Jill Myatt is excited that chickens finally will have their own place to roost during the Baker County Fair.

Along with turkeys, geese, rabbits and other the other smaller animals that kids show at the annual event.

Construction is underway on a 4,700-square-foot addition on the east side of the Baker County Event Center at 2600 East St.

Although the small animal barn/multipurpose building won’t be ready for this year’s fair Aug. 3-9, Myatt is still eager to see progress on the structure this summer.

“We’re very, very excited,” said Myatt, who along with Becky Schuette is superintendent for the small animal barn at the fairgrounds.

“It’s a really great thing. Having a building that is temperature regulated, it’s going to make everybody’s life easier.”

The Baker County Board of Commissioners recently approved a $1.44 million contract with CB Construction of La Grande for the building.

Besides serving as a climate-controlled site for small animals during the fair, the structure will have a meeting room that can be used year-round, as well as storage for tables and chairs, said Mark Johnson, a former longtime member of the Baker Fair Board who now helps oversee construction projects made possible by a $2 million allocation to the fair from the Oregon Legislature in 2022.

“It’s a quite usable space,” Johnson said on Monday morning, May 12, as a crew worked on the building. “4-H leaders are pretty excited about finally having their own space. Those (small animal) programs are getting larger all the time.”

For the past few years, small animals were kept in the east side of the event center. Prior to that, the county rented a tent for the small animal exhibit.

That wasn’t sustainable, said county commissioner Michelle Kaseberg, who, like Johnson, is a former Fair Board member.

Fair officials considered multiple options, including building a small animal barn near Leo Adler Field, Kaseberg said.

But that site was formerly a sawdust pit, so crews would have had to do more excavation for a foundation.

Instead, officials chose to build on the east side of the event center and design a multipurpose building that could be used year-round, she said.

Johnson said the building is designed to make it easy for kids to bring in their animals. There will also be parking near the building.

Kaseberg said the county has used some of the $2 million state allocation to install new bleachers at the rodeo arena at the fairgrounds.

The county also received another $277,000 from the state, which was used to build new fencing at the arena.