BUCKHANNON – The Event Center at Brushy Fork has hired a new manager looking to introduce new events to the space.

The Upshur County Convention and Visitors Bureau, which manages the space, decided to hire Buck Edwards as the new manager of the event center, effective Aug. 13. Edwards will fill the shoes of former event center manager Sean Harris.

“He has such a solid experience working with a variety of people and he’s well known for being involved with something and accomplishing a job, so we thought he would be a really great fit for this position,” Laura Meadows, executive director of the Upshur County Convention and Visitors Bureau, said. “We really wanted somebody who had great contacts, because the event center certainly has a very strong foundation and going forward we want to expand that. Buck knows a lot of people — he knows people in Buckhannon, really throughout the state — so his network of contacts will be a huge asset.”

Edwards said he was interested in the position because he always thought the space was not being used to its full potential. 

“I’ve always thought center out there was underutilized, and I thought with my experience, I could help turn it into something more than what it was at the time,” Edwards said. “It was really appealing to me, so that’s why I applied, and I eventually got the job, so I’m excited about making that happen.”

After starting his new position, he started evaluating their inventory and the space itself to determine the type of events they can facilitate.

“I’ve been learning the administrative side — inventory, equipment, what we have on hand — so that I can have a better understanding of what type of events we can handle,” Edwards said. “It’s going to be important to understand the market we have and what would fit well with that center because not every event will match the center, so I can make that determination and I can be able to market that different groups.”

Additionally, he’s working on several event ideas to start facilitating.

“I would like to start doing a farmers market on Sundays throughout the winter, maybe once a month throughout the winter,” Edwards said. “We’d like to do some antique shows, we can picture possibly doing something like an evening comedy show with dinner and somebody contacted us the other day about doing a cross-stitch event, anything like that we can come up with and find people to do those events.”

He also sees the potential benefit of having a large event space in central West Virginia.

“We will be looking to do a lot of events like one-day conferences with organizations throughout this state — maybe the Department of Education, maybe WVU, organizations like that,” Edwards said. “Groups want to have an event centrally located in West Virginia, and the event center definitely fits in.”

Meadows said there is no other venue like the event center in the immediate area.

“We really don’t have a large venue in Buckhannon and we’ve been really fortunate here in the past few years, where we do have some other event venues and I think they’re amazing because they all have their own different types of atmospheres,” Meadows said. “With the Event Center at Brushy Fork, there’s nothing else that large and there’s nowhere else in our area where you can house pushing 400 people for a banquet, so just knowing our community has that asset of space is tremendous.”