There are big gaps among the food stands on Restaurant Row. A series of three or four adjacent vendor booths in the The Eatery building stand vacant behind floor-to-ceiling decorated curtains.
There’s no bustling and crowded Gianelli / Dinosaur Bar-B-Que stand at the edge of Chevy Court. A once busy corner of the Horticulture Building is quiet.
“It just seems empty,” said fairgoer Nancy Hinman while walking with her family down the long stretch of the New York State Fairgrounds along State Fair Boulevard. Most of the space in that area that has traditionally been occupied by food stands and other vendors is vacant.
“I still love the fair, but where are all the things that used to be here?” said Hinman, who comes to the fair each year from her home in northern Oswego County.
There are exceptions: The Expo Center, the largest building at the fair, has seemed significantly busier than in recent years with the Dinosaur Expedition exhibit that features life-size animatronic dinosaurs that move and roar. And several of the concerts at Suburban Park (formerly Chevy Park) have drawn record crowds.
A row of former food booths in The Eatery building at the New York State Fair are vacant and hidden by decorative curtains. (Don Cazentre)
The issue of the fair “seeming” to be empty has been around since 2016, after officials tore down the old grandstand and racetrack that occupied almost a quarter of the fairgrounds.
That created a much more wide open feel to the fair, even in the years before the Covid pandemic changed things. The 2019 fair set the all-time record for attendance and still felt less crowded than usual.
The renovations did, however, create a whole new food vendor area called Broadway, along with the Expo Center, the fair’s biggest building, which opened in 2018.
Many people complaining to syracuse.com in recent years say they believe the renovations and changes “ruined” the fair.
Then the 2020 fair was cancelled due to Covid, and the fairs since then have featured fewer vendors and lower attendance than the pre-pandemic period.
In the years before the pandemic, the fair typically had just under 400 total vendors, of which about 200 were food and drink stands, according to syracuse.com archives. The 2023 fair has 286 total vendors and 114 food and drink vendors. (The number of vendors is up slightly from the 103 in 2022).
Through Wednesday, Day 8 of the 2023 fair, attendance was 508,941, an increase from the 475,677 through that day in the 2022 fair, but still well below daily records set in the years 2017-2019. The all-time fair attendance record was set in 2019, when 1.3 million came through the gates.
“I know there are spaces available, and I hear people saying it feels empty,” said fair director Sean Hennessey, who has been overseeing the fairgrounds since 2022. “It’s a concern. But we are making progress and working to bring more variety, more attractions. And we know that will continue to bring more people to the fair.”
This space toward the west end of Restaurant Row at the New York State Fair has been occupied by vendor stands in the past. (Don Cazentre)
Hennessey has pointed to the challenges of coming back out of the pandemic and the lingering issue of vendors finding it difficult to hire enough staff. Many vendors have told syracuse.com they agree that it’s hard to get staff for the 13-day event that requires them to be open 11 hours a day.
But Hennessey also points back to the renovations that opened up huge new areas of the fairgrounds, along with orders from state officials that led to the spacing out of vendors due to safety concerns.
“A lot of times these gaps between vendors comes from the codes, which mean we must keep them further apart,” Hennessey said. The new codes are especially stringent for food vendors, he said.
On Restaurant Row, longtime vendor Joe Todisco of JJ’s took note of several empty spaces around his stand. He said he wishes more of those spaces were filled.
“You might say it means less competition for me, but really I’d like to have people in these spots,” he said. “It makes it seem more friendly and inviting. It would seem more like the fair with more vendors.”
This corner of Chevy Court at the New York State Fair was once occupied by the large and bustling Gianelli / Dinosaur Bar-B-Que stand. (Don Cazentre)
Despite the complaints about empty spaces, Hennessey said he’s also heard from fairgoers who are more comfortable with more wide-open feel of the grounds.
Two visitors to the 2023 fair during its opening week confirmed the mixed feelings.
Jim Strong and Chris Steadman, sporting matching SUNY Potsdam T-shirts, had different takes on the fair.
“I hate crowds, so this is actually nice,” Strong said. Steadman replied: “Yeah, but it’s so empty I wonder why we’re here.”
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Don Cazentre writes for NYup.com, syracuse.com and The Post-Standard. Reach him at dcazentre@nyup.com, or follow him at NYup.com, on Twitter or Facebook.