Fair attendance down again, but still better than it used to be

Thursday was another down day for N.C. State Fair attendance compared to last year, but fair officials have begun to take a longer view.

The attendance Thursday was 80,094, or about 8,700 less than last year. It was sixth day out of seven that fair attendance has lagged last year.

But today’s attendance announcement from state Department of Agriculture points out that the 20-year average attendance for Thursday is 70,504, so this year’s number looks pretty good by comparison.

Overall, 523,686 people had attended the fair through Thursday, down from 550,992 last year. This year’s total includes an extra half a day last Thursday that was supposed to help push total fair attendance to a new record.

Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler said bad weather, high gas prices and the souring economy have made this year challenging.

“I’m still hopeful that we’ll make up the numbers this weekend, when we’re supposed to have sunshine and the 70s,” Troxler said. “We’re probably not going to break last year’s record [858,611] but we should do better than 2006 [785,956] that was our lowest number for the last five years. My guess is we’ll end up somewhere in the middle of the five year average."