'STAKES ARE HIGH'

Lebanon County Exposition Corp. expects to boost attendance at its expo center beyond its annual 200,000 visitors by doing more aggressive marketing.

The group also plans to take over the county's tourism promotion in the fall. County commissioners tentatively selected its proposal to set up

The local 4-H Club started the expo corporation about 35 years ago. The North Cornwall Township center was created to showcase animal competitions. The buildings have been added over the years.

Led by Dennis Grumbine, the former director of the Farm Show Complex, the expo center added a 22,500-square-foot building to its 70-acre complex last year. The center now has 50,000 square feet of space in five contiguous buildings and also dirt tracks for bike and car racing.

The corporation's board has discussed building a hotel, but it has not yet made a decision, said Grumbine, chief executive officer of Lebanon County Exposition Corp. He expects a sharp increase in attendance based on several contracts he is negotiating.

Whether the contracts. go through, Grumbine wants to make sure other businesses benefit from the 200,000 people that go to the expo center's events, such as the horse-drawn carriage auction held Aug. 6.

"If we take those 200,000 people and get (each of) them to spend $20 in Lebanon County, it will have a tremendous impact," Grumbine said.

Lebanon County commissioners expect local government officials to approve the Lebanon County Expo Corp. takeover of tourism promotion in a couple of months. County commissioners decided-to sever ties with the Hershey-Capital Region Visitors Bureau shortly after the bureau closed the Myerstown own visitors center in June. Bureau officials said it was not cost-effective to keep the office open for the approximately 4,000 people who visited the center each year.

County officials also were piqued because they said they did not get enough publicity for the area's bed and breakfasts and quirky historic sites, said Bill Carpenter, chairman of the county commissioners. Carpenter said the commissioners have adopted a measure that would turn over the county's hotel-tax revenue to the expo, center.

The next step is for supervisors in each of the 26 municipalities to vote. Municipalities representing 60 percent of the county's 124,000 residents must approve the measure for it to take effect. If the county doesn't get approval, the Hershey-Capital bureau will remain its tourism-promotion agency.

Carpenter said the commissioners picked the expo center over the Hershey-Capital bureau, the Lebanon Valley Chamber of Commerce and the Furnace Hills Country Project. The expo center stood out because it plans to give between $20,000 and $40,000 of its own budget to set up a Web site with links to local attractions and dedicate a fulltime employee to marketing the county.

Lebanon County collects about $94,000 annually in hotel taxes. About half of that money goes to the Hershey-Capital Region Visitors Bureau. The state also gives the bureau $175,000 to market all five counties, said Janis Schmees, executive director of the bureau.

If the municipalities do approve the commissioners' measure, the bureau would lose that $175,000 because it no longer would have five members. Lebanon would lose its share of that marketing money, Schmees said. "So, the stakes are high, for them and for us," Schmees said. The bureau represents Cumberland, Dauphin, Franklin, Lebanon and Perry counties.