NC State Fair’s elimination of restaurant row leaves a bitter taste in vendors’ mouths

Horace Johnson takes a break from the frenetic late-lunch pace of the Apex Lion’s Club kitchen to talk about what he figures will be its last year at the North Carolina State Fair.

But his voice breaks and his eyes fill with tears, and not because of the spices in the Cajun Daily Special.

“You see we have a line of people coming in here,” Johnson says. “They’re coming to say goodbye.”

Johnson himself was hoping to ease out of the volunteer job he accepted more than two decades ago running the restaurant, which sometimes feels like months’ worth of work compressed into the fair’s 11-day run. He just didn’t expect it to end this way.

“We got a letter,” Johnson said, as did all the other tenants of what generations of fair patrons have referred to as “restaurant row” or “church row” — a group of food vendors in a permanent building on the fairgrounds. The state has also referred to it at the lunch stand or the concession building.

“We are pleased to announce that the N.C. State Fair is constructing a new building that we are currently calling the Midway Events Center,” the letter began.

Happy news, to be sure, said Johnson and others who have worked in the existing block, wood and corrugated-metal building for decades.

The structure, which may actually be more than one structure joined together, is thought to have been built in the 1960s or before to house the kitchens and dining areas of what were the earliest food vendors at the fair: churches, civic groups and small family-owned operations. The building, which replaced earlier structures that served the same purpose beginning in the 1930s, is basically a long, enclosed shed partitioned into seven spaces.

Everyone knows restaurant row

Anyone who has been to the fair has walked past restaurant row, eaten at one of its kitchens or perched for just a minute to rest their feet at the picnic tables outside. It’s near Dorton Arena and, when the fair is in town, between the two midways.

The rest of the year, it’s used by vendors at The Raleigh Market, the weekend flea market on the fairgrounds.

Replacing the building has long been on the fairgrounds’ to-do list. The state Department of Administration’s capital improvement plan for the years 2007 to 2013 noted that:

▪ The restaurant row buildings are old and unattractive.

▪ The roofs leak.

▪ There are no fire alarm or sprinkler systems.

▪ There is no insulation, and the only heat available is from liquid propane units.

▪ The buildings have become impossible to maintain.

Every year, Johnson said, he and other operators thought this would be the year fairgrounds’ management announced the state would tear down restaurant row and build its replacement.

According to the capital improvement plan, “The new two-story building (36,000 square feet) will meet current needs and add space for future needs. The first floor should offer a much improved rental space for the flea market and would serve as a food service area during the annual state fair. The second floor would provide some small to medium conference space and some office space.”

Construction was to be done in 2008, according to the capital improvement plan, in time for that year’s fair.

Bandwidth land sale brought cash

But the money wasn’t available until now, said State Fair Manager Kent Yelverton. Funding to demolish the old building and plan its replacement is coming from the 2020 sale of 40 acres of land the state owned at Edwards Mill and Reedy Creek roads to Bandwidth Inc., which has built a new global headquarters there.

Bandwidth paid about $30 million for the land.

In this year’s state budget passed in September, the legislature approved $25.5 million for “State Fair Lunch Facility Renovation.”

Longtime operators say they always understood that when the new structure was completed, it would be their new home for a week and a half every October.

But in the letter sent to vendors, Yelverton wrote, “Kitchen facilities for fair time use only are not planned in the new building.

“The decision to end this era did not come without a lot of contemplation,” he said. “Lunch stand vendors have provided fairgoers a place to get inside, sit down and enjoy good food. I count myself among the many long-term customers.”

The letter directed vendors to remove all their equipment from the space at the end of this year’s fair, and invited them to apply for the 2024 fair along with all other vendors, including a proposal on how they would continue their operations there without the building.

Who comes to fair for office space?

In an interview Tuesday, Yelverton said the lunch stand vendors have enjoyed a long run and have provided a great service to fairgoers. Their annual rent, he said, was charged at the same rate as other food vendors though others have had to provide their own trucks or tent setups.

Rent increased by about 20% for vendors at the fair this year, the first increase since at least 2016, Yelverton said.

Yelverton said the plan for the new building still is a two-story structure with some office space upstairs, but he wouldn’t say how the ground floor would be used except to say it would help the fair meet its mission, which includes educating people about North Carolina agriculture and providing facilities that can be used year-round.

“Office space?” asked David Hughes of Raleigh, who was chilling with his mom, Jean, at a folding table in the Lion’s Club restaurant late Tuesday. “Who comes to the State Fair to look at office space? We come for the nostalgia.”

Yelverton didn’t immediately respond Wednesday to an email request for information on how the plan changed to eliminate the food vendors’ use of the new building.

Meantime, Johnson said the Apex Lion’s Club may have its best State Fair ever, financially. Long-time patrons are making sure to stop in for a meal and to sign the “Fairwell” page. They’re beckoned by a recording of Johnson’s voice almost singing his famous refrain about “Chawk-let pah, lee-mone pah” and other pie flavors for sale.

“It’s all for a good cause,” he reminds them. “‘Cause you’re hongry.”

After paying expenses to run the restaurant, which begins with breakfast when the fair opens and ends with supper and hot coffee and cocoa as the closing fireworks fly, the club uses the money it raises to help pay for vision tests and glasses for those who can’t afford them; run a food pantry; support the Governor Morehead School for the Blind; and other community activities.

A familiar spot on the State Fair map

Hunnicutt’s restaurant, one of the Lion’s Club’s neighbors, has been in business at the fair since the late 1930s, family members say. They too are grieving over the decision to give them the boot, just as their fifth generation has gotten old enough to participate.

Ronnie Buchanan of Apex runs the restaurant now with his two sisters. Their grandparents started it, and their mother, Betty, hand-made tens of thousands of biscuits for its appreciative customers.

Like Johnson, Ronnie Buchanan wonders if the restaurant could survive a move to a new location — if it can even get a spot next year — with the cost of a tent or a trailer and the loss of its familiar place on the State Fair map.

Betty will be 90 next year and isn’t in the kitchen anymore, but Buchanan said people who come to the restaurant still feel a little like they’re going to his mama’s house to eat.

It’s something special, he said, and worth preserving.

“When we open those doors on Thursday, for 10 days we know we’re going to see so many old friends and neighbors, even people that work out there that sell candied apples and things,” Buchanan said. “They come, and they will not eat anywhere else.

“It is really just like a big community, but you only see it for 10 days a year.”