In May of 2022 Chef Arran Stark of Jefferson Healthcare visited the Jefferson County Fairgrounds looking for a way to offer temporary space for the Hospital’s kitchen while giving to the community a new, valuable asset.

The Fairgrounds will be the new home of Jefferson Healthcare’s kitchen starting in March of this year while a new state of the art kitchen is built at their Sheridan St. location. Why the Fairgrounds? It’s not necessarily because it’s the easiest. Arran Stark saw that Jefferson Healthcare’s current kitchen equipment could have a second chance at life as a modern, fully equipped commercial kitchen available for the county and its residents. He saw that this new kitchen could become a teaching kitchen, perhaps in concert with 4-H, and that it had the opportunity to serve as a training ground for area youth as they launch careers or go on to higher education in the culinary arts.

For the Fairgrounds, it’s a $500k capital project that just dropped in our laps. Yes, there will be the displacement for about 18 months of a few yearly events that happen in the Erickson building, but after that Jefferson Healthcare will hand the keys back to the Fair Association and the people of Jefferson County. Hopefully Arran will stay with us to teach, or remain the kitchen manager.

Everyone at Jefferson Healthcare has been so pleasant to work with, professional, and offered a spirit of this being good for the community.

We will have much more to say on this project. Once taken full control of the space, it will be used 7 days a week to make food for hospital staff and patients.

Thank you Jefferson Healthcare!