Business View Magazine | May/June 2022

103 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 9, ISSUE 5 EXPO CENTER OF TAYLOR COUNTY State 4-H Horse Show, along with some cutting horse shows and quarter horse shows.” Bonds continued to pass in Taylor County to provide much needed updates to the Expo Center. In 1996, a new outdoor covered arena, along with a new outdoor entertainment pavilion were built. According to Johnson, “They knocked down the big country hall and rebuilt it. Half of that building houses the Texas A & M AgriLife Extension Service. The entertainment pavilion is actually a big stage that is 40 feet wide by about 40 feet deep. For 20 years, it has served us well, having that covered pavilion and the horse barn. And then we would put dirt in the Coliseum to accommodate larger shows.” That method landed them the Texas High School Rodeo Finals in 1990 – an event they’ve hosted ever since. Johnson adds, “We would be hauling dirt in and out of the Coliseum. We’re a nonprofit organization and not funded by the county, the city, or by anybody. But the county was gracious enough to move that dirt back and forth for us on a regular basis, a process which is time consuming, costly, and causes damage to the facility.” Johnson has worked at the Expo Center since 1984, taking over as General Manager in 2009. Over the years, she was privy to a lot of blue sky discussions. She admits, “We spent some time thinking about what we wanted to do long- term with the facility. One of the things I heard most was that our horse stalls were spread out all over the facility. This made things difficult for horse events during inclement weather, particularly during the inevitable ice that comes each winter. It was just too cold and dangerous for the horses.” So, the planning began for a new horse barn. It took a while to get the designs and people in place to make it happen, but eventually, their vision took shape: a complex that could accommodate livestock and horses, along with another facility, like their Coliseum, with a dirt floor to alleviate the dirt transfer in