OC Fair ambassadors to help with neighborhood issues
Orange County Fair officials are unveiling a new “neighborhood ambassador” program to help address residents’ concerns like parking infringements during the summertime event.
Costa Mesa’s Mesa del Mar and College Park neighborhoods, both adjacent to the 150-acre fairgrounds property, will each have two patroling ambassadors during the 125th annual fair, which runs from July 17 to Aug. 16.
Fairgrounds CEO Kathy Kramer said after meeting with residents of the areas that she tailored the program to meet their needs.
“[The ambassadors’] main goal is to interact with residents and provide a presence,” she said. “They’ll be another set of eyes, another set of boots in the neighborhood,” keeping watch for things like parking and littering problems.
The ambassadors will be paid fairgrounds employees, and they will wear bright, distinctive T-shirts and travel in electric carts.
Kramer stressed that the ambassadors are not a security team, and that although they will collaborate with police, they will serve more of a guest relations mission. The ambassadors will be the easiest point of contact for residents, she said.
Fair officials also plan to monitor sound levels coming from the Pacific Amphitheatre, the outdoor concert venue that, decades ago, was called a noisy nuisance by many in College Park and Mesa del Mar. The venue has since been redesigned and no sound problems have been reported in the last two years, fair officials said.
The public will have a chance to learn about the ambassador program from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. April 28 at the fairgrounds administration building, off Arlington Drive near Fairview Road. Questions can also be sent to [email protected].
[For the record, 9:50 a.m. April 10: An earlier version of this story stated the wrong public meeting time. The actual time is 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. April 28.]
