FARM-CITY PRO RODEO
Mercantile building will house museum
New building
provides
more room
for storage,
souvenirs
By Jayati
Ramakrishnan
Staff Writer
Staff photo by Gary L. West
A
long with the new
venue, visitors can
expect to see some
changes with the mercan-
tile area at the Farm-City
Pro Rodeo — even if all
the planned features are
not quite ready to go for
this year’s event.
“Eventually, the room
adjacent to the mercan-
tile area will be a mu-
David Bothum (right), board member and co-founder
of the Farm-City Pro Rodeo, measures construction
material for the mercantile building at the new rodeo
arena at EOTEC.
seum,” said Jon Gill, a
board member for the
rodeo. “It probably won’t
be complete for this year,
but that’s the intention.”
The museum will
showcase the history of
the rodeo, which is enter-
ing its 30th year.
“We don’t even know
exactly what we’ll have in
there yet,” Gill said. “It’ll
probably be old photos
and archives. It’s some-
thing we’re trying to fig-
ure out.”
“The mercantile build-
ing itself has three or four
functions,” Gill said. “It’s
not going to house people,
so to speak. But the area
facing the crowd will be
the mercantile area, sell-
ing t-shirts and ball caps.”
The north-facing mer-
chandise section will have
no outside entrance, and
will be larger than the
merchandise area at the
old fairgrounds.
The east side of the
building will feature a
bar for Chute 8 Whis-
key, named for Farm-
City’s competition venue,
and being used at rodeos
around the West. The bar
will have a walk-in cooler,
and drinks will be pumped
in through glycol pipes to
keep them cold.
“Everything east of the
mercantile area will be
Chute 8,” Gill said.
The south side of the
building will serve as a
loading dock and storage
area that will be utilized
throughout the year, and
the west side, a hospitali-
ty area for sponsors with a
kitchen.
Gill said the board and
construction crews are
busy trying to get the area
ready for the rodeo, and
are there every evening.
“Basically, just the
structure of the building is
going to change,” he said.
“The facade will have dif-
ferent features, but the in-
side, the inner workings
will be the same.”
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