Fair Officials Want Event to Be Based at Hansen Dam : Entertainment: An area congressman says the plan would take land needed for picnic areas and playing fields.

Three years after being evicted from its longtime home in Northridge, the San Fernando Valley Fair is trying to put down permanent roots at the Hansen Dam Recreation Area.

Fair officials want to build spacious new facilities in the dam’s vast flood-control basin, where city and federal officials are planning two new recreational lakes, sports fields and campgrounds.

But Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City), a key force in efforts to revitalize the sprawling, 1,450-acre recreation area, is pressuring fair officials to redesign their plans, saying an early site proposal would eat up prime land that should be used for public picnic areas and playing fields.

One fair consultant, however, said the site is the only one that could support the annual event.

The skirmish has erupted as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which owns the dam, is set to begin designing a 15-acre swimming lake to replace once-popular Holiday Lake, which shrank over the years to a muddy pond as a result of silt and sediment washing down from nearby mountains.

The fair has been without a permanent home since it was evicted from its former headquarters at Devonshire Downs to make room for a development planned by Cal State Northridge, which owns the property.

In the meantime, the fair has been spending more than $100,000 a year to put up and tear down temporary exhibit halls, bandstands and other structures, said Ted Nauman, a fair consultant.

Fair officials recently supplied preliminary drawings detailing the site they want at the dam to elected officials, including Berman and City Councilman Ernani Bernardi, who represent the dam area near Lake View Terrace.

A copy of the drawings shows the 58-acre site at the north end of the Hansen flood-control basin, near where Foothill Boulevard passes beneath the Foothill Freeway.

The drawings show four large indoor halls grouped around a large, grassy circle that Nauman said would be used for country-Western and big-band concerts. The buildings would house livestock, crafts and other traditional fair exhibits, he said, and would be fenced off from the rest of the recreation area.

Fair officials also proposed building a youth center across Foothill Boulevard from the main fair complex. Nauman said that facility could be used by 4-H, Boy and Girl Scouts and other community groups for free, although it would be run by fair officials.

Berman said he does not oppose the fair’s being held at the dam on a permanent, annual basis, adding that a recent public opinion survey by his office indicated that many of his constituents want the fair at that site.

But he said he believes the land sought by fair officials would be better used for public basketball and tennis courts and picnic areas, rather than for enclosed exhibit halls.

“If it’s all taken up by big buildings, then it raises real questions about whether we’re using it to let the largest number of people get recreational value out of it,” he said.

Berman said he asked fair officials to “go back to the drawing board” and redesign the complex to allay his concerns.

An aide to Councilman Bernardi said the lawmaker has seen the drawings but prefers to reserve comment until fair officials make a formal proposal to him.

Under a master plan for the recreation area awaiting approval by the Corps of Engineers, most “high-intensity” recreation facilities are to be located in the northern portion of the dam’s basin, where flooding risks are deemed lowest.

State Sen. Alan Robbins (D-Van Nuys), the fair’s longtime political godfather, asked the Corps of Engineers last year to add the fair to a list in the master plan of permissible recreation facilities, but they consented only to write in a category for “special events,” which could include the fair.

Nauman emphasized that the site drawings, which he produced, are strictly preliminary. But he said the site that fair officials want is the only parcel at the dam “that could support the fair.”

“None of the other parcels meet the size” or traffic circulation specifications outlined in a 1986 report suggesting how a permanent fairground should be built, he said.

Nauman said he could not discuss how or if the fair may rearrange its plans, and other fair officials could not be reached for comment Friday.

Nauman said he did not know how much the new fairground would cost to build. But he said the fair has accumulated $3 million in a capital-needs account and is eligible for another $10 million from the state, which governs county fairs.

The state money would come from revenue generated from oil-drilling leases on state-owned tidelands, said Teri Burns, an aide to Robbins. The lawmaker sponsored a 1984 bill earmarking a portion of those proceeds for the fair, she said.