Clore Center won't stage wine fair in 2010

PROSSER -- The pipes are in place and construction is about to commence, but it looks like the Walter Clore Wine and Culinary Center won't be host for this year's Prosser Wine & Food Fair.

After spending 26 of its first 27 years at Art Fiker Stadium, the fair was uprooted last year and moved to the Washington State University Prosser Irrigated Agriculture Research and Extension Center off Bunn Road a couple of miles outside town.

The event was supposed to move to the Clore Center's outdoor facility this year but likely will remain on the WSU Prosser grounds until 2011.

"It's 99.785 (percent), from what I've heard, that it's going to be (at WSU)," said Jim Milne, executive director of the Prosser Chamber of Commerce.

The decision to stay at WSU Prosser doesn't mean the Clore Center's completion date is off-track.

About $500,000 has been spent on water and sewer lines, electricity, parking lots, lighting and landscaping, mostly since the October site dedication.

"You can definitely see stuff on the surface," said Kathy Corliss, the center's director of administration. "We have all the overhead lighting up, and we've put grass sod outdoors."

"We're ready to build," she added.

The main building is to include a tasting room, retail shop, demonstration kitchen amphitheater, classrooms, multipurpose banquet room, conference room and offices. Outdoors will be interpretive vineyards and gardens, demonstration areas and a 2,200-square-foot event facility.

Marv Kinney, Port of Benton special projects director, said construction of the outdoor facility should begin this spring and be finished in July, in time for the Aug. 14 Prosser Wine & Food Fair.

He said the center is being developed in three phases. First, the infrastructure; second, the outdoor building; and third, the main 15,000-square-foot building.

Kinney said the main building should be done in 2012, "if everything goes right."

The Clore Center originally was expected to cost about $14 million but was scaled back to about $6.7 million. Corliss declined to cite a current estimate, but said the overall cost has been reduced further.

"I would say there are all kinds of factors," she said. "I would say definitely the economy and what the (wine) industry can bear."

Corliss said other aspects of the center also may be scaled back. Port of Benton and Clore Center officials are working to secure a $2 million grant from the federal Economic Development Administration.

A capital campaign has raised about $1.5 million, and another $2 million is committed from the state Department of Commerce, she said.