Giving Hoosier families five more days — including an extra weekend — to enjoy the Indiana State Fair turned out to be a good move for fair organizers.

Sunday, they closed out the state’s longest fair — it lasted 17 days — by recording the fair’s biggest-ever attendance, shattering a 5-year-old record and inching close to the million mark.

Final attendance figures will be released today, but the fair had already broken the 2004 record by Saturday night. With one day remaining, it had a 16-day total of 905,645, topping the 2004 12-day total of 900,365.

With Sunday’s crowded conditions, fair officials think the final tally could be 965,000 or more.

“This is the attendance range we anticipated,” State Fair Executive Director Cindy Hoye said in a news release. “Most importantly, all 4-H families received the full State Fair experience.”

Expanding the fair to 17 days from 12 was the best way to cope with the trend of Indiana school districts pushing up their start dates to the second week of August. Many 4-H youths would have had a difficult time showing their animals and still making it to school.

Michele Schultz, who lives on the Northeastside of Indianapolis, said Sunday that the extra days allowed her and 9-year-old son Max to enjoy the fair in comfort.

“I kept waiting and waiting for a cool day because it was so beastly hot most of the time,” Schultz said. “I really lucked out today.”

In essence, the fair got under way a week earlier. The 4-H community was able to enjoy other aspects of the fair, and visitors got an extra weekend to see the animals, the projects and the midway rides.

“In addition to offsetting the early start of schools, (this) is why we extended the fair in the first place,” Hoye said. “Now we’ll go back and evaluate the operation to see how we can make it even better next year.”

Although attendance was up, Andy Klotz, publicity director for the fair, said that many new promotions and discounts helped drive that figure. Free admission tickets from an Indianapolis Star coupon were redeemed in record numbers over two Wednesdays and two Thursdays. The cost of a regular fair ticket was $8 this year.

Visitors also bought more than 1,600 of the new coupon books, each costing $5, available in the gift shop.

Food vendors were happy to see the efforts made to boost attendance.

“I think having the three weekends was beneficial to us,” said John Barto, the owner of two large fair booths and a food vendor who remains open year-round for other events at the fairgrounds.

“It allowed a lot of people to flex their schedule. With school starting earlier, I knew it was going to be tough for us. But I have not been disappointed.”

On the other hand, Bonnie Schulz, 35, who operated a novelty booth for the Murat Shriners, said her business was down from a year ago.

“It seemed like the people who came in the extra days weren’t new people but those who were coming for a second time, and they weren’t spending as much,” said Schulz, who sold inflatable animals, toy swords and other items for children.

“You could just look around and see people whose arms were hanging; they weren’t carrying anything.”

Fair officials said they were not sure how the public would respond to the new schedule, which included moving around a few traditional events, such as the giant hot-air balloon race that did not open the fair on a Wednesday morning — as it had for many years — but was moved to a Saturday morning.

But it also allowed for some new things, such as school field trips, which drew more than 1,000 kids over three days last week, and a highly popular “$2 Tuesday” when visitors could buy sample-size items at most food booths for $2 apiece — a deal that fair officials think was responsible for drawing thousands more visitors.

State Fair officials have committed to the 17-day format for at least three years. Hoye said a planning committee will evaluate the change before deciding whether to make it permanent.

The 2010 Indiana State Fair is set for Aug. 6-22.

The numbers

[chart]
|Date|Attendance|
|Aug. 7|60,097|
|Aug. 8|64,315|
|Aug. 9|55,016|
|Aug. 10|59,261|
|Aug. 11|30,893|
|Aug. 12|65,211|
|Aug. 13|58,624|
|Aug. 14|53,429|
|Aug. 15|97,813|
|Aug. 16|75,927|
|Aug. 17|30,060|
|Tuesday|55,777|
|Wednesday|41,891|
|Thursday|38,012|
|Friday|45,943|
|Saturday|73,376|
|Sunday|not available|
|Total|905,645*|
[end chart]

*Note: Total does not include Sunday’s attendance numbers.