders, much remains unclear about how they plan to run the fairground site. According to the memorandum of understanding between the county and the city, the county is the lead agent representing both parties in a prospective joint purchase.
