The Eastern Oregon Trade and Event Center board awarded a contract for construction of the project’s rodeo arena Monday, but it doesn’t include restrooms or arena lighting.

Hendon Construction of Umatilla was the sole bidder at $3.9 million. Board chair Byron Smith said the $3.9 million meets the budget for the project but does not leave any extra money to add restrooms or lighting, which the board had separated out from the base bid after a first round of bidding produced bids well over $4 million and was rejected.

“My encouragement to the contractor would be to look for some value engineering opportunities,” he said.

Smith said at a previous meeting that if the money couldn’t be found for arena lighting, a “worst-case scenario” would be that the Farm-City Pro Rodeo becomes a daytime event in 2017. However, he clarified after Monday’s meeting that there were other options also being explored, including leasing lights or bringing over lights from the current rodeo arena as an interim measure until more money could be raised.

Despite concerns that the contract was awarded months behind the original schedule, Smith said he felt Hendon Construction would be “aggressive” in trying to meet the 2017 deadline and still had the ability to do so.

During the special meeting the board also made plans to attend a Hermiston Planning Commission meeting on Wednesday at 7 p.m. at city hall, when the commission will discuss EOTEC’s request for a variance on parking requirements.

As things stand now, fair week will be the only time that more than one of EOTEC’s main components (event center, barns and rodeo arena) can be used at the same time. The board plans to ask the commission to instead set an occupancy cap of 2,700 people for the entire project, meaning that a meeting in the event center could happen at the same time as a high school rodeo as long as the total combined attendance does not exceed 2,700 people.

The planning commission held a public hearing on the matter in July, but after concluding that the applicant had not presented enough evidence to justify the variance, continued the hearing to Wednesday in order to give the board more time to gather evidence.

Don Miller, who represents the Umatilla County Fair on the EOTEC board, said that the fair board was beginning to make plans to move all of its equipment and other possessions out of the current fairgrounds, which will be turned over to the Hermiston School District on Jan. 1. He said it was the fair board’s understanding that those items could be stored at the new fairgrounds, which means that the EOTEC board needs to start thinking about a secure storage location on the site.

The EOTEC board’s next regular meeting will be Sept. 30 at 7 a.m. in the EOTEC event center.

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Contact Jade McDowell at jmcdowell@eastoregonian.com or 541-564-4536.