Planners are already thinking about new events to bring even more people to next year's Black Hills Stock Show & Rodeo and, nearly as important, new places for those people to park.

Although crowds were good on the weekends of the 2008 stock show, particularly on the final Saturday, attendance was up and down on the weekdays, according to Brian Maliske, general manager of the Rushmore Plaza Civic Center.

"This whole run has been strange for us," Maliske said after the show ended. He said, based on concession sales, the first Saturday's crowds were up over last year's first Saturday. The first Sunday was flat, Tuesday was up, and Wednesday and Thursday were down. The last Friday and Saturday were up.

Maliske and his staff, along with officials of the Central States Fair Inc., which manages the non-pro rodeo part of the stock show, already are looking for events they might add, particularly with the new arena addition scheduled to be finished by the next year's show.

Both Maliske and Ron Jeffries, general manager of the Central States Fair, want to come up with more events that draw a different crowd.

"We've got to look for ways to help spread that crowd out over the whole run," Jeffries said after this year's show ended. "I think there's some entertainment we'll look at to expand the crowd."

Jeffries, Maliske and Sutton Rodeos, which produces the pro rodeo events, will attempt to balance the events, so similar activities aren't competing.

"But, if you want the show to grow, we'll have to have multiple events at the same time," Jeffries said.

Although Jeffries will be glad to have extra space in the new addition next year, he's worried about where the extra people will park.

"If we'd have had 5,000 more people at this facility yesterday, we'd seriously have had a parking problem," Jeffries said Sunday. "If you add 5,000 seats to the facility, you need to pick up parking spaces."

Many people who travel to Denver for the National Western Stock Show say parking here is a piece of cake compared with Denver. There are shuttle buses to haul people from the parking lots to the civic center and between the civic center and the fairgrounds event center.

But, on weekend days when the civic center crowd swells to more than 50,000, the extra parking lots on Fifth Street and at Central High School are nearly full.

Jeffries said the city should explore buying some vacant lots on North Street across from the civic center for more parking.

Maliske said three major approaches have been floated for more parking:

- Extending the Fifth Street parking lot on adjacent land, to add 505 spaces. Estimated cost: $750,000.

- Adding tiered parking on the hill between the civic center and North Street, adding 400 to 450 spaces. With retaining walls, that project would range from $2.5 million to $3 million, Maliske said.

- A parking ramp, with 550-600 more spaces. Maliske said cost could range from $14 million to $17 million. "That one's so cost prohibitive, the city council would have to step in to do something there," he said.

Even with the loss of 133 spaces to the new arena, adding another 500 stalls on Fifth Street would result in more than 4,400 parking spaces, Maliske said.

Dates for next year's stock show are Jan. 30-Feb. 8. That means no overlap with the National Western in Denver (Jan. 10-25, 2009). It also means the Super Bowl, on Feb. 1, will land on the first weekend of the stock show, instead of the second.

Contact Steve Miller at 394-8417 or steve.miller@rapidcityjournal.com