When first reached by the Source for a phone interview, newly hired Deschutes County Fair and Expo Director Jeff Curtis was in the process of having his car shipped from Alaska down to the lower 48. Once he and his vehicle arrive, plenty more logistics will be waiting for Curtis in Central Oregon.
Curtis has called Oregon home before – he led the Portland Rose Festival Foundation as CEO for 18 years. Though he was “passionate” about working with the Rose Festival, part of him wanted to switch things up.
“You don’t even know what your top gear is professionally when you’re doing the same thing for so long,” Curtis said. “I felt like I could do something different, like there’s another gear in Jeff Curtis.”
After taking time to figure out what that something different might be, Curtis accepted an offer far from Portland, becoming CEO of the Alaska State Fair.
“I absolutely found a completely different gear up here,” he told the Source. “Running the state fair, I am in the heart of what’s really important to Alaskans, which is celebration of the community at the same time as a focus on livestock, agriculture and entertainment… That’s the essence of fairs.”
Per a press release, the fair achieved “back-to-back overall attendance records” under Curtis’ leadership, “along with consecutive record-setting attendance” for the fair’s special concert events. “At the same time,” Curtis added, “I provided leadership on this 300-acre property, like, ‘What do we need to invest in or raise money for,’ or ‘What’s our next capital project?’”
Former Deschutes County Fair and Expo Director Geoff Hinds stepped down last fall after a six-year stint, accepting a new position in Wyoming. As reported by the Source in December, Hinds led the fair to record attendance; in 2023, the fairgrounds drew nearly a million visitors and its events generated an “estimated local economic impact” of $104,208,600, per former Interim Fair and Expo Director Erik Kropp, who works as the deputy county administrator.
However, a five-year budget forecast from a Deschutes County Budget Committee Meeting suggested that the Fair and Expo Center could soon be in the red, with increasing annual expenditures making a financial deficit possible in 2027.
Back in Oregon, somewhere new
As a previous resident of Oregon, Curtis has checked out the middle part of the state before: “Some of my best family memories are with my three daughters, camping in Central Oregon.” When he announced his new job, he got an unexpectedly warm welcome. “A lot of people said, ‘Great to have you back,’ even though I’m not going to Portland, I’m going to Redmond,” Curtis laughed.
He believes his “variety of relationships in Oregon and in the Bend-Redmond area” will come in handy. “It’s not a foreign community to me at all, I just haven’t lived there before,” he said. “But I get to live there now.”
One physical factor of the Deschutes County Fair drew Curtis in. “What is notable and attractive to me is the fairgrounds itself – the property. It’s a premier fairgrounds site, really well laid out,” he said. “It’s obvious that it’s a very successful piece of property. It draws great events… my job will be to steward that and grow that, and part of that growth will be looking at master plans and studies that [Deschutes County] is engaged in which are still in process, but developing the next phase of what that fairground property looks like.”
Asked about the fairgrounds’ financial forecast, Curtis said, “I’ve seen the balance sheets and have a perspective of where they are,” but declined to comment further until he gets to Redmond and gets to work.
“It’s a really strong fair and my job will be to continue to improve and grow it,” Curtis said. “My job is to jump in, to embrace the community, to take good care of that piece of property and be a good financial steward.”
This article appears in the Source February 12, 2026.
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