The Best Seats
In The House

The fall season brings a lot of things including changing leaves, blossoming pumpkin patches and, of course, fall fairs. For many small communities across North America, these annual festivals and fairs are put on by local agricultural societies and offer their local communities a great opportunity to celebrate the fall harvest season.

With a rich history, many of these agricultural societies were established back in the late 1800s and are celebrating centennial anniversaries or greater. Having seen the changes over the decades first hand, many of these organizations have grown in size and are always looking to improve seating solutions for annual visitors. Whether this means adding additional seating or replacing existing and outdated grandstands, each spring and summer season, our phone rings with calls for help from ag societies looking to improve their seating situation in one way or another.

This year was no exception and one of those calls came from the good folks at the Perth and District Agricultural Society in eastern Ontario. Ahead of this year’s fair, in which the society is celebrating their 177th year anniversary, key stakeholders came to us looking for a new, fully code-compliant bleacher for this year’s installment of their annual fair.

As is the case with many agricultural societies, organizers with the Perth and District Agricultural Society learned that their current bleachers were no longer code compliant and at the same time, were looking to increase capacity to house growing crowds at the popular Perth Fair.

Our sales and design team worked closely with key stakeholders and eventually agreed upon a new 10-row, 40 foot long bleacher that would include two barrier-free accessible notch-outs along with a centre aisle complete with handrails. This design is suitable for all ages while making additional allowances that enable those such as senior citizens to safely navigate the seating structure and find their seat. 

In total, this new bleacher has a net seating capacity of 214, plus the four additional barrier-free seats. As talks progressed, the agricultural society decided that they liked the design so much that they decided to double their order to include two of these beautiful bleachers. The plan was to place these two large seating structures side-by-side and have the ability to seat over 400 people for the 2024 installment of the fair.

 After plans and drawings were approved, the installation took place this past summer, well in advance of the popular fair season slated for the end of August. Our trained installers wasted no time installing these new bleachers on a compacted gravel pad by using our HDPE sleepers for the underside of each stringer, saving the client the added cost of a concrete pad.

The bleachers were completed with plenty of time for fair organizers to put their energy and effort into the events that have made this fair a fan favorite for nearly 200 years. 

Without anything left to complete, there was not much else to say other than “Bring on the Demolition Derby!”