
“The staff we had onsite were amazing. They were polite, professional, and always willing to help. They made a meaningful impact on the success of our event.”

TempGuru · Pomona, CA · Local planning guide
A 500-acre fairground that throws Southern California's month-long county fair, then rents itself out five hundred more times a year, beside a downtown that kept its 1930s movie palace.
Scroll. It gets specific.01The Ground Truth
One week the job is the LA County Fair, a month-long run each May across Fairplex's 500-acre campus, and the next it is a weekend gem show, a dog expo, or a hotel banquet on the same grounds, one of more than 500 year-round events the nonprofit campus hosts by its own count. Three miles south, downtown Pomona runs the opposite scale: the Fox Theater, an AEG-programmed movie palace on Garey Avenue, and The Glass House, an all-ages room in the Arts Colony, keep a walkable music block busy year round. The swing between those extremes is the Pomona staffing problem.
Pomona does not appear in the UC Berkeley Labor Center's inventory of US city and county minimum-wage ordinances, while Los Angeles and Pasadena, both within a 30-mile radius, do, so the same program's wage math changes when a date moves from Fairplex into the LA basin.
02The Map
Fairplex at 1101 West McKinley Avenue is a 500-acre nonprofit campus, a 501(c)5 in a public-private partnership with Los Angeles County, and it behaves like a small city: exhibition halls, grounds, the NHRA Motorsports Museum, and the on-site Sheraton Fairplex hotel and conference center. Each May it becomes the LA County Fair, the month-long anchor that wrapped its 2026 run in early June by the campus's own account and has already posted May 6 to 31 for 2027. The other eleven months, the same grounds host the 500-plus events that keep crews working: expos, festivals, banquets, and shows that each use a different slice of the acreage.
Downtown, the scale drops and the frequency rises. The Fox Theater Pomona at 301 South Garey Avenue runs touring acts under AEG Presents and opens its stage to local artists and nonprofits through no-fee Community Nights. Two blocks away, The Glass House at 200 West Second Street anchors the Arts Colony with all-ages shows. Between the two, downtown Pomona works like a small music district: frequent shows, fast turnarounds, and crowd profiles that range from all-ages hardcore matinees to seated touring dates.
"The hard part of a fairgrounds market isn't the fair. It's April and June, when the same campus needs a crew of six on Tuesday and sixty on Saturday."Local planning note
Fairplex, West McKinley Avenue. A 500-acre campus with its own hotel, museum, and exhibition halls. Non-fair events each occupy a different footprint, so every order starts with which gates, which halls, and which parking fields are actually in play that weekend.
LA County Fair, each May. The month-long anchor event. Staffing it is a rotation problem: day after day of gates, halls, and grounds work where the roster design, not the headcount, decides whether the seventh-day premium is planned or accidental.
Fox Theater Pomona, Garey Avenue. A restored downtown movie palace programmed by AEG Presents, with Community Nights lending the stage to local artists and nonprofits. Touring-show turnarounds and a historic interior that crews treat as part of the job.
The Glass House and the Arts Colony. An all-ages room on Second Street in a gallery-and-loft district. Fast load-ins, young crowds, and Second Street foot traffic, club-scale work two blocks from the county-scale campus's shadow.
03What We Staff
Fairgrounds and expo events lead: the fair's month-long run and the year-round calendar of trade shows, festivals, and consumer expos across Fairplex's halls and grounds. Concerts and nightlife follow on the downtown block, Fox marquee nights and Glass House all-ages shows with quick turnarounds.
Hotel and conference programs run through the on-site Sheraton and the campus's meeting spaces. Private and cultural celebrations, weddings, quinceañeras, and community festivals across one of the San Gabriel Valley's oldest cities, fill halls and parks, and brand activations ride the fair's foot traffic and the downtown Arts Colony's second-Saturday rhythm.
06The Rate
Published Pomona role rows are planning inputs, not a quote. Accepted terms control duties, the minimum shift, rate, and approved charges.
| Role | Rate | Min shift |
|---|---|---|
| General labor / setup | $38–$44/hr | 4 hrs |
| Registration | $38–$44/hr | 4 hrs |
| Guest services / ushers | $38–$44/hr | 4 hrs |
| Team leads / supervisors | $48–$54/hr | 4 hrs |
| Brand ambassadors | $54.50–$61.50/hr | 4 hrs |
| Specialized (bar, AV) | $58.50–$74.50/hr | 4 hrs |
09A Sample Plan
This illustrative scenario, not a historical TempGuru order, models Consumer expo weekend on the fairgrounds at Fairplex exhibition halls, McKinley Ave in Pomona, CA, 12,000 across the weekend planned attendees, over 3 days. The planning roster totals 28 workers across 9 General labor, 5 Registration, 7 Guest services, 2 Team leads, 5 Sunday strike crew.
Start from setup and work forward. 9 handle load-in, 5 handle registration's arrival window, 2 leads split the rest at roughly 13 each, 28 billable in all, staggered so the lot never fills before the doors do.
Fairplex is a 500-acre campus at 1101 West McKinley Avenue, home of the LA County Fair and more than 500 year-round events, operated by a nonprofit 501(c)5 in a public-private partnership with Los Angeles County, with the NHRA Motorsports Museum and the Sheraton Fairplex hotel and conference center on the grounds.
The LA County Fair runs in May, wrapped its 2026 edition by early June per Fairplex's own press announcement, and has published May 6 to 31 as its 2027 dates, the month that defines Pomona's staffing peak.
The Fox Theater Pomona at 301 South Garey Avenue operates as a concert venue under AEG Presents and runs a Community Nights program offering the stage with no rental fee to local artists, nonprofits, and community groups, anchoring downtown Pomona's touring-show calendar.
The Glass House at 200 West Second Street is an all-ages live music venue in downtown Pomona's Arts Colony, giving the city a club-scale room two blocks deep in the gallery district and a steady weekly counterpoint to the fairgrounds' campus-scale calendar.

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