By Andrew Edwards
Staff Writer
The Kirkpatrick Agricultural Arena has been a staple of the Autauga County community for nearly 30 years, hosting events such as motocross, horse shows and circuses.
When the coronavirus first began affecting businesses and facilities in the area over a year ago, many people started to panic.
Not Kirkpatrick Arena manager, Lee Pittman.
“It’s not to say that I wasn’t worried at all, because it did seem like a serious issue, but this arena is so big, and we usually don’t reach total capacity. I knew that closing events down entirely probably wouldn’t happened because people aren’t typically elbow to elbow anyway.”
Pittman’s comments came to be true, as the arena never found itself to be completely closed throughout the past year. That doesn’t mean that there weren’t some struggles along the way.
“While we carried on for the most part, we did have a few big events that had to be cancelled. We have a 2-3 ring circus that happens every six months, and that typically holds around 800-1,200 people. That would have been way too many people for us to handle. We also had to cancel our New Year’s Eve party and Farm-City Day,” Pittman explained.
But for the most part, Kirkpatrick Arena has soldiered on, in most part due to the way that the majority of their events are run.
“We call all of our shows and gatherings here “spectator events” which basically means that you can just walk in and out whenever you want to. That’s why the capacity was never an issue because you might have one group of people here at one time, and an entirely different group of people here another time,” Pittman said.
Some of the “spectator events” that happened during the winter, the arena’s busiest time of the year, were a dog agility show, team roping, barrel racing, motocross, a national remote control car racing tournament.
“Most of our events take place from around 9 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., so unless you’re a huge fan of team roping, you don’t have to stay for the whole time,” Pittman laughed.
The large square footage of the building, combined with the fact that most spectators shuffle in and out, ultimately helped Kirkpatrick Arena survive and otherwise tumultuous year.
“We have a lot people come to us and thanking us for continuing our events this year, and we’re very much aware that people are dying to do something outside of their homes. We’ve just been blessed to be able to continue to hold, for the most part, our regularly scheduled events,” Pittman said.
Most events are free to the general public, and for those who want more information about everything upcoming, please visit https://www.autaugaco.org/Default.asp?ID=234&pg=R+H+Kirkpatrick+Agricultural+Pavilion?ID=234&pg=R+H+Kirkpatrick+Agricultural+Pavilion
