This year’s ‘Iolani Fair looked a little different from past years. This was due to ongoing construction of the Arrillaga Center. This year’s ‘Iolani Fair faced significant layout and menu changes. With less space to work with, especially for cooking and food areas, organizers had to come up with new ways to compensate for the items that were lost. Fair director Mrs. Cathy Ohta said that the main challenge was trying to fit as many of the usual offerings in the space provided. Two of the biggest changes that happened this year due to space constraints were the malasadas turning into mochisadas and various different booths being relocated.
With the construction of the Arrillaga Center in full blast, Maddison A. (Mochi) ’26 said, “The main impact that we talked about the most is the size of fairgrounds, so we had to move around things.” Some of this included making adjustments to the layout while still trying to keep as much as possible from previous years, along with having to limit the number of rides at the fair to only seven.
Another point of change was having the games tent split into smaller tents because they couldn’t fill the whole left field with tents for the games anymore. As a result, games were spread across the fairgrounds to better use the available space. These two main changes were made because of the space constraint.
The malasadas are always a popular pick for all fairgoers but with the demolition of the students center earlier last year, finding storage for the dough to rise became a challenge. When asked, Mochi said, “The malasadas were affected. So I’ve been told that the reason why we’re not doing malasadas again is because there’s not enough storage to allow them to rise and to make it fluffier, so we’re doing mochisadas instead.” According to Mrs Ohta the reason they switched over to mochisadas was because they are easier to make without the use of a large kitchen which was formerly the students center. Mrs Ohta also said, “The mochisadas have been very popular already.” They sold over 400 dozen (5000 pieces) during Fat Tuesday when they had tested out the recipe.
Multiple changes have occured this fair due to the construction. Such as the available space to put tents and booths in along with the food offerings. With the limited kitchen space some of the food/gourmet offerings have changed to include new additions to the menu. Even though the construction played a major role in the changes of the fair this year, through the fair committee’s adaptive thinking and the meticulous planning and management from the Fair office, the construction was not able to hinder another successful ‘Iolani Fair.
