With so many buildings, the fairgrounds can hold up to four events at once, Cater said, or a group could start with dinner in one building, then move to another to finish with an employee meeting or team-building activity.
In November, Varsity Communications held its Bay Area Golf Show at the fairgrounds for the ninth year in a row, said Kirk Tourtillotte, vice president and show owner.
Besides the Tri-Valley region’s having a “spectacular” golfer demographic, the fairgrounds is “a value-price property to hold our event,” he said.
“Everybody knows where the fairgrounds [are], and it’s easy access off the I-680,” Tourtillotte said. “For an event like ours, it’s a very good fit because it’s affordable and because it has great recognition.”
The CVB also partnered with the Bay Area Golf Show in 2012 to put on a food and wine festival next door to cross-promote the consumer golf expo, Sarabia-Mason said. Tourtillotte said the partnership worked well, and he hopes to continue to build up the wine side to turn both events into a golf-and-wine weekend.
“[The region] is a really good fit for what we’re doing, and working with the tourism board is great. We’re excited about our partnership with them,” Tourtillotte said.
Read Phillips, owner of Beets Hospitality Group, which operates two event venues in Pleasanton, had spent 25 years as an offsite caterer in the region when, by “total fluke,” she met a developer who planned to build a winery and event venue. Phillips was all in.
Beets’ Palm Event Center in the Vineyard opened in 2004. The winery estate has an 8,000-square-foot ballroom, a 2,000-square-foot meeting room and a patio that overlooks the vineyards surrounding the property.
A few years later, the same developer wanted to do it again. He approached Phillips about building another winery event venue less than a mile from the Palm Event Center.
“We were successful with the first, and we knew we could make the second property better by taking what we had learned and applying it there,” Phillips said.
The Casa Real at Ruby Hill Winery opened in 2008. The venue includes the 9,000-square-foot Grand Salon and three smaller meeting rooms ranging from 580 to 2,000 square feet. Because of that, the Casa Real attracts events that need more breakout space, Phillips said.
“What’s really nice about having two locations is that we flip corporate clients from one to the next,” Phillips said. “This year they are, perhaps, doing their holiday party at one; next year they’ll do their business meeting in October at the other, so it doesn’t feel stale.”
