The Sugar Cane Festival and Fair Association board members took steps this past week to ensure people and vehicles going to the fair are free from wet and/or muddy parking places. 

They moved the fair from the Louisiana PepperPlex, home of the Iberia Soccer Association and Evangeline Little League, to the site of the former Iberia Parish Co-Op on Sugar Mill Road. That’s a giant step in the right direction. Fair-goers should welcome the change.

“For two years in a row, we had the fair set up at the PepperPlex and we had light showers on Friday and Saturday afternoons. It really affected the attendance because the parking was located on a pasture. If you were passing more than twice in the same place it caused the land to be slippery and muddy,” Ronny Gonsoulin said last week in The Daily Iberian.

Gonsoulin, board president, said the new venue has limestone and concrete surfaces. The site has been getting cleaned and spruced up the past few weeks by volunteers.

He and other board members are anxious to see the attendance numbers at this year’s fair, a major staple of the annual event that begins Sept. 20 and ends Sept. 24.

“The Sugar Festival is a community event. We may be the people doing the setting up and negotiating but this is a fair that’s for the community and it’s a way for us to show off New Iberia and our industry,” he said.

“We’re also bringing it closer to New Iberia, We are anxious to see how it’s going to work out but we think it’s going to be a big plus.”

“We needed better parking. The area at the PepperPlex, when it rains it gets muddy and that’s an issue in September,” board member Lisa Lourde said.

The ISA’s schedule of matches and practices for the soccer teams has been interrupted each year since the fair was moved to the PepperPlex. The rides and rest of the fair arrived early in the week each time and fields were closed for the duration of the event.

Board members also decided to move the time of the Royalty Parade, the grand finale, from 2 p.m. to 1 p.m., Gonsoulin said.

“We’re trying to make it better. We want to avoid afternoon showers,” he said.

They are thinking ahead and putting the people who attend the fair and parades first.

DON SHOOPMAN

SENIOR NEWS EDITOR