OXFORD – Fund raising is underway to build a large community hall on the Oxford County Fair property.

About $50,000 has been pledged to date for the $375,000 project, the brainchild of Oxford County Fair Association member Suzanne Grover.

“It will be a community hall with New England warmth,” Grover said Tuesday. A preliminary plan shows an 80-foot-by-160-foot building to be built on the fairgrounds property at a location yet to be determined.

“Even though it’s going to sit on the fairgrounds it will be a community building,” Grover said. “It will be a basic, yet classy and functional community hall,” with a main floor, a stage, a wood floor, and a pleasant and functional kitchen, she said.

A friend of the fair, Patricia Valeriani, said, “There is a great need in this community for such a facility. It’s very difficult” to hold large gatherings in the Oxford Hills because of the lack of suitable facilities.

Grover said the building will be designed to accommodate a large variety of events, including conventions, dances, weddings and meetings of large non-profit organizations. It could accommodate the annual awards dinners of the Oxford Hills Chamber of Commerce and the Growth Council of Oxford Hills. With dividers, the center could serve the needs of smaller gatherings as well.

“The idea is to create a community center that is affordable as well as accessible to the whole community,” Valeriani said. Plays and other performances could be staged at the center, she said. The stage would be capable of being removed to accommodate gatherings as large as 400 people, she said.

Grover said she is optimistic that a “significant amount” of the needed funds will be raised by March 15, through donations from individuals and businesses in the community.

“If we get the funds, we’d like to break ground by April,” Grover said. The building hopefully would be ready for use at fair time in September as an exhibition hall, she said.

Grover isn’t the least bit daunted by the challenge that lies ahead in making the community center a reality this year.

“We put a racetrack in in nine months, and we didn’t even know what we were doing,” she said, referring to the harness racing track completed in time for exhibition races at last year’s fair.

Grover said a community center suitable for large gatherings and a variety of uses will “enhance the community, help the fair and bring the community and fair together as closer partners.”