The first fair and rodeo at the new Eastern Oregon Trade and Event Center grounds has come and gone, and board members are now turning their attention to operating and maintaining the facility.

Board members of both the Umatilla County Fair and Farm-City Pro Rodeo spoke at Friday’s first EOTEC board meeting since those events ended. Both said that overall, their events went well.

“The board didn’t meet … because they were worried about getting it completed, not having an event,” said Dennis Barnett of the rodeo board. “After months of working on the facility, the event went off without a hitch.”

Dan Dorran, an outgoing fair board member and a member of the EOTEC board, said seeing the facility in operation was a dream come true.

“I have thousands of new friends I never would have had before, and probably as many enemies,” he said. “Dreams don’t come this big very often.”

Despite their overall satisfaction with the first event at the new location, EOTEC board members quickly shifted focus. Their next major job will be to find a permanent manager to run the facility. Nate Rivera, the superintendent of Hermiston Energy Services, agreed earlier this month to serve as interim manager of EOTEC for up to six months — but one of his main goals will be finding a candidate to replace him full-time.

Rivera updated the board on some tasks he’s been working on since the fair and rodeo ended.

“This week, we had a management company on site to do a facility assessment walk-through,” he said. “We did a two-hour tour. They saw potential at the entire site.”

Rivera said the company, VenuWorks (which also operates the Three Rivers Convention Center in Kennewick), told him the first objective for management should be revenue creation.

“They said we need to get something at this facility that makes money every day,” Rivera said.

The most likely way to do that, they suggested, is by developing the RV park on the EOTEC site.

But Rivera also told the board that they need to solidify their own objectives before bringing in a general manager.

“As we transition from a construction board to an operations board, we have to set vision and expectations,” he said. “Until we answer some of those questions, it’s going to be difficult for someone to take this journey with us.”

Rivera requested direction from the board on several operations issues. He suggested hiring a team from MLD Services for maintenance and janitorial services, and that the board enter a contract with them from now until the end of October. He also asked for approval on booking an event — a horse sale — at the facility using existing pricing structures from the fair, and requested that the board approve planting trees in the swells at the north end of the fairgrounds parking lot so they don’t have to be hand-watered. The board unanimously approved Rivera’s requests.

The next EOTEC meeting is 7 a.m. on Friday, Sept. 29.